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Jul 17, 2009 06:03 PM

Cupcakes- oil or butter

I am hosting a baby shower and I have a bit of a conundrum concerning one of the desserts. I currently have a favorite coconut peach layer cake recipe that I want to convert into cupcakes because I have a whole spread of other desserts like cookies and scones and cream puffs that I figure people will be more apt to eat something in a cupcake form rather than cut a whole piece of layer cake. Anyway, here are my questions.

1. Do you think I should use a combination of oil and butter or straight butter?

Oil is 100% fat to butter's 80% so I would modify and swap out about a quarter of the volume butter for oil (not olive even though, yes, it is supposed to keep baked goods more most than say vegetable because I don't like the flavor of even light olive oil in my cakes). There are tons of arguments that oil makes a harsher crumb, but I figure that a combo would give a good balance considering both moisture and denseness. Then again, this recipe makes for a pretty dense cake even considering using cake flour because of the sour cream, buttermilk, and coconut cream, so is it really worth it to risk using the oil in an already dense recipe? So basically, just looking for some educated opinions because I am hopelessly indecisive.

2. Should I bake the peaches in with the cupcakes or fill it post?

Just don't know the better option in terms of flavor. I would lightly flour the peaches to account for sinking. Or the other option is to cut a cone out of the top and fill with the peach filling.

Clearly I am probably over-analyzing all this but any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

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  1. Use all-butter. There's no comparison in the taste of cakes made with butter vs even part oil. It sounds as though in the original recipe the peaches are in the filling between the layers, not in the cake batter. Can you puree the peaches and add them into the frosting? If not, then pipe the peach filling into the baked cupcakes. You can do this without cutting the cone, if you don't use a great deal of filling. Or, if you can find some nice dried peaches, cook them in just a little water or peach syrup and blend to a very thick puree, mixing THAT into the batter. The flavor should be intense enough to come through.

    1 Reply
    1. re: greygarious

      I concur with the idea of filling the finished cupcake with your puree. I think you'll appreciate the true flavor of the peach using that method over the "cook it in the batter" method.