Rose cupcakes

Further to my previous post about the activities in the third class, here is a recap of the rose cupcakes I made for the class along with its recipe...

I had purchased a bottle of rose water some time ago with a plan to incorporate it in some kind of baked good. Rose water is most often used to make Iranian, Turkish, and Indian sweets and I found it in the multicultural aisle at Superstore. Since I didn't have a recipe that called for rose water, I decided to modify an existing recipe for my own use. This is what I ended up using:

• Rose cupcakes
•  
• 1 call-purpose flour
• 1 tspbaking powder
• 1/2 tspsalt, plus pinch for egg whites
•  
• 1/2 cunsalted butter
• 3/4 cgranulated sugar
• 4eggs, separated
• 1 Tbsprose water
•  
• Sift flour, baking powder, and salt. Set flour mixture aside.
•  
• Cream butter with sugar. Add rose water and egg yolks one at a time and mix. Fold in flour mixture.
•  
• Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt in a separate bowl until stiff but not dry. Gently fold into batter.
•  
• Spoon batter into 12 cupcake papers until about 2/3 full and bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.

Since the recipe required the egg whites to be beaten separately, I was really glad I had a second bowl for my KitchenAid mixer. This is what the batter looked like when I started to fold in the egg whites:


And this is what it looked like after I finished mixing:


There was enough batter to fill eleven cupcake papers:


Here are nine of them cooling on a wire rack:


The recipe yielded cupcakes with a sponge texture:


For class, we were supposed to ice them flat and I chose a light pink colour because I wanted to make decorations in a deeper pink:


Unfortunately, the deeper pink icing did not pipe properly so I couldn't put drop flowers on top of the cupcakes. Instead, I piped little white rosettes in the middle:


The cupcakes were easy to make and I would definitely use the recipe again. I had some doubts while mixing the batter because the rose scent was strong, but it faded once the cupcakes were baked. In fact, the flavour was so light that it was almost like an aftertaste!