peach cupcakes

I am not even going to eat these. They are not my type of thing. These will go to some ladies I know who work together. I taste-tested the raw batter as well as the frosting, and that was enough for me to last another year. 

The idea here was to see if a tin of peaches could make a decent cupcake. I don't know what's wrong with me. Is it so hard to find a recipe and follow it? I suppose it is. Look, you make a batter, put it in little cups, bake it and bang, there it is, a batch of cupcakes. 

I hear the axiom over and over again stated flatly as received wisdom, "It's baking, so you have to be precise."

That's total bullshit. I just proved it with the most careless batch of cupcakes you're ever likely to see. I will admit, along the way one does face a series of decisions. These were mine: D. = decision

Canned peaches or frozen or fresh?  D. Canned

What type of flour? D. Low protein for cakes

Puree the peaches or leave chunky? D. Puree

Use the syrup? D. Yes

Butter or oil? D. Butter and oil

Full cup of sugar? D. No, half cup, the syrup has sugar.

Egg? D. Yes, one. 

Vanilla? D. Yes, 3X more than normal because I'm a vanilla fiend.

Salt? D. Yes, 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Spices? D. Yes, 1/2 teaspoon

Food coloring? D. No.

Baking soda and baking powder? Test a portion to see how it reacts. D. Baking powder.

Temperature? D. 350℉ 175℃

Commercial frosting? D. No, homemade frosting. 

Type? D. Butter and confectioner sugar.  + the remaining Neufchâtel cheese

Water or milk? D. No, lemon juice

Technique. For both the batter and the frosting, cream room temperature butter with sugar. For the batter, continue beating in the egg, then the remainder of the wet ingredients. In this case, the peach puree took up one cup of sifted cake flour. So, the remaining peach syrup from the can was added which took up another cup of sifted flour, so two cups of sifted flour. In that manner, the liquid portion and the dry portion were added in increments. These two cupcake pans could have taken two and 1/2 cups sifted flour and however much liquid for that to form a batter. 

The batter was taste-tested. It seemed perfectly fine to me, delicious, actually.  At that point it had no leavening. A tablespoon of the batter was mixed with water and tested with baking soda. It did not react so that showed me the mixture was not acidic. I could have added an acid to the batter to force it to react but decided against that. I added two level teaspoons of baking powder. If the cupcakes would form domes, then I would consider slicing them off after the cupcakes were baked in order to have a flat surface to glue to another peach half. If I wanted the cupcakes to have domes, then I would add an acid and use both baking soda and baking powder. 

When two cupcakes are frosted together, a rounded knife edge is run across 1/3 or so of the sealed edge to form an indention in imitation of a real peach. 

Granulated sugar is colored in a plastic bag and then dumped into a bowl. The peach halves glued together are rolled around yellow-orange colored sugar, then red color is added to the orange sugar to darken it. The red sugar is spooned over a single area of each peach to imitate a peach blush. 

The stems are pinches of mint clipped from the Aerogarden.