Cook the Collection #3: Baking Illustrated

I’m still on the baking kick, but I think this week’s recipe is going to make me take a break for awhile (either that or I’m going to have to bake something else to get the taste out of my mouth). I cooked from “Baking Illustrated” which is a baking cookbook from the Cooks Illustrated library. I usually have great luck with the Cooks Illustrated recipes and their book “The Best Recipe” is one of my favorites but. . . not this time.

I made yellow cupcakes and instead of frosting them with the chocolate ganache in the recipe I used the vanilla buttercream recipe from the same book. The recipes were clear and easy to follow but I just wasn’t very happy with the results. The cupcakes tasted dry to me, and the buttercream was too buttery for my tastes. It was disappointing because I love a good cupcake and I was really looking forward to this one. I’ve baked other things from this book before that were more successful, but its definitely not one of my go-to baking books and the next time I have a choice I’ll try one of my others first.