This past weekend was eventful for four reasons:

• A friend of mine got married!
• I got my catalytic converter stolen.
• I got a weird pimple/bug-bite/stye(?) over my eyelid, which hurts way more than it should.
• It was Mother’s Day.

These four events are unrelated to each other but it’s worth labeling some sort of timestamp for this unfortunate occurrence in my life.

It’s been a tiring weekend for me.

I don’t even have a Prius and this part may be backordered for the next five months because ~*catalytic converter theft*~ has been on the rise. Because people suck.

First COVID, now the cat with the bonus of my eye pimple thrown in there because why not? This hasn’t been my month so far, y’all.

Other than the reminder of how much people suck, this weekend was also the time to remind myself that there are still some people in the world who do not suck–like the mom-like figures in my life. I wanted to bake something small and simple as a gesture of appreciation for some of the moms in my ministry group so I settled on making salted matcha white chocolate chip cookies and Hokkaido cupcakes, using recipes from Cooking Therapy and Unlikely Baker.

The Process

This was very straightforward and I wanted it to be. Last week, I was slammed by life and realized pretty quickly that my bandwidth to make something fancy was virtually none. Hence, that led to my decision to make cookies (I know I said I swore off of cookies but here we are) and Hokkaido cupcakes, which is basically a form of chiffon cupcakes.

The cookie-making process was relatively straightforward and uneventful, not that much different from the last time I made cookies. It was mixing the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately before combining both together. The one “pizzazz” was adding browned butter and a bit more salt. I baked it for longer than expected so it looked a little more brown than green but ehh not too bad.

I would like to investigate more of the effects of browned butter on a cookie because similar to what I’ve seen with other cookies with brown butter, there is the risk of the cookie’s texture becoming soft and cakey, rather than chewy, which is what I’m looking for.

Following the cookie recipe though yielded me around 20 cookies,

Moving onto the Hokkaido cupcakes, I was trying to find something with an inoffensive taste and texture and thought that these cupcakes fulfilled the criteria.

The process for this begins similarly to making a chiffon cake. First, I separated the egg yolks from the egg whites. In one standmixer bowl, I whisked the egg yolks with sugar before adding some milk, oil, and flour.

In another separate bowl, I whisked the egg whites with some sugar. Out of laziness to pull out another standmixer, I pulled out a handmixer, graciously donated to me by a friend after our senior year in college, right before she went off to help at a churchplant. Probably a weird feeling to be nostalgic while doing something mundane like whipping egg whites but here we are.

Unsolicited Science Corner

Also, egg-whites as leavener! Turns out that there’s three types of leavening agents–mechanical, chemical, and biological. While baking powder/soda are chemical agents and yeast are a type of biological agent, egg whites become mechanical leavening agents when you whip thousands of little air bubbles into them.

Doing a bit a research (this article from the American Egg Board(?!) specifically), egg whites contain two proteins responsible for this foaming/aeration process—ovalbumin and ovomucin. As egg whites are whipped, proteins unfold and end up interacting with air and each other to create foam and eventually enable expansion when under hot air. Going by the principle of hot air rising and expanding, those little air bubbles are responsible for making things like souffles or chiffon cakes rise.

Okay, back to the process

After whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks, I folded it into the egg yolk mixture and completed my batter. I then loaded up my batter in these paper baking cups I got for cheap at Daiso. They felt flimsier than I expected so I was a little dubious but eh, my choices were limited.

This recipe said it yields 8-12 cupcakes but realistically, this yielded closer to 7 cupcakes.

Luckily, I was proven wrong when they poofed up beautifully in the oven.

The next day, I whipped up some whipped cream and decided to add a lil less sugar and vanilla for health reasons.

Jk, no, actually, it’s because, unpopular opinion, I don’t like it when the taste of vanilla is strong in my whipped cream. I avoid most storebought whipped creams for this reason. I hate the after taste it leaves behind, which ends up ruining the whipped cream experience for me. When I eat whipped cream, I want the dominant flavor to be what its name implies–cream. Milky cream. Perhaps, one may think of my taste as “bland” but I would insist that this is me enjoying whipped cream closest to its original, God-created, natural state.

Some of you haven’t experienced the adrenaline of downing shots of coffee creamer in your youth and it shows.

Anyway, so the next step was filling up these cupcakes with whipped cream. Learning vaguely from my lesson with the donuts and the fact that most of the filling stops half-way through, I stabbed each cupcake with a knife in a cross-like fashion down its center to give the whipped cream to fill the cupcake. I am aware that there is a narrow tip that is best for these sort of purposes but I didn’t have that so I tried to compensate.

To make it more picturesque, I then placed some leftover strawberries I cut up for my youth group snacks on top. At least, the pop of red made the cupcakes look less boring. I then dusted the cupcakes off with powdered sugar to cover up their flaws because decoration is really about distraction.

Then, because presentation is everything and distracts from the lackluster appearance of my baked goods, I placed two cupcakes and four cookies in a nice box, throwing in some pink tissue paper and red ribbon for festivities.

Overall

I liked the taste of the matcha cookies, the pop of salt brought out the flavor of the matcha more. I would actually even argue that in hindsight, I could have added more matcha to add more to the flavor and hue of the cookies and the salt would’ve helped with that too. It wasn’t as chewy as I expected but definitely not underbaked. Again, echoing what I mentioned earlier, it might be worth seeing what browned butter does to cookies, as even my previous experience with baking cookies with browned butter led to similar results in texture. It almost seems that softened butter garners the most consistent results when it comes to chewy cookies (#nestletollhouse as the supreme cookie recipe).

It’s a solid cookie, but alas, after eating one, I realize that yes, I was still sick of cookies from the aftermath of the last time I made cookies in bulk.

As for the chiffon cupcakes, it was very light in terms of taste. I liked that it didn’t taste too heavy but I felt like I could’ve add more sugar to make the whipped cream more sweet. I liked the pillowy soft texture of the cupcake itself, which made me happy. It was a bit on the blander side. I think if the strawberry wasn’t there, it would surely taste too bland.

If I were to make this again, I would incorporate some sort of jammy curd to pair with the whipped cream or make a flavored whipped cream to pair with it instead.

Some Final Thoughts

Overall, it was solid and I was thankful I got the chance to appreciate some people in my life this Mother’s Day. I know it’s easy to slide into self-pity and anger when I think how stuff has been playing out in my life so far but I’m trying to do my best to focus on the things I can be grateful for.

I’m thankful to have a friend who know cars and was quickly able to identify the issue with my car when it first appeared.

I’m thankful to have a friend who had his catalytic converter stolen twice and because of that, he was able to advise me on what to do when that happened to me.

I’m thankful for friends who are compassionate and trust me enough to lend me their cars when I still needed a way to get to work.

I’m thankful that I have friends who show concern about my situation and remind me that I’m not alone and that I matter.

I’m thankful that I live in a church body that supports me and made a sucky situation that much more bearable to get through.