Novel Bakery

While I’m up, I order a box of a dozen cupcakes from Baked & Wired, one of every flavor they have on sale that day. When it arrives, I sit down on my floor with a fork and eat until it tastes good.

from Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang is not a comfort read, but it lived up to all the hype including its pick as Reese’s Book Club July pick. It’s more of a lose-all-hope-in-humanity kind of read. 

After her quasi-friend and best-selling author Athenu Liu dies, June Hayward steals her manuscript and passes it off as her own. The novel is a chilling satire of racism, white privilege, cancel culture, and social media bullying. None of the characters will give you warm fuzzies, least of all the protagonist and unreliable narrator, June Hayward. 

I had to recreate the dozen cupcakes that June orders from Baked & Wired (a bakery in Washington, D.C.) to celebrate the sale of her book and then has to eat alone. Because she had nobody to celebrate with. The book says that June orders a dozen–one of every flavor. Which isn’t possible because the bakery has more than 12 flavors. But I chose 11 of Baked & Wired flavors plus I created a pandan cupcake for the pandan pancake scene.

For the chocolate cupcakes, I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe. A quarter of my chocolate cake recipe makes 6 cupcakes.

For the cupcakes with a vanilla base, I used Chelsweets vanilla cake recipe. I halfed the recipe and then divided it to make the separate cupcake flavors.

For the buttercream, I used my favorite Italian Meringue buttercream recipe from Erin McDowell and then added flavor.

For the pandan cupcake, I used my favorite cream cheese frosting (I use honey instead of golden syrup and I skip the lemon extract). For the tesita cupcake, I added a spoonful of nutella to about a cup of cream cheese frosting.

vanilla vanilla	vanilla cake base with vanilla buttercream
coconut	vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream, topped with toasted coconut
tesita	vanilla cake with chocolate hazelnut cream cheese frosting and dulce de leche filling
pandan	vanilla cake (1/2 teaspoon of pandan added to the cake batter) with cream cheese frosting
vanilla satin	vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream (added some melted chocolate to the Italian Meringue buttercream)
dirty chai	vanilla cake (1/2 teaspoon of chai spice added to the batter), flavored the Italian Meringue buttercream with 1/2 teaspoon of postum since I don’t drink coffee and added a dot of ganache
strawberry	vanilla cake (fresh chopped strawberries added to the batter) with Italian Meringue buttercream flavored with ground up freeze dried strawberries
Razmanian	vanilla cake (lemon zest and a touch of lemon juice added to the batter) with Italian Meringue buttercream flavored with lemon zest, and a fresh raspberry filling (subbed raspberries in this quick jam recipe)
Smurfette	vanilla cake (lemon zest and a touch of lemon juice plus fresh blueberries added to the batter) with Italian Meringue buttercream flavored with lemon zest
almond orangesicle	vanilla cake (1 teaspoon of almond flour and 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract added to vanilla batter) with Italian Meringue buttercream flavored with orange zest, garnished with toasted almonds
doom cupcake	chocolate cake with Italian Meringue buttercream flavored with melted chocolate
Karen’s birthday cupcake	chocolate cake with vanilla Italian Meringue buttercream.

Making these cupcakes was a project. While they were all delicious, my very favorite was the tesita. I cannot wait to make a full cake from those flavors. It was divine.

Which flavor of cupcake would you choose to assuage your guilt?

Check out my Instagram reel for Yellowface!