Watergate Cupcakes

For my boyfriend's birthday, I decided to bake him cupcakes. After all, he thoughtfully gave me that big book filled with cupcake recipes. What better event than now to show off my newfound knack of baking cupcakes to him, after all? A little over a year ago, he told me his and his father’s favourite cake was called ‘Watergate Cake.’ Now, I never had heard of this type of cake before, and he explained it to me – see: filled with pistachios and yummy.

 I did research on the internet for a cake recipe like this, since I couldn’t seem to find it in any cookbooks I had on hand. Even Martha Stewart didn’t have a recipe for it! I did find a few recipes though on it, and they all had pretty much the same features: a boxed cake mix (yellow or white), some sort of fizzy soda (club or lemon-lime usually), and pistachio pudding. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find a ‘Watergate Cake’ recipe from scratch, ie. not using a boxed cake mix. So I figured that if I got the other ingredients on hand, I could deviate from a white cake recipe and add in the other stuff.  So that’s what I did! I also added in some crushed pistachios and walnuts for extra flavouring.

This recipe yields a ridiculously large number of cupcakes! I made about 30 regular sized cupcakes, and a dozen mini cupcakes with the batter.

Watergate cake:

3 ¼ cups sifted cake flour (not self-rising)

1 ½ tablespoons baking powder

¼ tsp salt

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk

½ cup plus 6 tablespoons (1 ¾ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 ¾ cups sugar

5 large egg whites, room temperature

1 cup crushed pistachios

1 box pistachio flavoured instant pudding

½ cup walnuts
1 cup club soda

1.   

    2. Preheat oven to 350° F. Line muffin tin with paper liners. Sift together cake flour, baking powder, pudding mix, and salt.

2.       

2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter until smooth. Gradually add in sugar, beating until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk, and beating until just combined after each. Add club soda.

3.     

3.   In another bowl, with electric mixer on medium speed, whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold one third of egg whites into batter to lighten. Gently fold in remaining whites in two batches. Add in crushed pistachios and walnuts, stir until combined.  (Additionally, I added in a few drops of green food colouring because I wanted my cupcakes to be really green!!

4.    

4.    Fill muffin tin ¾ full. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Transfer muffin tin to wire racks to cool for 10 minutes. Pull out cupcakes and let cool completely before frosting.

The frosting I made was really simple to make. I used the same recipe for the frosting that all the Watergate cake recipes I found were using. This yields about enough frosting for two dozen cupcakes.

Frosting:

Two packets of Dream Whip

One box of pistachio flavoured instant pudding mix

1 ½ cups milk

1.       Mix, with an electric mixer on medium-high, Dream Whip and milk together until the mixture thickens and forms peaks.

2.       Add in pistachio instant pudding mix and mix until combined.

3.       Chill until ready to use.

Everything went according to plan: the baking, the frosting making. And then the unthinkable happened. I had set a tray of iced cupcakes down on the table and as I turned to find a spatula, the whole tray slipped off the table and… splat. Top side down onto the floor. I had unknowingly set it on a potholder that was hanging off the edge, and it carried the whole tray down to cupcake doom.

I ended up making some more. And finished the day off with making chocolate chip cookies. Phew, what a day!