Sweet Corn Cereal Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Buttercream

During my last weeks at ICE, I had to catalog a bunch of books.  One of them was called, The Colors of Dessert, by Battman, a photographer who chronicles food and other things that encapsulate NYC.  He got a bunch of famous pastry chefs in the city to make desserts that scaled the colors of the rainbow.  I found this recipe from the restaurant, Good Enough to Eat, for sweet corn cereal cake.  The cake sounded so different and interesting that I just had to try it.  I of course changed a bunch of things based on my own choosing and what my grocery store had in stock.

Here are the changes that I made: Instead of sour cream, I used greek yogurt.  The recipe called for sweet corn cereal, which is POPS, but my grocery store didn't carry POPS so I went with an organic brands version.  My snooty grocery store also didn't carry canned creamed corn, so I had to buy the fresh stuff and make my own version.  The buttercream was fairly simple, only containing butter, cream cheese, and confectioners sugar.  I added a touch of vanilla and salt. 

Here is the recipe and the cost analysis that I did.  I ended up spending so much money at the grocery store that I wanted to see if the actual recipe was expensive, but as it turns out, its fairly inexpensive.  I also had a lot of ingredients in house which made it easier.  Doing baking experiments is a costly endeavor!  Especially since you always leave the grocery store with more than you need.

The cake was really weird.  I think there was too much lemon juice and I think it needs the creamed corn.  Sometimes baking experiments don't work out, this one definitely did not.  But it turns out that the experiment wasn't a total waste because the cream cheese buttercream was delicious.