Hi -- I think I posted in the wrong forum earlier; no responses . . .

I'm new to scratch baking for cupcakes, and I recently purchased the Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook. I'd like to try a couple of the recipes listed, but I have the following questions:

1. In the cookbook, the author says that she prefers cake flour to AP flour, although from her comments, it appears that in Australia (I'm in the U.S.A.) cake flour isn't always available, so many of her recipes call for AP flour. Are they interchangeable? On a 1:1 ratio?

2. In the frosting section, several icings call for "thickened cream" (vs. regular heavy cream for ganaches, etc.). Any ideas on what that is? (and/or how to make it?)

I tried googling their website, but no contact other than phone is available (too much of a long-distance call for me!)

So, thanks to anyone who can help!!!! Diana

It is not 1:1 if you use measuring cups. If the recipe calls for measuring 2 cups of cake flour, you would need 1 3/4 cups bleached all-purpose flour, according to my cookbook Rose's Heavenly Cakes. But if you're measuring by weight, just use the same weight, according to the book. HTH.

i would assume that if your making a ganache or frosting, thickened cream is heavy cream. i have always use cream in my frostings and ganaches.

I believe that thickened cream (what we mostly get here) has gelatin added to make it easier to whip. I think most people in the US use what's called heavy cream there.

Crabapple Bakery have gone into liquidation.... TWICE! in the last 2 years.

I would say that the recipes are using the flour that they state in them - ie. Plain (all purpose) and the quantity stated.

The reference to her preference to 'Cake Flour' is just in the Preface Section (How to Bake a Great Cake)

oops - CREAM - Yes our cream is your Heavy Cream (35% butterfat) and the only difference with the thickened cream is the addition of gelatine which assists with the whipping.

It is not necessary to use thickened cream when making ganache (the heating process used during the making of ganache will render the gelatine iseless anyway) SO.... if thats all you have on hand makes no difference to use it

We have only 2 kinds of cream here: whipping and thickened. I can say for sure that regular whipping cream is fine for ganache.
The difference is the fat content, whipping is about 30% fat, heavy whipping cream is 36-38%, double is about 40-48% and thickened has the gelatin added to make it spoonable and stable.
In our ganache, recipes typically call for some butter, I think this is probably to up the fat content to give the nice texture as we only have the whipping cream. HTH.

THANKS, Everyone!! In her ganache recipes, she uses the heavy whipping cream (what we do here in the U.S.). But for the "thickened" cream, how much gelatin would you add? (I guess per cup of whipping cream???) The recipes that call for the thickened cream are the strawberries and cream filling, raspberies/jam and cream fillings, etc.

Thanks so much for your help!

I don't think it will make much difference at all if you just substitute your Heavy Whipping Cream for the Thickened Cream stated in the recipes.

If you are still wanting to make it -try doing a recipe search for stabilised whipped cream - think it is approx 1/4 tspn gelatine, to 1/4 cup water to 1 cup heavy whipping cream.

Thanks, Pam!