The Last of the Hurricane Posts

This is the third and final post about how I cooked my way through the hurricane.  While it’s been good for my blogging productivity, let’s hope there are no more natural disaster-induced motivators, hmm?

Anyway, having survived Irene basically unscathed, I found myself with far more time than I expected the day after.  So I baked, but just because I had the time doesn’t mean I had the inclination to pull out all the baking stops and do something stupidly “Thank God, we’re alive!” manic like eclairs (though I did make eclairs during the blogging hiatus, because there is, in fact, a correct time and place for stupidly manic cooking).  I just wanted something comforting, low on the effort scale, and, since I didn’t know if commuter rail was going to be back up in time for me to go to work on Monday morning, capable of keeping an extra day if necessary.  What fit that particular bill excellently was gingerbread.

As we all know, my quest for ever more obnoxiously in-your-face gingery things is a lifelong one, and in that quest, I had tried the Classic Gingerbread Cake recipe in this January’s issue of Cook’s Illustrated. Apart from the bordering-on-foolhardy quantities of both fresh and powdered ginger, the recipe had two other things going for it: the clever use of stout to deepen the flavor, and the promise of eliminating the sunken and damp middle gingerbread is so often prone to. The recipe delivered on both intense gingery flavor and structural soundness, and was particularly well-received by the coworkers, who as we’ve established are surprisingly amenable to having their palates challenged via their weekly baked goods.

The one snag was that I had no stout on hand, and because I live in a state with patently absurd liquor laws and was not going to make a special trip to the beer distributor on the day after a hurricane to buy stout by the full case, I had to substitute what I did have: a nice hard cider.  To make up the required volume and add some more depth, I spiked it with some really spectacular rum we picked up on our now-annual summer jaunt to the Berkshires with His Lordship’s community orchestra. Despite the fact that the CI people said it wasn’t worth making the recipe with anything but stout, I noticed no dumbing down of the cake once baked.  The cider, rum and very dark blackstrap molasses I had in the pantry contributed more than enough low notes to support the double-ginger assault.  Honestly, I think it’s just as good with the substitution, and since we have not much use for stout while I adore hard cider, I’ll be going with this combination from now on.

For ease of distribution, as usual with Monday treats, I converted the recipe to cupcakes, which I spread with a cream cheese and lemon curd frosting. The frosting is seriously optional, and if it were up to His Lordship there would be no question about leaving it off, since he didn’t care for the additional sourness.  For those of you who are similarly less obsessed about citrus than I am, feel free to eat them plain or with a dab of salted butter for just the merest bit of decadence.

Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemon Curd Frosting
(Adapted from Classic Gingerbread Cake, Cook’s Illustrated, January/February 2011)
Makes 30 cupcakes

For the gingerbread:
3 cups all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 bottle (11.2 ounces) hard cider plus enough dark rum to make 1 ½ cups
1 teaspoon baking soda
⅔ cup blackstrap molasses
⅔ cup honey
1 ½ cups packed light brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs
⅔ cup canola oil
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger

For the frosting (utterly optional):
4 ounces (half a block) of cream cheese, at room temperature
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
½ powdered sugar
2 pinches sea salt
Half a (10.5 ounce) jar of lemon curd, or more to taste

Whisk together flour, ginger, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and black pepper in a large bowl and set aside.

Bring the cider and rum to a boil in a small pan over medium heat.  In the meantime, set the oven rack to the middle position, preheat the oven to 350 F and line 2 ½ muffin trays with cupcake liners.

Pour the hot cider and rum into a medium bowl and stir in the baking soda, which will foam up aggressively, then stir in the molasses, honey, and sugars.  Once the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is a bit cooler, whisk in the eggs, oil and grated ginger.

Add the wet mixture into the dry ingredients a third at a time, whisking vigorously between additions until completely smooth before adding the next third.  (For once, you need not be afraid of over-mixing.)  The batter will be quite liquid after the final addition, so use a ladle to divide it evenly among the lined muffin cups.

Tap the filled muffin trays gently against the counter a couple of times to release any air bubbles, and bake 25-30 minutes, until the tops are firm to the touch and a tester comes out mostly clean.  Cool briefly in their tins before lifting out by the liners onto a wire rack and cooling completely.

While the cupcakes are cooling, beat the cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar and salt together in a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light.  Beat in the lemon curd and taste, adding more if you want a more pronounced lemon flavor.  Spread the frosting thinly over the cooled cupcakes.

Unfrosted cupcakes will keep for several days at room temperature in an airtight container.  Once frosted, they really should be refrigerated, though you should bring them back to room temperature before serving since the chill will blunt some of the spicy kick.

Notes:

I could have stretched the batter among three full muffin tins, yielding 36 cupcakes, but they would have been slightly smaller than I wanted.  If you prefer that many, start checking them at 20 minutes for doneness. If you want to make a large sheet cake instead, pour the batter into a 9×13 pan, greased and floured, and bake 35-45 minutes.  Cool completely in the pan before frosting and slicing.

The quantity of frosting here is just enough to thinly cover the full batch of cupcakes.  If you want to be much more generous or to pipe designs with it, double the quantities.

Read Full Post »

Seeing Red

So one of my coworkers requested I make red velvet cupcakes for my regular Monday-morning office treat, which posed a bit of a dilemma. While I’m not a food nazi, I do try to avoid the patently unnatural, and red velvet cake is defined by the glowing red produced by huge quantities of artificial food coloring.

What to do: compromise my principles, or settle for less-incendiary red from some more natural source?

As much as I like to please my coworkers, the idea of pouring two bottles of blood-red fluid straight from some Frankenfood plant on the New Jersey turnpike weirded me out too much, so I decided to go the natural route. Since research pointed to beets as an accepted coloring agent in the early history of the red velvet cake, and beets are one of my favorite vegetables, that’s what I chose to experiment with.

My first attempt used a Cook’s Country recipe, since despite my continuing annoyance with Kimball for the polenta fiasco, a lot of bloggers had used it with good results. While I agreed that the taste and texture were good, the pretty magenta color of the batter baked out to an extremely generic tan. I got no complaints when I passed them off as Brown Suede cupcakes, but I still wanted to make genuinely red red velvet without resorting to food coloring.

A little more research turned up the cause of the color change and a potential solution. Rose Levy Berenbaum’s most recent cake book has a recipe for red velvet cake, which uses artificial color but includes a note about baking soda neutralizing the natural pigments in beet juice. Her batter, in contrast, is highly acidic, which should preserve the color.

And it did! Although there was a little fading from bright raspberry to dusky pink in the oven, the resulting cupcakes were definitely in the red end of the spectrum. Because it’s an egg-white-only chiffon batter, it was considerably drier than the conventional Cook’s Country one, but a thick coating of cream cheese frosting mostly took care of it.

I won’t call these the best cupcakes I’ve ever posted here, but they’re perfectly respectable and they are a legitimately non-toxic red. And no, they really don’t taste like beet, I swear. They taste mildly of cocoa and of the cream cheese frosting, which, besides the inflammatory color, is what I understand the whole point of red velvet to be.

Non-Radioactive Red Velvet Cupcakes
(Adapted from Rose Red Velvet Cake in Rose Levy Berenbaum’s Rose’s Heavenly Cakes)
Makes 24 cupcakes

For the cake:

1 large beet, peeled
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups minus 2 tablespoons cake flour
1 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons natural cocoa powder, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup grapeseed or canola oil
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup buttermilk

For the frosting:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon creme fraiche or sour cream
Pinch of salt
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Set the rack to the lower-third position and preheat the oven to 350 F. Line two muffin tins with paper liners.

Run the beet through a juicer. Skim off any foam, and measure out 2 tablespoons of the juice. Whisk the beet juice and vanilla into the egg whites just until the color is evenly distributed.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cocoa and salt in a medium bowl.

Mix the oil and butter together in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for 1 minute on medium speed. Add the flour and buttermilk, and mix on low until the dry ingredients are moistened, then increase the speed to medium and beat 1 1/2 minutes longer. Scrape down the bowl and add the egg mixture in two parts, beating 30 seconds on medium speed after each addition.

Using an ice cream scoop, evenly divide the batter among the cups. Bake for 16-18 minutes, until the tops spring back when pressed lightly. Cool for a few minutes in the tins, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cupcakes are cooling, combine the cream cheese, butter, creme fraiche and salt in a food processor and pulse until smooth. Add the sugar and vanilla and keep pulsing until evenly incorporated. Spread the cupcakes with this frosting once they’ve cooled.

Notes:

If you’re less gunshy about fake food coloring than I am, you can replace the beet juice with the same amount of liquid red food color to get a really bright red cake, but if you’re going to do that, I’d go with the moister, richer Cook’s Country version.

Read Full Post »

Cake and Happenstance

It’s not just His Lordship who doesn’t get cake for his birthday. Since His Lordship isn’t much for baking, unless we go out to dinner somewhere with a creditable pastry chef, I don’t get one on my birthday either. The fact of the matter is that Chez Disdain is a birthday cake-free zone.

That isn’t to say that you should pity me, because while His Lordship doesn’t bake cake, he does, in fact bake on occasion. And what he bakes on those occasions is this:

That is a chocolate souffle, and it’s part of a long-standing tradition which began with his deciding to surprise me back when we were in grad school. Being no fool, I’ve insisted on repeat performances every year since. At this point I can’t imagine celebrating my birthday any other way.

But. As much as I adore the souffles and would never give them up, every few years, I kind of miss cake. Since this year’s birthday not only fell on a weekday but the one on which His Lordship would be out all evening at an orchestra rehearsal, I decided to use the time alone to make my own damn cake. Specifically, almond cupcakes topped with a frosting of the quick Meyer lemon jam folded into creme fraiche.

The cupcakes were a quick and painless mix job, came out beautifully tender and cloud-light, and provided a nice neutral base for the brightly lemony cream. They would have had more almond flavor if I’d had almond extract and time to toast almonds instead of using pre-ground almond flour, but they were still quite birthday-worthy, and made me more than content enough to wait all the way to this weekend to get my souffle.

Almond Cupcakes with Meyer Lemon Creme Fraiche
(Adapted from Almond Cake in Rose Levy Berenbaum’s The Cake Bible and Lemon Jam from Sally Schneider’s The Improvisational Cook)
Makes 12 cupcakes

For cake:
1 large egg
1/3 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon Amaretto liqueur
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
13 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon sifted cake flour
5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon ground almonds
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

For lemon cream:
1 recipe Quick Meyer Lemon Jam
8 ounces cold creme fraiche

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.

In a liquid measuring cup, combine the egg, 2 tablespoons sour cream, the Amaretto, and the vanilla.

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the flour, almonds, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt on low speed briefly to blend. Add the butter and remaining sour cream and mix on low until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 90 seconds, then scrape down the sides. Add the egg mixture in three additions, blending for 20 seconds between additions and scraping down as needed.

Using an ice cream scoop, divide the batter evenly between the twelve lined cups. Bake for approximately 20 minutes, until the tops are firm and golden and a tester comes out clean.

While the cupcakes are baking, fold the jam into the creme fraiche until completely combined. Cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to use.

When the cupcakes have cooled sufficiently, top with the creme fraiche and, if desired, a twist of candied Meyer lemon.

Notes:

The lemon creme fraiche will still be pretty fluid when freshly made, and will firm up to a softly spreadable frosting if refrigerated for a few hours. You could serve the barely-cooled cupcake atop a pool of the sauce-like cream, or cool them completely and top them with the chilled cream. Your call.

You can double the quantities for the cake and bake for 35-40 minutes in a buttered and floured 9-inch cake pan for a full-sized cake instead.

Read Full Post »

Yes. Yes She Did.

She most certainly did make the trek on a wretchedly rainy Saturday to the dangerously-nearer-than-before Penzey’s boutique, wherein she proceeded to plunk down more than $80 on spices.

What? I just moved! I needed to restock! Not to mention, the holiday season is coming up! Don’t judge.

By the way, was I exaggerating when I said I clean out their chile section whenever I go there?

No I was not.

Yes, I do like it hot.  QED.

So anyway, you might be wondering what I did with this embarrassment of spices when I got home.  Well, the first thing I did was make a curried egg salad sandwich for lunch.  The second thing I did was to make these fantastic cupcakes for afternoon tea, because spotting the poppy seeds on the Penzey’s shelves reminded me that I’d been craving them for weeks.  The cupcakes also gave me an opportunity to crack open the little jar of dried orange peel and intoxicating Mexican vanilla extract, both of which are absolute necessities for my holiday baking.

While these were cooling, we took the Monster out for her walk, and of course the heavens chose that precise moment to crank up the rainfall to 11. Normally that would put me in a vile temper, but I came home to ferociously strong and milky tea, snappy little cakes, a pantry full of future deliciousness, and an excuse to trot out the totally awesome poppy pin I got at the Museum of Opium in Thailand. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

Except perhaps the project this shopping spree spun off, namely finding a storage solution for my spicy bounty. On our way out of the store, His Lordship declared the current arrangement — a big covered bin into which all the zip bags and little jars are unceremoniously tossed — unacceptable. If anyone has any suggestions that do not involve me wasting hours transferring spices into little jars I don’t even have the shelf space for, I’m all ears.

Poppy Seed Cupcakes
(Adapted from Brown Sugar Lightning Cake in Sally Schneider’s The Improvisational Cook)
Makes 10 jumbo cupcakes, or 12-16 normal ones

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Scant 1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons poppy seeds
2 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dried orange peel, rehydrated in 2 teaspoons boiling water
Zest of one lemon
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350, and line the appropriate number of jumbo or regular muffin tins with foil or paper liners.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and poppy seeds.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and zests until pale and light. Whisk in the liquid mixture, then fold in the dry ingredients until just incorporated.

Scoop the batter into the muffin cups, filling no more than halfway. Bake 20-25 minutes for regular cupcakes or 25-30 for jumbo cupcakes, until golden and springy and the proverbial skewer comes out clean when inserted in the middle of a cupcake. Cool the cupcakes in their tins on a wire rack.

Notes:

If the cake recipe has a vaguely familiar ring, it’s because the endoskeleton is the same basic one that supports the olive oil cake I wrote up last month. Like Alton, I adore a multitasker, and this recipe is as adaptable, quick and foolproof as any you’ll ever find.

I favor cupcakes not because I have a weakness for cute food, but because they cook faster than full-sized cakes, and leftover individual cakes are easier to share with coworkers or friends than a partially-eaten cake. If you have neither concern, bake the batter in a buttered and floured 9-inch round pan for 35-40 minutes.

Read Full Post »

Midnight Snack of the Gods

Quetzalcoatl would be pleased. Or at least appeased.

There are nights — long, dark, melancholic nights — when the only thing between you and abject despair is chocolate, and a candy bar just isn’t going to cut it. Maybe the weltschmerz is growing unbearable, or maybe you have people coming for dinner in twenty minutes because you opened your mouth without thinking and you now need a dead-easy killer dessert that won’t send you spinning into hysteria. Or maybe you’re coming out of the movie theater on a Friday at 11, already forgetting the marshmallowy blockbuster you just saw but haunted by regret over not having ordered a slice of triple-decker chocolate cake to go at dinner even though you knew you’d want dessert later and everything would be closed by then.

Well, with a little help from the ever-fab Alton Brown, I’ve totally got you covered.

I’ve been making his practically instantaneous, utterly fantastic chocolate lava muffins ever since he first aired the recipe on Good Eats, and last night, they saved me from said post-cinema regret spiral. We were going to miss the movie if we didn’t hustle, and I was so full from the grain-heavy veggie burger that I convinced myself it wasn’t worth the delay. Sure enough, as soon as we were walking back to the car after the movie, I started lamenting the absence of cake. Forty-five minutes later, I was happily devouring an individual bittersweet chocolate cake spiced a la mexicana with cinnamon, chiles, coffee and vanilla, as sultry as a summer night at Teotihuacan. Embellished with vanilla bean ice cream and a glistening blood-red sauce of fresh red raspberries, it would have sent that silly fudge cake slinking away in shame.

The “muffin” of the original recipe is a misnomer, since these are actually molten-centered fallen souffle cakes of the sort that have been on every mid- to upper-range restaurant’s dessert menu since the dot com days.  The only connection these have to muffins is the fact that they’re made in muffin tins, or in my version, half of a muffin tin.  Alton’s north-of-the-border unspiced original made twice as many cakes, but unless you really are doing this for a dinner party, it’s just way too much. These are so rich and dense that even I can’t eat more than one at a sitting, so any more would complete overkill.

There’s no conceivable chance you won’t try these, since they’re laughably easy on top of being knock-your-socks-off impressive, but in case you need an extra incentive, the leftovers make a most excellent Sunday brunch with infernally strong coffee. I’m pretty sure no hangover could survive that.

Mexican Chocolate Cakes
(Adapted from Alton Brown’s Chocolate Lava Muffins)
Makes 6 individual cakes

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon espresso powder
1/8 teaspoon Maldon salt or other coarse sea salt
1/8 teaspoon powdered ancho chile
2 large eggs

Additional butter for greasing the muffin tin
2 tablespoons cocoa for coating the muffin tin

1 pint raspberries
Agave nectar, honey or sugar as needed
Vanilla ice cream

Combine the chocolate and butter in a glass measuring cup and microwave on half-power, stirring frequently, until melted and smooth. Stir in the vanilla, and cool briefly.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, espresso powder, salt and chile, crushing the salt between your fingers for more even distribution in the batter.

Scrape the chocolate mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment. Add the flour and mix well. Mix in the eggs one at a time, incorporating the first completely before adding the second. Increase the speed to the highest setting and beat until creamy and lighter in color, 4-5 minutes. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and chill for 15-20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Butter generously the cups and top of a 6-cup muffin tin, or half of a regular 12-cup tin. Coat the cups with the cocoa, shaking out the excess.

Using an ice cream scoop, evenly divide the batter between the six coated cups. Bake 10 minutes, or until the cakes look set on the outside but still moist and a tiny bit wobbly under the surface. Be very careful not to bake them to the point of complete firmness, or they’ll be unpleasantly dry.

While the cakes are baking, puree the berries with an immersion blender. Strain the puree through a mesh strainer to remove the seeds, and sweeten as necessary with the agave, honey or sugar.

Serve the still-warm cakes with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and the raspberry sauce.

Notes:

If you’re not a fan of cinnamon and chiles with chocolate (you poor, sad creature), leave them out, but keep the vanilla and salt.

Since there is so little flour in the recipe, I might try replacing it with the equivalent amount of very finely ground almonds, which are a traditional companion to chocolate in the Mexican tradition.

These can be made up to a day ahead if you don’t care about preserving a molten center — and, frankly, I don’t. The gimmicky molten center thing is so 90s, and not really essential to the success of this recipe.  The real appeal is the speed, ease, velvety texture and deep chocolate flavor.

Read Full Post »

The Return of Sunday Baking: German Chocolate Cupcakes

I won’t even bother with the usual feeble attempt at excusing the lags in blogging. Let’s just look at the pretty picture and forget all about it, OK? Right, moving on…

This lovely little morsel evolved out of my interest in this recipe, which I ran across mid-week and knew I wanted to try over the weekend. I love dulce de leche and I love coconut, so the idea of combining them was irresistible. I stocked up on coconut milk and happily boiled away until I had two and a half cups of caramel, which was…

…to be honest, not everything I had hoped for. I had wanted a clean coconut and caramel flavor, but the brown sugar flavor was a bit overwhelming and it imparted a less than stunning greyish cast to the finished gel. It was still tasty, though, and I still love the idea, so I might try it again soon with white sugar instead.

In the meantime, I had two and a half cups of this interesting goo. In trying to find uses for it, it occurred to me that the taste and texture were very much like the filling for German chocolate cake, only more coconutty. A few quick mental hops later, I had pulled together the following recipe by adapting one of my favorite old-fashioned chocolate fudge cake recipes, from Scharffen Berger’s house cookbook, The Essence of Chocolate. I carried the coconut theme even further by substituting coconut milk for the heavy cream in the frosting, which worked seamlessly. Since coconut milk is shelf-stable and always in my cupboard, unlike cream, which I have to make special trips for, I will probably do this all the time in the future.

As I discovered when I brought them to work this morning, German chocolate cake has a massive fan base. There are a fair amount of steps involved here, but these were such a huge hit that I will definitely pull out the recipe for special occasions. If you’re so inclined, you can turn this back into a full-sized cake by following the baking instructions for the original recipe.

German Chocolate Cupcakes

Makes 36

For the coconut caramel:
2 14-ounce cans unsweetened coconut milk
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

For the coconut ganache:
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
5 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the cupcakes:
2 cups granulated sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup natural cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons espresso powder
1 cup boiling water

For the coconut-pecan topping:
1 cup coconut caramel
1 1/2 cups pecans
1 1/2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut

To make the caramel:

Whisk ingredients together in large heavy pot over medium heat until sugar has dissolved and mixture comes to a boil. Lower heat and simmer vigorously, stirring occasionally, until mixture has thickened to a caramel texture and reduced to approximately 2 1/2 cups, about 30-40 minutes.

Transfer to glass jars and cool completely. Cover and refrigerate once cool.

To make the ganache:

In a heavy saucepan, combine the sugar and coconut milk and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat and simmer for 6 minutes.

Remove from heat, add the chocolate and butter and stir until melted. Pour into a bowl and stir in the vanilla. Cool until thickened to a spreadable consistency.

To make the cupcakes:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 3 cupcake tins with paper liners.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the sugar, flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, and baking soda on low speed.

In a liquid measuring cup, mix together eggs, oil and milk. Add liquid ingredients to mixer and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes.

Dissolve espresso powder in boiling water. Reduce mixer to low speed and add water mixture, blending just until a very liquid batter forms.

Ladle batter into lined cupcake tins, filling each cup just over half full. Bake for 20 minutes, or until tester inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely in tins.

To finish the cupcakes:

While the cupcakes are cooling, spread the pecans and the coconut on separate quarter-sheet pans and toast in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until pecans are fragrant and coconut is pale gold. Stir midway through toasting to prevent the coconut from burning. Set aside to cool while frosting the cupcakes.

Frost each cupcake with a generous amount of ganache, then set aside briefly to set up while finishing the topping.

Chop pecans medium-coarsely and mix together with coconut and approximately one cup of the caramel, or just enough to bind the pecans and shredded coconut together. Top each cupcake with a large scoop of the sticky mixture, and serve.

Read Full Post »

Sunday Night Sweets Blogging: Opera Cupcakes

We’re woefully overdue for another Sunday night sweets entry. It isn’t that I haven’t been baking; it’s just that life has been interfering with blogging time again. The hazelnut chocolate chip cookies I made two weeks ago were a bit disappointing and not worth posting about yet, but I’ll try to find time to write up last week’s almond-caramel sandwich cookies sometime soon, since they came out rather well.

In the meantime, tonight’s mood was in the cake direction. The foibles of my crappy oven aside, I’ve been really happy since I started using Shirley Corriher’s recipe for Basic Moist Sweet Cake from Cookwise for cupcakes. The method is a bit quirky, since you blend the flour and the fat together first, then add the liquid ingredients, but the end product is wonderfully moist, tender, and velvety. I think it might actually work better as cupcakes, since the crumb is so delicate and melting that I can’t imagine it holding up particularly well to frosting or slicing as a full-sized cake. As it is, you really need to double-line the muffin cups, or use the stiff mini-panettone molds I used this time, to give the cakes enough support to stand up once you unmold them; otherwise, they just spread and deform in the liners.

Besides the fantastic texture, the other advantage of this recipe is that you can use any oil you like, but nut oils, if you have them, give you an incredibly flavorful end product. Nearly every time I’ve made this recipe, I’ve used macadamia oil, which gives the basic yellow cake a wonderfully exotic, round, full flavor. This time, since I’m out of the macadamia, I used hazelnut, which inspired me to go with the coffee-chocolate combination of the classic Opera Cake when it came time to frost. Having both a coffee buttercream and a ganache glaze is probably overkill for cupcakes, but I couldn’t decide on one or the other, and I really do love the combination of chocolate, coffee, and nuts.

I’m not entirely happy with the decoration here, because the coffee beans are too small and too dark to make any impact against the ganache. Next time I’d probably use the half-cup of leftover buttercream to pipe rosettes on top of the ganache and then top with the coffee bean, or perhaps a chocolate-covered espresso bean. I’m not going to knock myself out over aesthetics this late on a Sunday, though, and anyway, you really can’t argue with the taste.

Opera Cupcakes
Makes 20-24 cupcakes

Hazelnut Cakes
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
6 tablespoons plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk (1/2 cup total)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/3 cup hazelnut oil (or other nut oil, or mild vegetable oil)

Leave eggs, buttermilk and butter out at room temperature until butter has softened.

Place shelf in lower third of oven, and preheat to 350. Set 20 mini panettone molds on a baking sheet, or line two muffin trays with liners.

Sir the eggs, yolks, 6 tablespoons buttermilk and vanilla together in a liquid measuring cup.

In the bowl of a standing mixer, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, and mix on low speed for 30 seconds. Add the butter, oil and remaining 2 tablespoons butermilk, and mix on low until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium and beat for 1 1/2 minutes, until light. Add the liquid ingredients, one third at a time, beating for 20 seconds between additions.

Fill the molds or muffin cups halfway and bake until golden and a tester comes out clean,
approximately 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit on baking sheet or in muffin trays for ten minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Coffee Buttercream
3 cups powdered sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder, dissolved in 1/4 cup hot water
1 to 2 tablespoons whipping cream

In a standing mixer, mix the sugar and butter on low speed until well blended, then increase speed to medium and beat for another 3 minutes, until light and fluffy.

Add vanilla, dissolved espresso and cream and continue to beat on medium speed for 1 minute more, adding more cream if needed for spreading consistency.

Once the cupcakes have completely cooled, spread 2-3 tablespoons of buttercream over the cakes, creating as smooth and level a surface as possible and leaving at least 1/4 inch of space between the buttercream and the top of the mold/liner for the ganache layer. Refrigerate the frosted cupcakes in an airtight container until the buttercream has firmed.

Ganache
150 grams heavy cream
150 grams dark chocolate, chopped fine
2 tablespoons Lyle’s Golden Syrup (or corn syrup)

Heat the cream in a liquid measuring cup in a microwave until near boiling, approximately 1-2 minutes. Add the chocolate and whisk thoroughly, until chocolate has dissolved and the mixture is smooth. Whisk in the syrup.

Pour 1-2 tablespoons of the ganache over the frosted cupcakes, tilting the cupcakes to swirl the ganache over the surface and ensure even coverage of the buttercream layer. (Do not touch the ganache or try to spread it with a spatula or other utensil, as it will mar the shiny surface of the end product.) If desired, add a coffee bean or chocolate covered espresso bean as garnish.

Return to the refrigerator in a covered container until the ganache has set.

Read Full Post »

Pie? Meh, but Cupcakes I Can Get Behind.

We never had pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving when I was growing up. While my mother adopted Thanksgiving with a vengeance when she first discovered it as an immigrant, her nearly-wholesale appropriation stopped short of the dessert course. She never cared for pumpkin pie, probably because she dislikes cloves and allspice, so we usually had some variation on apple pie (pie, strudel, even tarte tatin) instead. As an adult, though, I’ve thrown off my mother’s aversion to the spices usually found in pie, and I’ve also become really fond of pumpkin as a dessert medium, although pie is still not my favorite use for it, partly because really good pie dough without hydrogenated fat is my personal demon and constant nemesis, and partly because there are so many more interesting possibilities for pumpkin.

For the past few years, I’ve been alternating between the flan/creme brulee end and the cake ends of the spectrum. This year, I decided to follow the example of the very inventive Chockylit at Cupcake Bakeshop, because, in addition to being cute, leftover cupcakes would be much easier to take to work than a partially-consumed cake. I used the same recipe for the cakes, but I’m just not convinced by the combination of pumpkin and chocolate. I opted for a mascarpone and cream cheese frosting instead, based on a recipe I’d seen on Everyday Italian (yeah, she’s annoying, but at least she does have a legitimate grounding in terms of both training and Italian cuisine). The results were both yummy and attractive, although next time I might double the amount of frosting, since there was only enough to cover eighteen cupcakes, and not particularly generously, either.

I won’t re-post the cupcake recipe, since I didn’t modify it at all (although it made twenty-four rather than thirty in my muffin tins, probably because I always resist underfilling the cups), but I’ll post the frosting recipe, since I added vanilla and since the Food Network pulls recipes after a while.

Mascarpone Cream Cheese Frosting
Makes enough to lightly frost 18 cupcakes

3 oz cream cheese
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1/3 cup mascarpone cheese
3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Let the cheeses and butter come to room temperature, then beat together the cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the mascarpone until combined, then the honey and vanilla extract.

Chill until firm.

Read Full Post »