White chocolate raspberry cupcakes of divine greatness

Near Christmas I was at my aunt's house and stumbled upon this book on her coffee table:


Naturally, I started flipping through it and I was immediately taken back with all the delicious recipes and gorgeous photos. Apricot upside down cake. Hazelnut gooey brownies. Chocolate strawberry cake. I had been denied all these delicious calories without knowing!

I immediately inquired about the book and was told it was from a cake shop in South Africa, where my aunt and uncle used to live. Crushing news. I figured it was for the best since the recipes used the metric system and I can't follow regular recipes without occasionally forgetting key steps like, oh say adding sugar to pumpkin pie. In case you were wondering, unsweetened pumpkin does taste exactly like soil. And soil pie wasn't exactly what I was going for.

I put the cookbook out of my mind until Christmas, when I received it as a present from my grandparents, who also live in South Africa. I encourage you all to acquire some South African grandparents so you too can receive cool South African cake books. You may also be so lucky as to befriend your tech savvy grandpa on facebook and read his status updates about how grandma was stalked by a baboon that day.

I don't know if it was more shocking that my grandma. Was stalked. BY A BABOON!! IN AFRICA!! Or is it more horrifying that my grandpa. IS ON FACEBOOK!!! AND WE ARE FRIENDS!!

Anyway. My first logical excuse to make some shmancy baked goods was Valentine's Day, when white chocolate cupcakes with smashed berry frosting was most appropriate.


And they went over resoundingly well. I manged not to run into any problems converting the metric recipe, although according to my calculations my oven was supposed to be at something like 353.27 degrees Fahrenheit. Joe declared them the best cupcakes ever in the histories of all things cupcake, so let it be known, amen.

I think the kicker here was the frosting, which was basically mascarpone cheese (a bit like cream cheese) mashed raspberries and a touch of powdered sugar. I tend to prefer cream cheese-like frosting over American buttercream so I loved this.

I decided not to participate in the Daring Baker's February challenge of homemade tiramisu because I wasn't really feeling it-- I'm not a huge tiramisu person and I couldn't justify going through the laborious process when I couldn't think of anybody who would eat. I did decide to do one aspect of the challenge, however, which was to make your own mascarpone-like cheese at home. It's really easy, actually. And the stuff tends to be expensive at the store so why not? Here it is:

(Source: Vera’s Recipe for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese)
This recipe makes 12oz/ 340gm of mascarpone cheese

Ingredients:
474ml (approx. 500ml)/ 2 cups whipping (36 %) pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized), preferably organic cream (between 25% to 36% cream will do)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Method:

Bring 1 inch of water to a boil in a wide skillet. Reduce the heat to medium-low so the water is barely simmering. Pour the cream into a medium heat-resistant bowl, then place the bowl into the skillet. Heat the cream, stirring often, to 190 F. If you do not have a thermometer, wait until small bubbles keep trying to push up to the surface.
It will take about 15 minutes of delicate heating. Add the lemon juice and continue heating the mixture, stirring gently, until the cream curdles. Do not expect the same action as you see during ricotta cheese making. All that the whipping cream will do is become thicker, like a well-done crème anglaise. It will cover a back of your wooden spoon thickly. You will see just a few clear whey streaks when you stir. Remove the bowl from the water and let cool for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, line a sieve with four layers of dampened cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. Transfer the mixture into the lined sieve. Do not squeeze the cheese in the cheesecloth or press on its surface (be patient, it will firm up after refrigeration time). Once cooled completely, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (in the sieve) overnight or up to 24 hours.
Vera’s notes: The first time I made mascarpone I had all doubts if it’d been cooked enough, because of its custard-like texture. Have no fear, it will firm up beautifully in the fridge, and will yet remain lusciously creamy.
Keep refrigerated and use within 3 to 4 days.

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It really was a breeze, the only thing is you need to start it the day before you need it, which I'm rarely good about. But makes an excellent frosting: I added about a cup of raspberries and powdered sugar to taste and it was glorious. Too thin to be pipped but a messy chic cupcake has its place too.

Divine!

Birthday Butterflies

I'm not a big birthday party person, I'm usually content with a small family dinner or something similar. On the other hand, I was excited to bake something awesome for myself. A few people asked if Joe was going to make me cake and that honestly hadn't occurred to me, perhaps because one time Joe me pancakes that were curdled, undercooked and filled with kiwi slices.


He's gotten much better at baking since but I just enjoy doing it. I also found out around the same time that my pilates teacher was putting on a benefit for her dance company the day of my birthday. I decided to make something for her benefit that I could also use as my birthday dessert.

Joe gave me Hello, Cupcake! for Christmas last year and while I've flipped through it many times, I never had an occasion to make any of the cupcakes. A benefit and my birthday seemed like it warranted some special cupcakes so I looked through it again and decided on butterfly cupcakes. Basically, you pipe chocolate into the shape of a butterfly onto parchment paper and let them harden. Except its really hard and takes 900 hours.

I knew the butterflies would take forever so I started making them about a week before I baked the cupcakes. I traced butterfly outlines onto parchment paper, filled pipping bags with chocolate and then traced my outlines. Then I used colored chocolate to fill in the outline and used a chopstick to pull the outline into the wing for a swirly design.



I actually found this quite enjoyable and relaxing but I am odd that way. I spent quite a few nights happily pipping butterflies on the living room table. And I may or may not have been half nude and watching Project Runway at the time. Completely normal behavior.


Two days before my birthday, I made vanilla bean buttercream, which is pretty much the best thing you will ever put in your mouth. Joe came up with the ingenious idea of buying vanilla beans off of amazon.com and now we have loads of vanilla beans that I put in everything.

The day before I baked chocolate cupcakes. I've been searching for a good go to chocolate cake recipe and this one was pretty close. I thought it could be a tad more moist but baking them a little less might solve that. They would also be better with fancy cocoa powder, I just used Hershey's. AKA cocoa powder for college students.

My birthday cupcake with 22 on the wings. I'm very clever that way.

The morning of my birthday, I whipped up the buttercream and frosted and decorated the cupcakes. Then I loaded them onto a cookie sheet and prayed that I wouldn't drop them. I may have murdered somebody if that had happened. Transporting was also difficult because it was still hot at that time so my poor chocolate butterflies began to wilt a bit in the car. I eventually settled on blasting the air conditioner and sacrificing bodily heat for the butterflies.

Everybody loved them but thought I was nuts for making chocolate butterflies. Can't win them all!

And because I am that crazy, I would make them again but maybe out of something more stable than chocolate. Like steel.

Technicolor Unicorn Poops: Rainbow Cupcakes

Last Wednesday was my last day on my pediatric rotation so our group decided to make baked goods for the staff to thank them for putting up with us. Rainbows are theme of the pediatric hospital so I was suddenly inspired to make rainbow cupcakes.



Rainbow cupcakes were all over the food blogging scene for awhile and though I thought they were cute, I never had the occasion to make them. If you've never seen them before, you basically make white or yellow cake batter and then divide the batter into six bowls and dye each section a different color of the rainbow. Then you layer the colors in cupcake liners and bake. Ta da! Rainbow cupcakes.

I don't have a go to white cake recipe so I just used a Martha Stewart recipe that another blogger used for her cupcakes. I thought they turned out a little weird, they some how reminded me a bit of cornbread? Joe liked that they weren't too sweet though and they were better with frosting. Of course I can't find the recipe now to share with you but I'm not too sad unless you're dying to have a cornbread style white cake. If you'd like to make rainbow cupcakes yourself, I recommend this website.

For the frosting, I just used left over cream cheese frosting I had left over from the monster carrot cake. Brian ate one of the leftover tubs with a box of crackers but luckily one tub was still left over and was more than enough to frost all the cupcakes. I also dyed the frosting to top the cupcakes and did of a few in each color.



Brian thought these cupcakes were hilarious and dubbed them unicorn poops, which didn't stop him from eating the leftover ugly ones that I didn't take to the hospital. Other women will probably think you're really cute and creative when you make these and boys will think you are clinically insane. Such is life.

I've read a lot of criticisms of rainbow cake because it has- GASP SHOCK HORROR- FOOD COLORING in it. I think the food coloring here is the least of your worries, you should probably more concerned about how many sticks of butter are in this, not the two drops of blue food coloring you added. Cupcakes are never health food, people. Have people never heard of red velvet cake, which uses an ENTIRE BOTTLE of red food coloring? Chill out, people.

In any case, these are cute cute cute little suckers and pretty tasty to boot. Also they required my monthly cupcake requirement for the blog. I think these would be adorable for a kids birthday party, baby shower or gay pride event. They cover a lot of bases, really.



Next up: Daring Bakers challenge! And I am SO excited about this one, I plan on eating it tonight. Nyum nyum nyum.

Brown Sugar Glazed Banana Cupcakes

Happy St.Patrick's Day! I'll have a more festive post later, for now here's what I made the other night.

I've been a bad blogger lately. I've made two desserts that I didn't photograph, gaspity gasp. The first one was chocolate banana bread pudding which turned out well (especially considering I made it up as I went along) but was ugly as sin and I didn't want to make a post about my own personal Rosemary's baby. The next was key lime pie for my baby brother (who is somehow not three years old anymore but seventeen, when did that happen?) and I just plum forgot my camera. Oh wells. Here, imagine them.

This is where you think about chocolate banana bread pudding.

Here is where you think about key lime pie.

I did finally get around to getting pictures of my most recent baked goods. I made these as thank you gifts for some nurses and I was soooo indecisive when trying to decide what to make. I finally settled on banana cupcakes because I'm always freezing overripe bananas and always have an extra eight million frozen brown bananas in case there's a sudden world shortage on disgustingly overripe frozen bananas. I decided on a glaze instead of frosting since I was going to have to cart these to the hospital with me and any frosting would just get destroyed on the journey.


This is actually the first banana cake recipe that I've tried that is actually cake-like in texture. I've tried others that were basically banana bread in a cup, which is nice but I've been looking for something with a lighter crumb. This is definitely more cake-like, less quick-bread. I cut down the sugar since I knew I was going to glaze them and I know Joe likes less sweet desserts. I know, he's not from this planet.

Here's the recipe I used:

Banana Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/4 cup shortening
• 1/4 cup butter
  
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (this was three bananas for me)
  
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening, butter and sugar. Add the eggs, vanilla, bananas and buttermilk. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to banana mixture. Fill 18 paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full.
2. Bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove to wire racks to cool completely. In a small mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugar and enough milk to achieve desired spreading consistency.

For the glaze, I just combined 1/2 cup of brown sugar with a splash of vanilla and 2 Tbsp water. I dipped the tops of the cooled cupcakes a few times to form a nice glaze over the top. You could also just drizzle it.

The glaze makes a nice crunchy, sugary shell and since the cupcakes weren't too sweet, it wasn't overwhelming. I approve.

Get Your Fat Pants on: Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Joe requested I make carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting recently and I happily obliged. I don't think I had made a carrot cake prior to this and to make matters more difficult, Joe wanted the cake to have pineapple and coconut in it in addition to the usual raisins and nuts so I was a bit nervous that I would have more chances to mess things up. Apparently I had a bit of a carrot cake phobia.

It worked out well though. I let Joe pick the recipe out of the two I had it narrowed down to and he picked the Barefoot Contessa version because he trusts her. She does look like she knows how to bake a cake, I'm always a bit untrustworthy of skinny pastry chefs. Giada DeLaurentes, for example. How are you so skinny? On the other hand, Paula Deen creeps me out a bit. I once saw a show in which she made a breakfast sandwich with eggs and bacon and used two doughnuts instead of bread. That was just an abomination and my fat cells swelled a bit just watching the show.

In any case, I altered the recipe a bit to make it closer to how Joe likes carrot cake but it still turned out.

Carrot Pineapple Cake

INGREDIENTS:

nocoupons

• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
• 3 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 pound carrots, grated
• 1/2 cup diced fresh pineapple

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Butter 2 (8-inch) round cake pans. Line with parchment paper, then butter and flour the pans.

For the cake:

Beat the sugar, oil, and eggs together in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light yellow. Add the vanilla. In another bowl, sift together 2 1/2 cups flour, the cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Toss the raisins and walnuts with 1 tablespoon flour. Fold in the carrots and pineapple. Add to the batter and mix well.

Divide the batter equally between the 2 pans. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool completely in the pans set over a wire rack.

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Changes I made: I replaced 1/3 cup of the oil with applesauce since A) carrot cakes can be oily and heavy and B) I had a huge jug of applesauce I needed to use. I also toasted my walnuts briefly, used about a cup and a half grated carrots and about a cup chopped, drained canned pineapple. Even if I had thought to buy a fresh pineapple, I think I would feel a bit weird eating one in December. It doesn't feel right. Oh, I also used 1 cup flaked coconut which I threw in at the end.

If you're making this as cupcakes, you'll have to change the baking directions. I tried baking them at 350 for about 20 minutes and while it worked, they came out flat and a bit ugly. I found another recipe that said to bake carrot cake cupcakes at 400 degrees for 10 minutes and then to lower the temperature to 350 until they finished baking, about 10 more minutes for me. These came out much cuter with nice domed tops.

This was a great cake to bake since I got to snack on all the tasty elements while putting it together. I love raisins, pineapple and even carrots. I also adore coconut, something I inherited from my coconut-loving mom who used to make us fork over our Almond Joys every Halloween as kids. Though I guess it must have been the almond coconut combo, she shunned our Mounds bars.

For the frosting, I used a delectable Orange-Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting recipe from good ol' M. Stewart. I would gladly live off this stuff the rest of my life, this stuff is amaaaaaazing.

Orange Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

INGREDIENTS:

• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3 bars (8 ounces each) cream cheese, room temperature
• 3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated orange zest
• 2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger
• Pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS:

1. Place butter in bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and beat on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add cream cheese, and beat until well combined and fluffy, about 2 minutes more. Add sugar, orange zest, ginger, and salt, and beat for 5 minutes.

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I scaled this recipe back some because I never read recipes before going to the store and only bought 2 blocks of cream cheese. It still made plenty of frosting though, I had just enough to ice the 27 cupcakes and enough to sample liberally while making it.



I am now officially on Winter Break and survived my freakishly long plane ride back to Alaska. My standard coping mechanism of surviving plane rides consists of Xanax and chick flicks. It almost never fails.

After I get some supplies, I'll be making a few things for friends and family for Christmas. Stay tuned.

Banana Butterscotch Stress Relief

My week of midterm hell is finally over so I can now emerge from study-cave and return to baking and blogging. The natural light, oh how it burns. Midterms actually went better than expected. Expected being I fail everything and than have a stroke. I really work myself into a panic, see. But it leads me to study harder so hey.

Here's me destressing in Chicago after (most) of my midterms:

And here's how I was coping:
Don't worry, midterms didn't drive me to drink. But this year was the first year I could get a drink at the bar at the Hancock Building and bloody marys are one of the few mixed drinks I like, mostly because the spicy tomato juice mixture hides the alcohol and I'm a wuss. Joe and I went to Sam's, a giant alcohol warehouse in Chicago that Joe has been drooling over and I wandered around bored for awhile and ended up buying some salted caramels and preserved pears. Leave it to me to find the sweet gourmet goodies hidden in the corner in a giant warehouse.

Anyways. Midterms.

Most of the not-failing-everything-and-having-a-stroke can be credited to my statistics tutor, whom I now owe my first born child. Stats has been kind of a hit or miss class for me, either I get the material instantly or have absolutely no idea what's going on. The midterm was on four chapters, two of which I felt confident in, one of which I was hazy on and the final one I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Obviously I'm not that strong in math but I did quickly realize that having an understanding of 2 out of 4 chapters would leave me with a 50% on the midterm. Que panic attacks and some frantic e-mails to the tutor. A few marathon sessions with the tutor and I aced the midterm. Well, not really but an 87% when I would've otherwise failed is pretty good, no? The points I missed were stupid, there was actually one question I got right, looked back on, and changed my answer. ARGH.

In any case, now that midterms are over I finally got around to making the banana butterscotch cupcakes my sister recommended, which have been on my 'to-make' list for awhile now. I love butterscotch and a banana/butterscotch combo sounded delish.




The recipe was from this Chronicle book, which I definitely want to buy now. I LOVED the cake recipe, it came out light, fluffy with an almost caramelized top. I really dig the banana butterscotch combination, though next time I may try subbing brown sugar in for at least part of the regular sugar to see if I can make the banana cake a bit more buttescotchy on it's own, rather than banana cake studded with butterscotch flavor from the chips.



I was going to be mean and not give out the recipe because A) I felt bad giving out the recipe from a cookbook I don't even own and B) all I had was scanned pages of the recipe and I was too lazy to type it up. But a quick search on the interwebz turned up a few blogs that had already ripped off the recipe so I don't feel bad giving it out. They did it first! Blame them!

INGREDIENTS:
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 medium bananas, broken into pieces
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup butterscotch chips

Icing Ingredients:
1/4 cup half and half
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cupcake Directions:
Preheat oven to 350:
Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Beat butter and sugar in large bowl until creamy.
Add banana and mix well.
Add eggs one at a time, mixing well between each of them.
Add vanilla and beat for one minute.
Add half flour and mix well.
Add buttermilk and mix well.
Add remaining flour and mix well.
Stir in butterscotch chips.
Spoon batter into greased cupcake pan or paper liners.
Fill cups to about 1/4 inch below top of liner or pan.
Bake for about 25 minutes or until cupcakes pass toothpick test.
Place on cooling rack until cool.

Icing directions:
Over low heat add brown sugar and half and half.
Stir often until brown sugar dissolves.
Increase heat and bring to a boil.
Boil for 1 minute, stirring often.
Pour into a small bowl and refrigerate until cool to the touch (about 45 min.)
In large bowl beat butter and powdered sugar until it is smooth.
Add vanilla and brown sugar mixture.
Mix until smooth and creamy.

Using a small spatula, top banana cupcakes with 1.5 Tbsp. of frosting.


The only substitution I made was rice rice milk instead of the half and half in the frosting, which I know sounds totally awful but we didn't have any half-and-half and we never have real milk either since I don't like it so we buy soy or rice milk instead. Whenever Joe pouts about me being vegetarian, I just tell him he can be glad I'm not vegan since I was born not liking meat, eggs or milk. Still haven't taken the plunge to veganism though.

Despite the weird sub, I liked the frosting recipe too but honestly I'm not a huge frosting person, at least American style with butter and powdered sugar. I'm a frosting snob and I much prefer French buttercream but I couldn't be bothered to make any, so I just left half the batch unfrosted for me. The frosting tasted like caramel to me, not butterscotch, but it's not like a caramel frosted banana butterscotch cupcake was a bad thing.

And oh, update on the cassata cake: once I got over hating the cake, I tasted it and it was indeed good. Brian can also vouch for that, since I think he ate 90% of it. He told me I'm banned from making another cassata cake for at least a month while he tries to lose weight. Which is a bummer for me, since a large part of the Sophie Weight Loss Plan is baking whatever I want, eating one and then pawning the rest off on other people, primarily Brian and Joe. It works, I've lost 15 lbs at the expense of others waistlines. Sorry, guys.

Next up: Halloween goodies and birthday goodies! And oh, ps: I bought a holiday cookie magazine special with 101 cookie recipes and have decided to make it a goal to bake every cookie recipe in it. What can I say, it seemed like a good idea when I was stressed. So expect lots of cookies in the near future.