Cakes & Cupcakes

Post-Partay Thoughts (And a Great Pistachio Cupcake Recipe)

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Image by TanteTati from Pixabay

So . . . this past Friday, March 6, was the Irish concert by the Cherry Creek Chorale, a great, great occasion. And afterwards was the reception (which, thankfully, is held only after the Friday-night concert, not the Saturday-night one.) I made three items: my Spicy Cheddar Cookies, Guinness Brownies, and Pistachio Cupcakes. Follow the links to the first two recipes if you’re interested. And for the wonderful frosting I made, go here. I’m giving the recipe for the pistachio cupcakes below. For the Guinness Brownies I’m linking to the post over at Sally’s Baking Addiction. Note, though, that I ended up just using the white chocolate-cream cheese frosting linked to above for those as well as for the pistachio cupcakes. I had made a double batch of the frosting and realized that I had plenty for all of them. I

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Use Food to Promote Conviviality without Promoting Indulgence

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Image by silviarita from Pixabay

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about party food, even more than usual, because I’m working on a cookbook about such stuff (working title: Tiny Bites). Lately I’ve been testing my take on Swiss buttercream frosting. (Yesterday’s version was root beer. The batch is now in the freezer awaiting its use as a topping for root-beer brownies at the wedding reception I’m helping with in August. It was pretty good, but I’m still tweaking the basic recipe.)

So, as I’ve often said, food can be a tool that promotes conviviality. People aren’t eating because they’re hungry

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Two Recent Gatherings, Plus a Great Frosting Recipe

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Here I sit in Kansas City, Missouri, well after the events I described in my last post: the post-concert reception and the dinner for the annual business meeting. So I’ll give you a quick update and then a great, simple frosting recipe that you can use in the place of that horrible powdered-sugar stuff. I’ll be doing an exhaustive (and exhausting) recipe and variations for my streamlined Swiss buttercream, but that will have to wait.

In the meantime, here’s what I did, with some helpful hints along the way:

I nixed the black pepper-Parmesan biscotti and just stuck with the spicy Cheddar cookies.

I nixed the banana cupcakes and just stuck with the pistachio ones, part of them with strawberry buttercream (recipe to come) and part with white chocolate-cream cheese frosting (recipe below).

Sorry about the rather distorted photograph; it was taken in haste via smartphone at the reception itself.

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No More Massive Desserts!

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Image by GLady from Pixabay

Just a quick post today as I go back to a principle I’ve been on the verge of forsaking, that making/serving a big, massive dessert is almost always a mistake. Much, much better to make small, individual portions that are easy to serve and that don’t overload people. I let myself get sucked into making that huge three-layer carrot cake for the Easter dinner, and, while I enjoyed the challenge, in the end I decided it just wasn’t worth it. People were very appreciative of my wonderful dinner and ate a lot, so then that massive (I know I keep using that word) cake was

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Wonderful, Unusual Brownies for a Party

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Alas. I have no pictures of these wonderful items, but I plan to make them again soon and will try to get myself together a little better then. I look forward to having one or two of them whenever I make them because they are so absolutely incredible. I’d put them in the same category as my pumpkin-chocolate timbales. And they’re so rich and so strongly flavored that you just can’t eat too many–not at once, anyway The best kind of treat if you’re trying to limit sugar.

A number of years ago I found a recipe in the King Arthur Flour catalog called “Chocolate Stout Cupcakes.” I thought they sounded so good, got some chocolate stout (which is a type of strong, dark beer), and made them a number of times. People seemed to like them, but I always thought that they were a little dry and lacking in flavor. Then last year the great, the peerless Sally McKinney at Sally’s Baking Addiction posted a recipe called “Guinness Brownies.” Guinness is also a strong, dark beer. Hmmm, I thought, I’ll bet that would work well with chocolate stout, which is probably about the same as the Guinness, but who can resist the idea of chocolate-flavored beer? (Although I have to say that I tasted the stout once and found it unbelievably bitter.)

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Lemony Little Cupcakes with Raspberry Jam and Lemon Buttercream

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This has been a favorite recipe of mine for many years. The sour cream gives the cupcakes a great texture and fits in well with the tang of the lemon flavoring. I especially love the combination of lemon and raspberry, so I have you make the cupcakes small enough for a raspberry jam and lemon buttercream topping. They shout spring!

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LEMON CREAM CUPCAKES

Makes 48 small cupcakes. These are very moist and delicious but not terribly lemony. Very good with a topping of a layer of raspberry jam and lemon buttercream.  The original recipe is from Taste of Home, but had a yield of only 30. By dividing up the batter to make 48 I've made the recipe yield smaller cupcakes that have room for the jam and a nice layer of buttercream.
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword lemon, raspberry, cupcakes
15 minutes
Servings 48 small cupcakes, so 8 grams of sugar per cupcake, plus an additional 6 grams from buttercream and jam, so 14 grams of sugar altogether
Author Debi Simons

Ingredients

  • 1  cup  butter  softened
  • 2  cups  sugar
  • 3  eggs
  • 1/8  tsp  lemon oil or 1 tsp. grated zest*
  • 1  teaspoon  vanilla extract
  • 3 1/2  cups  all-purpose flour
  • 1  teaspoon  baking soda
  • 1/2  teaspoon  baking powder
  • 1/2  teaspoon  salt
  • 2  cups  sour cream

Instructions

  1. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add lemon oil or zest and vanilla; mix well. Combine dry ingredients; add to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream (batter will be thick). Fill foil-lined muffin cups enough batter to fill about 1/3 of the muffin tin. (Yes, only 1/3. You want these to be small. And foil cupcake liners work much better than paper ones, as they are easier to peel off. A quick spritz of baking spray makes them even easier.) Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes; remove to wire racks and cool completely.

  2. Spread a thin layer of raspberry jam over each cupcake and then spread or pipe lemon buttercream or frosting on top.

Recipe Notes

*I keep lemon oil on hand and always use it in place of zest. It is pressed from lemon peel, so it is the substance that gives lemon zest its flavor and is extremely strong. Be very careful not to overdo this ingredient, as you can ruin a whole batch that way. If you taste the batter and feel that it's not lemony enough, add additional oil literally drop by drop. Citrus oils last forever in the fridge.

A Great, Unusual, Not-too-Sweet Cranberry Cake

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This is a great recipe Not terribly simple, but well worth the effort!

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Martha Stewart's Cranberry Upside-Down Cake

This is so pretty and so good--it's not terribly sweet, and the cornmeal and almond paste/extracts make it different and special.

Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword cranberries, almond, cornmeal
Servings 12 23 grams of sugar per serving
Author Debi Simons

Ingredients

  • 12 tablespoons butter, softened or 14 tablespoons if not using the almond paste--see below
  • 2 3/4 cups cranberries or one 12-oz. bag, rinsed and shriveled ones removed
  • 9 tablespoons maple syrup or 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 3/4 cup flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 6 tablespoons cornmeal or 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons--The recipe recommends coarsely-ground; I usually buy Bob’s Red Mill or Arrowhead Mills brands, not the Quaker de-germed stuff.
  • 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/4 cup almond paste An expensive ingredient, I know, but this cake is really special. If you feel that you just can’t splurge on this, I’d suggest that you add 2 tablespoons extra butter. Or make your own almond paste—see Note below.
  • 3 large eggs, separated
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1/2 tsp. almond extract
  • 1/2 cup milk

Instructions

  1. 1. Spray Pam on or butter a round cake pan, then flour it. (I used a 9-inch springform pan, which made unmolding the cake much easier than if I'd used a regular cake pan. The original recipe says to use an 8” pan, but at least one comment on this recipe said that that size pan was too small. So if you don’t use a springform pan you probably should use a 9” cake pan.) In a large skillet, heat 6 tablespoons butter until melted, add cranberries and cook 2-3 minutes, until beginning to soften.

    2. Add the maple syrup and cinnamon. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes more, until cranberries are completely softened but still hold their shape. (Don't worry if they cook a little long--they just won't look as pretty.) Remove the cranberries with a slotted spoon and spread them in the cake pan. Boil the syrup remaining in the skillet until it boils and thickens, 3-4 minutes. Don't let it cook too long. Pour the syrup over the cranberries and let cool while you make the cake batter.

    3. Place rack in center of oven and preheat to 350. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cornmeal. Beat together the remaining butter (6 tablespoons if using the almond paste, 8 tablespoons or one stick if not) and the almond paste, crumbled, if using, and the 3/4 cup sugar until creamy looking. (You're supposed to use an electric mixer, but mine was packed, so I just had to use a spoon and beat it by hand.) Add the egg yolks, one at a time, and beat until well combined. Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk in two batches.

    4. In another bowl beat the egg whites until foamy; slowly add the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar; beat until soft peaks form. Whisk a third of the whites into the batter, then fold in remaining whites.

    5. Spread the batter over the cranberries in the cake pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan (original recipe says 2 hours) before inverting it onto a serving plate. Cake is best eaten within 2 days.

Recipe Notes

Note: You can make your own almond paste, especially if you have some almond flour hanging around and need to use it up. Use 1 ½ cups almond flour, 1 ½ cups powdered sugar, one egg white, and 1 1/ tsp. almond extract. Process in a food processor until it’s smooth. If you just have almonds, process 1 ½ cups of those with the powdered sugar until finely ground—don’t process the almonds by themselves or you’ll end up with almond butter—and then add the other ingredients. You can divide up the paste into 1/2-cup or 1/4-cup portions and put them in ziploc bags, then freeze.

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcake Extravaganza

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Strawberry muffins on cupcake standMy dear friend Cindy took a picture of the final product under less-than-optimum circumstances in the low light of the wedding reception.  Thank you, Cindy!  As usual I wasn’t prepared to take pictures and had left my camera in the car.

I made these for the daughter of a dear friend, and I have to say that they were very successful.  Every single one of the 96 I made disappeared, and I got lots of compliments. Can’t recommend them highly enough. They’re not very hard and can be made in advance and frozen excluding the strawberries and glaze. The actual filling is a very basic plain cheesecake mixture; the toppings make them special. You can do even more with decorating them if you want to.

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Easy, Rich Chocolate Cupcakes

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rich chocolate cupcakes

Pretty nice-looking cupcake, isn’t it?  Beautifully domed, perfectly sized for the muffin tin cup.  And the inside was moist and delicious, in spite of the fact that I overbaked it a bit.  (Note to self:  Be sure to use the oven timer that measures minutes and seconds, not hours and minutes, when baking something that requires minutes.  If I hadn’t realized at about the 20-minute mark that I’d set the wrong timer, the above would be a picture of a lump of chocolate coal.  As it was, they probably baked about five minutes more than necessary.)  I did frost these with an unbelievably delicious chocolate buttercream, but I’ll be discussing that recipe in a later post.

Below are are two comparison shots of the cupcakes this week and the ones last week.

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Lava You Don’t Get from a Volcano

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chocolate lava cake a la modeHere’s a shot of one of the chocolate lava cakes I made for my brother-in-law’s birthday party.  I think the last time I made these was for the same occasion, two years ago.  Gideon has said periodically since then that I should make them again, and my answer has always been, “I’ll make them for Ed’s birthday.”  So here they are.  I made some changes from the recipe I found online, and this is now a pretty standard recipe anyway. I did find it interesting that, as for a number of recipes, the innovation came about because of a mistake. Its originator, chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, apparently pulled a chocolate cake out of the oven too soon and realized that its underbaked warm center was actually an asset. Then he must have developed the individual cakes that are usual today. A full-sized version would be very messy to serve.

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