Comfort Me With Apples

Blueberry Cupcakes, Two Ways

Hey look! I’m still here! Still making cupcakes! Since I last posted, I’ve endured the long Portland winter, moved to a new neighborhood, lost my camera battery charger, burned lots of cupcakes, finally conquered my new oven, and eventually acquired a new battery charger.

I didn’t have any plans for these cupcakes, really. I wanted to test out some new cupcake liners and warm up the baking skills before making forty cupcakes for a wedding next weekend. So I asked the husband what he wanted and he promptly responded, “blueberry pancakes.” The inspiration for these cupcakes was born: blueberry cake made with fresh blueberries and maple cream cheese frosting with just a drizzle of real maple syrup on top. 

I also had a bit of leftover chevre cream cheese frosting and rosemary caramel that I made for some cupcakes a few weeks ago (strawberry, if you must know) so I decided to use the rest of that up as well (you can see the result in the cupcake on the right in the above picture).Truthfully, I’ve been dipping everything in this leftover rosemary caramel – strawberries, cherries, my fingers…it’s that good.

Of course, the best laid plans, or non-plans as the case may be, often go awry, and I received an invitation to a pot-luck as these were just about to come out of the oven. My friends have developed super-cupcake-sensing power, I think. It worked out for everyone, as they got cupcakes, and we got dinner that was slightly healthier than twenty cupcakes. 

Recipes

Chocolate Kahlua Cupcakes

The top two requests I get for cupcakes are chocolate and Red Velvet. Curiously, Red Velvet requests usually come from women, and chocolate requests come from men. I was playing World of Warcraft when I was thinking up ideas for this weekend's cupcake, and since I play with a bunch of guys for the most part, chocolate it was. 

We happened to have some Kahlua in the pantry. It isn't something we generally keep around the house, but we had some leftover from election night when we made "I Can See White Russians From My House" and the clerk at the liquor store convinced my husband to buy the holiday variety pack.

I went back and forth a bit on whether I should dip the cupcakes in ganache or use it as a filling, but in the end it came down to a time constraint since I stayed up way too late last night playing Apples to Apples with some friends, so I went with the quicker option and dipped them. They came out pretty and shiny, so I think it was a good choice after all. 

Recipe Notes: You'll probably have extra ganache. It's delicious on ice cream or just eaten out of the pot with a spoon, so it's not generally an issue around here. If it is, you can probably reduce the recipe by a third. The Kahlua buttercream, however, doesn't make enough to fully frost all the cupcakes. That was okay for me, because I wanted to make some alcohol-free cupcakes, and because I didn't have any butter left, but if it's an issue for you, you could probably add another half a stick of butter and up to a cup of powdered sugar. 

Recipes

Hot Chocolate Cupcakes

Happy Halloween! 

Okay, I know I'm a few days late in posting, but I made these hot chocolate cupcakes for a Halloween potluck at work. No one got my costume, but at least they all loved the cupcakes. 

Fall has hit the Great Northwest, and I've got to say, even though it means winter is coming and I'm going to be cold and miserable for the next several months, fall has to be my favorite season here. The leaves are changing and it's prettier than any picture could ever capture. There's also a definite bite in the air that means it's time for mittens, scarves, and hot chocolate. That's where the idea for these cupcakes came from. 

My mom is the queen of hot drinks. Usually it's tea, sometimes apple cider, but every now and then she'd make hot chocolate for my sister and me. She'd break out that yellow package with the paper wrapped disks of Mexican chocolate infused with cinnamon and sugar, chop it fine and heat it over the stove with milk and vanilla. Nowadays we're all grown up and she'd probably add a little rum, too. That feeling of anticipation and then warm comfort was what I was hoping to capture in these cupcakes. Rich and warm from the cinnamon and vanilla, with a creamy marshmallow center. Maybe I'll even add a little rum next time. 

Recipes

Triple Lemon Cupcakes

My husband's favorite flavor is lemon, and if it were up to him, he'd have you believe he's very much like a lemon himself: bitter and sour with a tough skin. But it's my blog, so I'm here to tell you, he's much more like these cupcakes: tart, but mostly sugar, with a sweet, gooey center. He gets a lemon dessert every year for his birthday. Last year I think it was cheesecake, the year before was a layer cake, but this year it's these triple lemon cupcakes. 

He asked for something so tart it was hard to eat, and I did my best, but nothing leaves my kitchen without a good bit of sugar involved, so these are pretty balanced. You'll recognize the cake recipe from the lemon blueberry cupcakes I posted in the past, and I wouldn't be surprised if it pops up again sometime. It makes a very nice base. Lemony, tender, and sweet, and it bakes up into a picture-perfect domed cupcake. 

The filling is delicious and tangy and easy to make. If I could get away with eating lemon curd every day, I probably would. My dentist might have something to say about it, though. 

The frosting is...well, how can you go wrong with cream cheese icing? It's the perfect compliment for these cupcakes, and the lemonade concentrate I added at the end is just the right finishing touch. 

Recipes

Hazelnut Raspberry Scones

My job took over my life last week. I worked late every night, and put nine hours in on Saturday. But I also committed to bringing something delicious to a morning meeting, so I knew I needed something quick and easy to throw together. On top of that, I agreed to a little link swapping with Kelly over at Almost Frugal Food, so I was looking to kill two birds with one stone and make it budget friendly, too.

I narrowed my decision down to scones pretty early on. They're quick to whip together in the food processor, you can refrigerate the dough over night and just stick them in the oven while you're getting ready for work, and people are always impressed by them. Maybe when you don't spend a good part of your day reading food blogs you just don't think to make them.

With scones decided on it was just a matter of making them budget friendly, so I took a look around my pantry. I've always got the staples like flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, but I also managed to find a (slightly dusty) jar of homemade raspberry jam in the cupboard and some hazelnuts in the freezer. I did still have to send my husband off to the store for cream, but fresh scones for an output of about three bucks? That's the joy of a well stocked pantry.

Recipe

Candy Bar Cupcakes

I found these adorable little Valrhona chocolate covered rice crunchies at Whole Foods the other day, and knew I had to incorporate them into a cupcake somehow. The flavor that immediately came to mind was the Whatchamacallit bar. Crunchy, chocolately, peanutty, and caramelly. Perfect! 

My friends and I meet monthly at this great restaurant/bar called Crush here in Portland, and I've gotten in the habit of taking cupcakes each month. Partly for my friends and partly for the waiter who has been there and served us every month for the last year. We're a big, unruly group, and we never know exactly how many people are going to show up in advance. We're a server's nightmare, but he was never anything but friendly.

I was crushed (get it? ...yeah, sorry) to find out today that he no longer works there, and the new server didn't seem inclinced to tell me where he went. We were a bigger, louder group than usual this month, and the new server handled us very, very well, but it just wasn't the same. I handed him over a box of these cupcakes, but I know that taking food from strangers is kind of a risky proposition, so I'm not sure if he tried them or not.

Ah well, at least I had a cupcake to console myself.

Recipes

Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes

What do you do when you find out that party you apparently RSVPed for months ago and promptly forgot about is in two hours? Well, if you're me, you get your act in gear and make cupcakes. This is a fairly simple recipe made mostly with ingredients I usually have in the house. I did have to make a special trip for the blueberries, but fresh blueberries are worth a special trip, if you ask me. We ended up late for the party, but for some reason I'm usually forgiven when I hand over a fresh batch of baked goods.

Both the blueberry and the lemon frostings are simple American style buttercreams. Often that much sugar can just be overwhelming, but in this case the tartness of the lemons and blueberries evened it out.

My husband's favorite flavor is lemon, so the cake recipe is a trusty, fairly foolproof recipe I've made more than a few times before. Perfect for a day you thought you were going to spend lounging around the house.

Recipes

Apricot, Almond and White Chocolate Cupcakes

My reputation precedes me, I've come to find out. It's generally expected that I'll bring some sort of dessert when I go to a party, and I've found that it's a good way to guarantee an invitation back. That's been the case at a semi-regular get-together some friends throw, so I was expecting the invitation and the request for cupcakes a week ago. What I was not expecting when my husband and I arrived last night, was to find that the guests had all already been talking about my cupcakes.
I believe the exact quote was, "my world is a happier place knowing that your Fluffernutter cupcakes exist in it."

I strayed a bit from the traditional when coming up for the flavors for this cupcake, but it seemed to go over pretty well anyway. I think one friend had four before the night was over. The base is a traditional white cake with almond meal substituted for some of the flour, and almond extract added. It makes for a tender, subtly almond flavor that pairs quite well with the apricot preserves I used to fill them.

Truthfully, I could have eaten them just like that, but I've been playing with the flavors of white chocolate and mascarpone cheese together lately, and that was truly the inspiration for this cupcake. I love the flavor that mascarpone adds. It's a little lighter, and a little less tangy than cream cheese, so it really lets the white chocolate speak for itself while adding just a little undertone of deliciousness.

Recipes

Raspberry White Chocolate Mocha Cupcakes

A friend had a birthday celebration this weekend, and when I asked him what kind of cupcakes he wanted, he mentioned the caramel macchiato cupcakes I made a few months ago. I wanted to keep this cupcake in the same theme, but I didn't really want to repeat myself, so I came up with this raspberry white chocolate mocha cupcake. It's a coffee cupcake with raspberry pastry cream filling, whipped white chocolate ganache frosting, topped with a bittersweet chocolate drizzle and a chocolate covered coffee bean.

It's definitely an intense and time consuming cupcake, but he's a good friend, and another friend visiting from New York said it was better than anything he'd ever had at Magnolia Bakery, so ultimately it was worth it.

I started with Chokylit's coffee cupcakes with a few small variations. I do still want a more intense coffee flavor, so I should have taken my own advice from last time and added some espresso powder. Next time for sure.

Next I made a standard pastry cream and added fresh raspberries. Delicious, but I made way too much. I've got a ton left over in the fridge that I'll have to find some use for. I would also like the raspberry flavor to be a bit more intense, so next time I'll probably do a few things differently. I'll increase the raspberries and decrease the pastry cream, and I'll probably add some sort of raspberry syrup or framboise to up the flavor a bit. All in all it turned out great, but the white chocolate was definitely the dominant flavor.

Last up was the white chocolate ganache. It's a simple mixture with good quality white chocolate and cream, simply melted together, cooled and then whipped until fluffy. I will caution you, though, this is not a warm weather cupcake. Portland was on the warm side yesterday, and this frosting was not forgiving. I ended up loading the cooler and a bag of ice in the car just to transport these to the party.

I felt like these might be just a little bit too sweet, so at the last minute I decided to melt some bittersweet chocolate and drizzle it over the top. It turned out to be a nice touch, and the balance between the white and dark chocolate was just right.

Recipes.

Cinnamon Ice Cream with Blackberry Pie

Surely there's nothing more American than pie and ice cream. Oh sure, I know the old saying is about apple pie, but it seems to me that sweet pies of any type are an almost exclusively American treat. So what better way to celebrate Independence Day than blackberry pie, ice cream, and lighting stuff on fire?

Both of these recipes are simple and unfussy. The ice cream starts with a simple custard base, infused with the flavors of cinnamon and vanilla.  I simply  heated cream and half and half together with half a vanilla bean, a  cinnamon stick, and a little ground cinnamon, then slowly combined it with egg yolks and vanilla sugar.  With a total of nine egg yolks, this may be the richest ice cream I've ever made, but hey, it's a holiday, right?  I heated it until it coated the back of a wooden spoon, then plunged it in an ice bath and stuck it in the refrigerator for about four hours. Pour it all into the ice cream freezer for about twenty minutes and you've got some very decadent cinnamon infused ice cream on your hands.

The pie absolutely couldn't be simpler. Fresh blackberries are combined with sugar and some thickeners and put aside to combine while you make the crust. I was very pleased with the way this crust turned out. I usually shy away from shortening based crust for two reasons. I like the taste of butter, and shortening simply isn't something I usually stock in my pantry. Really the only use I have for it is in pie crust and in biscuits. I'm happy with the all butter or butter and cream cheese crusts I've made before, but I found a non-hydrogenated shortening at Whole Foods made with palm oil, so I picked it up out of curiosity. This is definitely the flakiest crust I've ever made. I think this one will be my standard in the future.

I can't stress enough how simple this pie is. Waiting for the crust to chill and then rolling it out was really the hardest part about the whole day. I rolled out the bottom crust and laid it in the pie tin, poured in the berry mixture and then weaved together a lattice crust for the top. A simple egg wash and some turbinado sugar on top give it a pretty finish.

This is my entry in Mike's Table's You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream For Frozen Desserts event.

Cinnamon Ice Cream
Blackberry Pie