Comfort Me With Apples

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