The darkest hour

Do any of the rest of you get up early to bake?  I've always been more of a morning person than a night owl.  Plus, there's something so nice about being up before the sun, when the day is still so quiet and undisturbed.  I get so much more done then than if I stay up late to finish something.

Today, it was getting up to make a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream.  (Dorie's recipe from BFMHTY.)  I've made it so many times now, I could practically do it in my sleep. =)  It helps that I had leftover egg whites in my fridge.  I made the cupcakes last night--the Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes from Cook's Illustrated, minus the ganache filling--and this way they had plenty of time to cool completely.  B surprised me by saying that if she had to pick just one frosting flavor, it would be vanilla.  (She originally wanted me to do a chocolate/vanilla swirl.)  She picked the wrappers, and we decided pink edible glitter would coordinate nicely.

It's so fluffy!!!

Mission accomplished!

I did it!  NaBloPoMo success--30 posts in 30 days.  I'm still trying to decide if I want to continue the daily posting into December, but it's really nice to know that I can manage it if I put my mind to it.  My goal is to avoid getting hung up on being perfect, and just write more often than I did before this month.

I was tempted to wait on posting about the Gingerbread Cupcakes until I could get a better picture.  But that would have taken a while, since I would have been tempted to make more cupcakes first.  Since I wanted to take most of them to work but keep a few for us, I increased the recipe by half so I got 18 regular-sized cupcakes.  The only ingredient that was a little tricky was the egg.  I cracked an egg into a small bowl and beat it to combine the yolk and white.  Then I measured out about 25 grams of it to add to the batter along with the other whole egg.  It worked out pretty well.  Other than that, the recipe was pretty straightforward to follow.  My cupcakes took 20 minutes to bake.  For the frosting, I only used 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, since I was using high-oil Vietnamese cinnamon.  I only ended up adding a couple teaspoons of milk to the frosting, since I wanted it pretty thick for piping.  One thing to note is that I didn't have to increase the ingredients for the frosting.  The original amounts yielded more than enough frosting for 18 cupcakes.

The verdict?  These were definitely a hit at work--and a nice change from chocolate.  The cupcakes were quite tasty on their own--nice and spicy--and the frosting was very good, too.  The cinnamon kept it from tasting overly sweet.  Both the cupcakes and frosting are going on the make-again list.

Baking therapy

Is it bedtime yet?  This has been a very long week.  I'm sick of everyone being sick, while keeping my fingers crossed that I don't come down with whatever has been plaguing everyone else.  I'm tired of G coughing her head off and B whining that she can't breathe.  And J isn't feeling so hot either.  Might just be a respiratory virus, might be the flu, who knows.  But it can go now.

G managed to be sick on days that she had off from school anyway.  B, on the other hand, missed school on Monday and Tuesday.  As a result, we've been paying for it yesterday and today.  She's had a bunch of math classwork and homework to catch up on, as well as a test that she ended up bringing home today.  Figure in the facts that she still isn't feeling well and that she's a drama queen at the best of times, and you end up with me spending the better part of four hours (over two days) dealing with her as she's been sitting at the kitchen table complaining.

I finally gave up and went for the stress relievers--baking and booze.  Not the hard stuff, just some tasty cider.  And some gingerbread cupcakes that are in the oven now.  If all goes well, the finished products should make an appearance here soon.

Double yolk!

Happily-ever-aftering

This was my latest order from KAF.  No flour this time, since I'm still pretty well-stocked.  I can buy AP, bread, www and unbleached cake flour blend in my local grocery store for quite reasonable prices.  Durum flour is the one I order most often, but I just opened a new bag, and I have cake flour, high gluten flour and pastry flour that I've barely touched.  So I'm good there.  I love the boiled cider, so I try to keep a bottle in reserve.  As for the vanilla, I really like King Arthur's relatively new house blend a lot.  I have to admit, the fact that it's a big bottle makes me use it more liberally than I might otherwise. =)  Again, this new bottle is for my reserve.  I don't want to run out of a lot of things, but vanilla is very high on the list!  As for the sprinkles and cupcake papers, look, it's more evidence of my love of snowflake items. =)  I bought some snowflake papers from KAF last year, which were great.  These are a slightly different design, but still very pretty.  I couldn't pass up the sprinkles, either.  I'm sure B&G will enjoy helping me use them to decorate cookies and top cupcakes.

Note--I just happen to like KAF products; they have not compensated me in any way.

Fifteen?!

Something a little unexpected happened at work today.  This coming Monday will be my 15th anniversary of working for my company.  I knew that in the back of my head, but I wasn't expecting anything related to that today.  But since we have the day off on Monday, my boss brought it up this morning.  I got a nice certificate and a lovely paperweight-ish item to commemorate the occasion.  But much better was the gift from the people I work with, pictured above.  Do they know me, or what? =)  Okay, not well enough to know that I don't really like white chocolate, lol.  But the thought is definitely what counts, and it certainly won't go to waste, since everyone else here likes it, and I can find fun ways to use it for decorating stuff.  I love the cupcake stencils, mainly because they're something I wouldn't have thought to buy for myself.  I think I need to bake some cupcakes this weekend now...  Something that my coworkers were surely hoping for.  =)

Weekend wind-down 9.9.2012

Okay, I have to admit that I'm totally stealing this idea from my friend Kayte, who often posts a Sunday Snippets on her blog as a summary of what's been going on during her week.  I have a whole bunch of odds and ends that I can talk about, but nothing that I want to write an entire post about.  I thought about doing a Wordless Wednesday-ish sort of thing, since I have some pictures, but I realized that I do have some words to share as well.  So here we are. =)  If I like the way this works out, it might even become a weekly thing.

Above is my dessert from tonight.  I'm trying to will autumn to come to Central Texas sooner rather than later.  Summer is my least favorite season.  I dislike the heat, I don't really grill, and summer meals aren't the ones I really enjoy making.  We had a brief taste of fall weather this weekend--the highs were still around 90 (I can hear my northern friends thinking, how can she say that's fall weather?), but the low this morning was about 60, which we haven't felt in months.  We might get one more run of temperatures around 100, but maybe we'll get lucky and avoid it.

I've been craving fall flavors big time, things like apples and pumpkin and warm spices.  I had a short day on Friday, and spent part of my time at home making spice cupcakes.  I tried a recipe that I hadn't made before.  (It's from the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook.)  It was originally for a 13"x9" pan, and I made it as cupcakes.  It was a mixed success.  The flavors were great, but the batter spread too much and the cake's crumb was too delicate in cupcake form.  It did give me a chance to use my new cupcake papers from my recent KAF order, though.  I took a bunch of the cupcakes to work, where they got rave reviews.  The rest got crumbled up and layered with some homemade applesauce (I found some enormous Paula Red apples at Central Market the other night) and whipped cream.  Yum!

My other major baking activity for the week was the Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake for Tuesdays with Dorie.  I actually made it on Tuesday, but ran out of energy to post about it.  The verdict?  I like the cake, but I'd make a few changes next time.  The main thing would be to use a tarter fruit, either regular nectarines (I used white ones) or maybe plums.  The cake was also at its best the first day; it got soggy after that.  Thanks to Marlise and Susan for hosting this week.  And everyone else's results can be found on the Links page.

Getting back to fall flavors...  Gillian was quite concerned that Central Market had Halloween stuff out this week.  At least they waited this long.  Most of the candy I can take or leave, but I do have one notable weakness.  I can resist the regular candy corn--I don't buy it, because if I do, I'll eat it without really thinking about it and then wonder, "why did I do that?" when I end up with a queasy stomach.  But a few years ago I discovered caramel candy corn.  This stuff is awesome.  Tooth-achingly sweet, which isn't usually my thing, but so tasty.  

I'll leave you with some kid news.  This picture is actually from last weekend.  Gillian was pretty happy to lose the second of her top front teeth, since it had been pretty loose and annoying.  This way she still can't bite into a lot of stuff, but she doesn't have a wiggly tooth in the way, either.  Both girls were a bit under the weather this weekend.  Both were in daycare from a very early age, so we dealt with a lot of germs and built up their immune systems early.  But G is at a new school this year for kindergarten, with lots of new people and their different germs.  Plus she's been really tired from the adjustment to a new schedule.  So I'm not terribly surprised that she got a cold already (and shared it with her sister).  Here's hoping things improve as we all get into the new routine.  

Well, that's all I have for now.  My goals for the next week include figuring out some new ideas for school lunches as well as some new easy dinner ideas.  (I'm open to suggestions if you have them!)  I'm also reacquainting myself with Pinterest.  A bunch of my blogging/tweeting friends use it, and I'm starting to see why.  I've had an account for quite a while, but haven't spent any time with it.  We'll see how it goes.

Wordless Wednesday - Birthday cupcakes for J

(these chocolate cupcakes, with this frosting)

Wordless Wednesday - 41

Vanilla Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting (both from Bon Appetit Desserts)
that I made for my birthday yesterday;

frosted with a 2D tip as in this video (via Tracey)

Wordless Wednesday - Star bright

(cupcake recipe here, glitter here)

Wordless Wednesday - Monkey Business

(Cupcakes here, frosting here)

Wordless Wednesday - Rocky Road Cupcakes

Strawberry cupcakes forever

I've been really good lately.  I haven't bought a new cookbook in ages.  (Ages meaning a couple months.)  Then I broke my streak by buying two in two days.  The second one was this morning--I ordered Dorie's new book on Amazon.  (Surprisingly, my order said I may have it by the end of the week. Wow. And cool!)  The first cookbook I bought yesterday at Half Price Books--a copy of Martha Stewart's Cupcakes.  I have several friends who are members of the MS Cupcakes Club, so I've heard lots of good things about it.  In fact, I thought about buying it back when it came out, but decided that I just don't make cupcakes often enough to justify it.  But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get it for half price.  Now I just have to restrain myself and not go crazy buying cool cupcake papers and other decorating stuff.  It seems I have the same love for decorating supplies that I have for office supplies.  Which is why I do my best to stay out of both Michael's and Office Depot. =)

So of course I had to make something right away.  After flipping through the book, what caught my eye right away was the lovely pink Strawberry Cupcakes--strawberry cake with strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream frosting.  (I have to say, one of the things that appealed to me about this book is that Martha uses a lot of Swiss meringue buttercream, which is a favorite of mine.  Gotta do something to use up all those egg whites leftover from making ice cream!)  Since I just bought a bunch of strawberries when grocery shopping, these cupcakes seemed like a great place to start.  

The recipe makes a lot--it gives a yield of 34--but since I only have one muffin tin and didn't need a huge number of cupcakes, I made a third of it.  It wasn't too difficult to cut the ingredient amounts in thirds, especially since I converted everything to grams first.  I couldn't find any notes in the book about what weights Martha uses for flours, so I went with a fairly standard 4.5 ounces (about 125 g) for AP flour and 4 ounces (about 115 g) for cake flour.  The batter is made with the creaming method, and finely chopped strawberries are folded in at the end.  I ended up with 11 cupcakes.  The frosting is pretty standard as well.  Even though I knew I wouldn't need that much, I made a full recipe of plain Swiss meringue buttercream, since it's kind of hard to make a small amount in a stand mixer.  I just froze half of it and added fresh strawberry puree to the rest.  I originally added the strawberries to a third of the plain frosting, but I think I had too much puree, because the frosting broke and wouldn't come back together no matter how much I beat it.  I think I added too much liquid for it to handle, so I added in some more of the plain frosting and beat it all together.  That solved the problem.  So now I have a bunch of plain frosting and a little extra strawberry frosting in my freezer.

The verdict?  Well, Brianna and Gillian certainly gave them two thumbs up.  =)  I think they were excited to see cupcakes for dessert, since we hardly ever have them except for birthdays.  I'll have to report back with my verdict later, since I'm way too full from dinner to eat one now.  Well, and because I might have sampled just a bit of the frosting before dinner... The frosting is definitely delicious.  Edited to add: Okay, I finally tried one. Yum! It's nice to have non-chocolate cake for a change.  (Everyone here but me likes chocolate/chocolate the best.  I prefer vanilla cake/chocolate frosting.)

If you'd like to try these for yourself, you can find the recipe here.  I can't wait to see what other fun cupcakes I can find to make.  Gillian has already put in a request for the monkey ones for her birthday. 

And one to grow on

I love birthdays.  It doesn't matter if it's mine or someone else's.  I love presents, and special dinners, and cake, of course.  My birthday and Jamie's are exactly 7 weeks apart (okay, except for leap years, when there's that extra day in there).  I'm the older one.  Most of the time that's no big deal, unless it's a birthday of some significance.  Like next year will be--we turn 40 next year.  And if the last major milestone was any indication, I'd better start looking for obnoxious birthday cards now.  Because the year we turned 30, Jamie got to all the good cards before I did.  Yes, cards.  Like, 3 or 4 of them.  I had to work much, much harder to find something appropriate to respond with. =)  This year, the only real significance that I noticed with the difference in our ages was the census.  As I was filling out the form, it said to put ages as if the form was filled out on April 1st.  That means that for official purposes, I am 39, while Jamie got to be 38.  That hardly seems fair, does it?

But I decided to be nice and make some yummy birthday cupcakes for him anyway.  =P  I can't get away with making cupcakes for Gillian or Brianna most of the time.  They want an actual cake.  (Okay, now that I think about it, I ended up making cake and cupcakes for Brianna, one for home, the other for school.)  But Jamie seems to be okay with cupcakes, or at least he's never told me that he isn't.  As I've mentioned before, everyone in this house likes chocolate cake with chocolate frosting the best, except for me.  So I had at least some idea of what I would be making.  The question was whether I'd be using recipes I'd made before, or something new.

As I was standing in the checkout line at Central Market the Friday night before Jamie's birthday, I looked over the cooking magazines as I usually do.  (They have a really great selection.)  The new Cooks Illustrated caught my eye.  One of the recipes mentioned on the cover was Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes.  That sounded perfect.  I picked up the magazine and skimmed the article.  Chocolate cupcake, with ganache filling baked in, and chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream on top.  Wow.  More than perfect.  Keeping my fingers crossed, I put the magazine back, and reminded myself to check the mail when we got home.  Sure enough, my copy of the magazine was waiting for me in the mailbox.  

There were a few expected things in the recipe, and a few unexpected ones.  As is often the case with chocolate, coffee is added to enhance the flavor.  There actually isn't any dairy in the batter itself.  The butter is replaced with oil (plus there's fat from the chocolate).  Since coffee is the liquid rather than buttermilk, a little vinegar is added to react with the baking soda for leavening.  And the flour used is bread flour, to help strengthen things so you don't end up with crumbs everywhere when eating the cupcakes.  To add more chocolate flavor (in case bittersweet chocolate and cocoa powder aren't enough), ganache is dolloped on top of the batter before baking.  It then sinks, to make a creamy chocolate center for the cupcakes.  Finally, there's the amazing frosting.  I love Swiss meringue buttercream, but have never made a chocolate version. 

The verdict?  Wow.  These are some wonderful cupcakes.  As promised, the cake is not too crumbly.  And the frosting is amazing.  The only thing that needs some work is the filling.  While it was quite tasty, it sank almost to the bottom of the cupcakes.  I'll have to play around and see if I can do anything about that.  We will definitely be having these again!  The birthday boy enjoyed them a lot, as did the girls.  If you'd like to try them for yourself, I definitely recommend picking up a copy of the magazine.  It's the May/June issue of Cooks Illustrated, which should be available for a while yet.  You can also get access to that recipe and many more by subscribing to their website.  And for some other great recipes from magazines, check out Ivonne's blog for Magazine Mondays.  

Pretty in pink (and red)

There are definitely hassles with having kids in two different places and it's a pain having to plan family vacations around the school schedule.  But there is one advantage to having Brianna in elementary school now--I get to bake for her!  The day care has a policy prohibiting outside food.  They do allow for birthdays and other parties, but the items still have to be store-bought (with ingredient labels).  While I understand the concerns about food allergies, it still pains me every time I have to buy cookies or cupcakes at the grocery store.  I know I can do so much better!  =)

As it turns out, my girls' birthdays are conveniently in close proximity to holidays.  Gillian's birthday is a couple weeks before Halloween, and Brianna's is about three weeks before Valentine's Day.  Somehow it works out well for them.  Gillian wanted purple and orange colors for her cake.  No problem--Halloween m&ms!  And while Brianna has changed her favorite color to light blue, she still seems okay with the pink and red that you can find all over the place this time of year.  The other day, I found some great cupcake papers decorated with hearts, and pink (raspberry) filling goes nicely with chocolate cake and frosting, both in color and flavor.

This past weekend was a busy one.  I had to work Saturday, so I only had Sunday to do all the prep for Brianna's birthday, which was yesterday.  She's now seven--where does the time go?  It hardly seems possible that she could be that old.  It feels like this was just yesterday:

Now where was I going with this?  Oh, right.  Busy Sunday.  I needed to make Brianna's cake, since I knew I would be busy at the Peter Reinhart class as Central Market on Monday night.  (More to come on both the cake and the class.)  I also needed to make cupcakes for Brianna to take to school on Monday to celebrate her birthday with her classmates.  And then I needed to make this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe.  For that, Steph of Obsessed with Baking picked Cocoa-Nana Bread.  It looked like a chocolate-banana pound cake sort of thing.  I had no idea how we were going to manage to eat that as well as a great big chocolate birthday cake.  So being of sound mind, I decided to kill two birds with one stone.  I made the TWD recipe into cupcakes!

The recipe was quite easy to mix up.  It's the creaming method, beating together butter and brown sugar, then adding eggs, bananas and vanilla.  Then you stir in the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, salt, baking soda and baking powder) and then mix in chocolate chips.  From the full recipe, I ended up with 19 cupcakes, which was perfect for Brianna's class.  I baked them for 23 minutes.  To make sure the cool red heart cupcake papers still looked festive, I used white papers inside them, which worked quite well.  For the frosting, I used both sour cream-chocolate frosting (see this post) and raspberry buttercream (from the Perfect Party Cake, flavored with raspberry fruit butter).  I used them for B's birthday cake, and didn't have a huge amount of either left, so I tried something new--I put both into the same piping bag and got swirls when I piped the frosting.  Very cool!

The verdict?  I only got a small taste--we had one extra, so Jamie and I split it (without frosting).  I thought it was pretty good.  The banana was subtle, but noticeable, at least when still warm.  They struck me as more muffiny than cupcakey, but I figured that it wouldn't be a problem with frosting on top. =)  Brianna reported that most of the kids in her class really enjoyed the cupcakes.  The frosting was a big hit.  Apparently a few didn't entirely like the cake part.  I'm guessing they didn't like the banana, which Brianna didn't know about.  I'm not sure if I'll make this one again or not--I'm kind of curious how it does as a loaf, but I'm not that fond of bananas.  We'll see.

If you want to give this one a try for yourself, head on over to Steph's blog for the recipe.  And be sure to check out the TWD blogroll to see how everyone else fared this week!

Hit or miss

For those who are looking for this week's TWD, it'll be coming a bit later on Tuesday.  My dad has been here for a long weekend, so I haven't been spending much time on the computer.  And Brianna's birthday (6 already--where does the time go?!) was on Sunday, so we're still recovering from chocolate cake and cupcakes.

I may have mentioned this before...  When I was growing up, it was tradition that for your birthday you got to pick what to eat for dinner and what kind of cake you wanted.  Brianna's pick for dinner was hamburgers and french fries.  The bucket of dough in my fridge came in handy for making burger buns.  =)  Dad asked me what my favorite birthday dinner used to be.  I'd have to say it was ravioli.  But I haven't found that particular sort of ravioli in years.  They were frozen.  There were 50 in a package--two sheets of 25 each (5 x 5), and you had to snap them apart before dropping them into the boiling water.  No idea what the brand was, but both the meat and cheese ones tasted different from (i.e. much better than) the ones I can buy in my grocery store now.  

As for the cake, that changed for me over time.  I can remember having a few spice cakes.  And I really liked angel food cake (with either chocolate or raspberry glaze) for quite a while.  But yellow cake with chocolate frosting was ultimately my favorite, and still is.  Brianna's hasn't changed since she was old enough to tell me what kind she wanted--"all chocolate."  

This year was no different.  I used the same chocolate cake recipe that I've been using for the past several years.  It's the Simple Chocolate Sheet Cake from Cooks Illustrated (Jan/Feb 2001).  I played around with it just a bit this year.  I added about a teaspoon of instant espresso powder to the chocolate mixture.  I also mixed the batter differently, although that wasn't really on purpose.  I just started mixing without looking back at the recipe.  =)  Since I was planning on taking the cake out of the pan to decorate it, I also lined the baking pan with parchment.  

As usual, the cake turned out great.  Next up, frosting.  I stuck with another tried-and-true recipe, the Dark Chocolate Frosting from the Feb/Mar 2006 issue of Cook's Country.  It's more or less a ganache frosting, made in the food processor.  As usual, I got it too warm trying to melt all the chocolate, and had to whisk it over a bowl of ice and water to get it to firm up.  For the trim (pink, of course), I just whipped up a quick buttercream consisting of butter (8 tablespoons), powdered sugar (about 4 ounces, I think), milk (a couple tablespoons?) and a bit of salt.  I overdid it a bit on the food coloring and ended up with a pretty bright shade of pink. =)  The decorating was nothing fancy.  For the fourth birthday running, it was a Princess cake, complete with Belle, Aurora, Ariel and Cinderella.  Buying those toppers is some of the best money that I've ever spent (about $10, if I recall correctly).  

The verdict?  The cake was a big hit with everyone--kids and adults alike.  Some kids may dislike dark chocolate, but not mine. =)  And it's really not all that hard to make.

So that was for Brianna's actual birthday and party on Sunday.  Since her birthday fell on the weekend this year, I told her I would make cupcakes for her kindergarten class on Monday.  Since the weekend was pretty busy, I didn't make them until Monday morning.  I've made a few chocolate cupcake recipes, but for some reason it didn't occur to me to use a recipe that I've made before.  Instead, I decided to try the Devil's Food Cupcakes from the same article as the frosting (Cook's Country).  Unfortunately, that didn't go as well as I hoped.  

The recipe makes 24 cupcakes (the amount I needed), but I only have one muffin/cupcake pan.  So I made two half-batches.  I think something is wrong with the leavening, because for both batches, the cupcakes rose nicely but then sank in the middle when they started to cool.  The cupcakes also spread out too much on top, and then the edges broke off when I took them out of the pan.  I thought that I'd overfilled the cups in the pan, so I put a bit less batter in each one for the second batch, but that didn't help.  They still spread on top, and just ended up with bigger dents in the middle.  

Fortunately, I was making these for a bunch of 5- and 6-year-olds who would just think "Hey, more room for frosting!"  So I kept going.  For the frosting, I wanted something that wouldn't be too sugary-sweet.  I made what was more or less a whipped ganache.  It was on the soft side, since I ran out of time to chill it, but it was quite tasty.

The verdict?  I spent several hours making cupcakes, and they were devoured in under two minutes. =)  The frosting really was pretty fantastic.  I won't bother making the cupcake recipe again though.  It clearly has issues, and the taste isn't good enough for me to want to spend a lot of time fixing it when I have some other perfectly good recipes that work.

Want to try some of these yourself?  The America's Test Kitchen recipes are only available to website subscribers and those who buy the magazines and books.  If you subscribe to the Cooks Illustrated site, the Sheet Cake recipe can be found here.  It's also in Baking Illustrated (page 342).  The Dark Chocolate Frosting can be found here on the Cook's Country site.  And if you want to see if you have better luck with the cupcakes, that recipe is here.  Here's the frosting I made for the cupcakes:

Creamy Whipped Ganache Frosting

12 ounces heavy cream

4 ounces semisweet chocolate (I used El Rey 58.5%)

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (I used a combination of El Rey 70% and Ghirardelli 72%)

6 ounces powdered sugar

pinch salt

Chop the chocolate into small pieces and place in a heatproof bowl.  Heat the cream until very hot. (I microwave it for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes in 30 second bursts to make sure it doesn't boil over.)  Pour half of the cream over the chocolate and let it sit for several minutes.  Stir the chocolate and cream mixture together in small circles, starting at the center and working your way out in increasingly larger circles, until it forms an emulsion.  Carefully stir in the other half of the cream.  Let stand at room temperature until the mixture thickens a bit.  With a hand or stand mixer, beat in the powdered sugar.  Continue to beat until the mixture lightens and eventually forms peaks, kind of like making whipped cream (6-8 minutes?).  You want it thick enough to pipe, but still somewhat soft.  

I know, it's a picture of Gillian on a post about Brianna's birthday.  But it was too cute to pass up. =)

Chocoholics in training

For Brianna's first birthday cake, I tried to come up with something at least a little bit healthy.  I made carrot cake (this fabulous recipe) with cream cheese frosting.  She ate a little of it.  Then, a couple months later, I made chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for Jamie's birthday (his favorite).  Brianna devoured it.  And never looked back.  Every year now, she reminds me repeatedly that her favorite is "just chocolate."  As if I would forget.  =)  Now Brianna's birthday isn't until January.  But last year, she figured out that she could get her favorite more often--if it was Gillian's favorite, too.  Fortunately, Gillian has been quite happy (so far) to go along with that.  

While it's nice to know the Tuesdays with Dorie recipes ahead of time (for shopping purposes), I try not to bake ahead.  Part of my reason for joining TWD was to bake every week.  When this week's recipe of Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes was chosen by Clara of I♥food4thought, she suggested that we could decorate them for Halloween.  But a couple weeks ago, I was trying to figure out what we could do to celebrate Gillian's birthday in the middle of a crazy week.  And I realized that the cupcakes would be perfect!

The recipe was pretty easy to mix up, though it was a bit different from some of the other chocolate cake recipes I've made.  There's cocoa powder mixed in with the dry ingredients, and then you fold melted chocolate into the batter right at the end.  (I used Scharffen Berger cocoa and some of my new Ghirardelli chocolate pieces.)  I think I baked them for about 22 minutes.  (I forgot to write it down!)  The ganache glaze was easy to whisk up as well--more chocolate (El Rey 58% this time), a bit of powdered sugar, and some butter.  I had just enough time to spread it on the tops of the cupcakes before it set up.  I finished them off with some pink and white non-pareils (another favorite that Brianna's been sharing with Gillian).  

The verdict?  Dorie prefaces this recipe with "Sure, you could serve these to three-year-olds, but I think everyone would be happier if you waited until your audience was grown-up enough to appreciate the cupcakes' dark, close crumb, the very dark and not very sweet chocolate flavor and the elegance of the glaze..." She's never met my girls. =) They've never met a chocolate they didn't like.  (Gee, I wonder where they get that from...) Actually, they're cake snobs. They won't eat grocery-store-bakery chocolate cake, because it's not chocolatey enough. These cupcakes were right up their alley.  Jamie and I enjoyed them as well.  I liked the recipe as is, but might try adding a bit of instant espresso powder next time to bring out the chocolate flavor even more.  And if Brianna and Gillian have anything to say about it, we won't be waiting for the next birthday to make these again.  =)  If you want to try them for yourself, head on over to Clara's blog for the recipe.  And be sure to check out the rest of the TWD bakers--there are sure to be some great Halloween cupcakes!

Cupcakes for Daddy

Jamie's birthday was actually Friday, but we always grocery shop on Friday nights, and I didn't have a chance to make anything before then.  It worked out better to wait until today anyway, so Brianna could help.  She wanted to make cake, but it would take us forever to eat, so I convinced her that cupcakes would be better.  And hey, we got to buy new cupcake liners and sprinkles!  There was no question what flavor they would be--"Chocolate with chocolate!"  Fortunately, that's Jamie's favorite as well as Brianna's.  =)  And Gillian didn't complain either.  (My favorite is vanilla cake with chocolate frosting.)

For the cupcake recipe, I turned to my trusty source, Cooks Illustrated.  I made a couple of small modifications to the recipe, and they turned out great, as always.  I had a bit more trouble with the frosting.  I originally wanted to do something light, like a chocolate whipped cream, but my chocolate/cream mixture broke.  So I dumped in some powdered sugar, unsweetened cocoa and a bit more melted chocolate along with a pinch of salt and beat it all together.  I'm not going to give the recipe, since I'm not sure I could duplicate it (or if I should), but it was decent.  Edited:  Okay, so Jamie thought the frosting was great--he really liked the texture.  So I'll have to see if I can get it to come out the same way again.  =)

Super Chocolatey Sour Cream Cupcakes

(adapted from Cooks Illustrated)

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces

2 ounces semi-sweet chocolate (I used El Rey Bucare 58.5%)

1/2 cup (1.5 ounces) dutch-processed cocoa (I used Valrhona)

1 teaspoon instant espresso powder

3/4 cup (3.75 ounces) all-purpose flour (I use King Arthur)

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

2 large eggs

3/4 cup (5.25 ounces) granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla (I used 1/2 teaspoon double-strength)

1/2 teaspoon table salt

1/2 cup sour cream

Preheat you oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard-sized 12-cup muffin pan with cupcake liners.

Place the butter and chocolate in medium heatproof bowl. Heat the butter and chocolate in the microwave for 2 minutes on 50% power. Stir until the chocolate is completely melted, microwaving for additional 10-second bursts if needed.  Whisk in the cocoa powder and espresso powder. Set the mixture aside to cool until just warm to the touch.

Whisk the flour, baking soda, and baking powder together in a small bowl to combine.

Whisk the eggs in a second medium bowl to combine; add the sugar, vanilla, and salt and whisk until fully incorporated.  Add the cooled chocolate mixture and whisk until combined. Stir in about one-third of the flour mixture until incorporated, then half the sour cream. Alternate stirring in the remaining flour and sour cream, ending with the last third of the flour.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin pan cups. (I use a #16 disher for this.)  Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcakes comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes.

Cool the cupcakes in the muffin pan on a wire rack until they are cool enough to handle, about 15 minutes. Carefully remove each cupcake from the muffin pan and set it on the wire rack. Cool the cupcakes to room temperature before icing, about 30 minutes.