This past weekend was a weekend of double takes. First, I made chocolate cupcakes for the 29th birthday of this blog's founder and eponymous star, Sarah... I followed up Act 1 with an encore of decadent chocolate on chocolate cake for my Bible study. I know, I'm not really exercising my range here. But I don't really care, it's chocolate.

This double duty was matched by the fact that I had Pad Thai not once, but TWICE this weekend. (anyone jealous?) However, I'd like to quote the iconic old Hollywood actress Mae West who once said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!" Amen sista. And this weekend was definitely wonderful. Particularly the chocolate cupcakes (IMO)...

This cupcake recipe is from the latest issue of Cook's Illustrated magazine (which, as many of you know, serves as my culinary cornerstone, nay, my culinary Bible... sorry Jesus). It's touted by CI as being the "Ultimate Chocolate Cupcake," and needless to say, such bold sweeping claims must be tested and proven in my kitchen before they are to be believed... and I'm happy to announce that this recipe lived up to its name... frickin' ULTIMATE!!


Let's start with the Ganache Filling:

2 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
1/4 heavy cream
1 TBSP confectioners' sug

1. Place chocolate, cream and sugar in medium microwave safe bowl, and heat on high for 20-30 seconds... enough to melt the mixture. Whisk until smooth and put in the fridge for no more than 30 minutes... enough to firm it up.

Chocolate Cupcakes:
3 oz of bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
1/3 cup of cocoa powder (I refuse to use dutch-processed, since they fluff it with all that alkali and make it taste nasty)
3/4 cup of hot coffee
3/4 cup bread flour
3/4 granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking SODA
6 TBSP of veg oil (I subbed it with coconut oil, because it's so much healthier and tastier! made a difference!)
2 large eggs
2 tsp of white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Place chocolate and cocoa in medium bowl, pour the hot coffee over the mixture and whisk until smooth. Set in fridge and let it cool completely... 20 mins. Whisk flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda in med. bowl and set aside.

2. Whisk oil, eggs, vinegar, and vanilla into cooled cocoa-chocolate mixture until nice and smooth. Add the flour mixture and whisk until smooth.

3. Divide batter evenly among muffin pans... only makes 12! Bummer. Then place one slightly round teaspoon on top of each cupcake... don't worry about pressing it in (like I did), because it will sink! Promise! :-)

4. Bake at 350 degrees for 17-19 minutes until cupcakes are set and are slightly firm to the touch. Let the cupcakes cool for 1 hr (take them out of the muffin tin after about 10 minutes).

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Swiss Buttercream Chocolate Frosting:
1/3 cup granulated sugar

2 large egg whites

Pinch of salt

12 tablespoons of unsalted butter, softened and cut into 1 tbsp pieces

6 oz of bittersweet chocolate (melted and cooled to 85-100 degrees)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

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1. Combine sugar, egg whites and salt in double boiler... allow the water in the double boiler to be simmering. Whisking gently but constantly, hear mixture until slightly thickened, foamy and 150 degrees... 2-3 minutes... give or take.

2. Place ingredients into stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment. Beat mixture on medium speed until consistency of shaving cream... don't overwhip! add butter 1 piece at a time until it's smooth and creamy. Frosting make look curdled after half of butter as been added. It will smooth out though. Once all butter is added, add cooled chocolate and vanilla and mix until combined. Increase speed to med-high and beat until light and fluffy... about 30 seconds... Voila!

3. Now it's time to frost those puppies!! Place about 2-3 tablespoons of icing on each cupcake. Using a non-serated knife or metal icing knife thing (technical term, but I need to get one of those!!!), push out frosting from center towards the edge of the cupcake, then smooth out the edges of the cupcake! dazzling darling... simply mauvelous! You can grate some chocolate, make some pretty curls or put Sprinkles on top... but they are ready to be served!

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Below are examples of the cupcake... this actually a picture of one of my rejects - notice the weird hole (this was the last one to be eaten... which was promptly devoured as I wrote this post!)...

Down here in Louisiana, and probably in other parts of the south, you can often find sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on Thanksgiving and holiday tables. I hunted (i.e. Googled) for a cupcake equivalent, and what do you know - it exists!

The cake part was easy enough, but roasting little mounds of mini-marshmallows let me express pryomaniacal desires I didn't know existed. Thank goodness my step-mother isn't bothered if you start marshmallow fires in her oven.

Whoops!

The second batch came out just right, but they were a pain to transfer to the cupcakes.

Cute, hunh?

The overall taste of the cupcake with the "frosting" was okay, but nothing really special. I prefer the casserole or sweet potato pie.

My nephews really liked them, but I think they'd eat brussell sprouts if we put marshmallows on top.

What did I learn from all this?

1) Marshmallows go from lightly toasted to flaming mounds of madness in about 2 seconds.

2) Young boys like sugary treats.

3) Not every dessert dish should be cupcake'd.

I'm so sorry for the long delay between posts. Hopefully, your lives have been filled with other frivolities and you have not been made desperate by the dearth of posts on this blog.

/apologies and beseeching for forgiveness

Here's what I've been up to while away from the blog.

1) For Kate and Dimitri's wedding, I baked about 120 cupcakes (see picture at left). All my practice sessions this summer really paid off and the lemon and devil's food cupcakes were a hit. I had a little help from some of the wedding guests, but, all in all, I spent about 8 hours baking and frosting these tiny, cakey, cup-sized, bits of joy.

Most importantly, the bride and groom loved them.

PS- check out their wedding buffet! It was beautiful and delicious.

2) I made an awesome mushroom, caramelized shallots, and fontina cheese quiche, but I won't go into details since Shelly already posted about quiche.

3) For Ilya's birthday, I made a fig jam crostata. It's super simple to make. Take a pie crust, either store bought or homemade, put in the pie pan. Mix 1 and half cups of fig jam with tsp of almond extract and two teaspoons of lemon zest. Pour into pie crust. Then top it off with another pie crust (or cut up the second pie crust into strips and criss-cross them). Bake for 45-50 minutes at 350. It's super easy.

Here's a link to a more complicated (and more authentic?) recipe for Italian fig crostata.

By the way, you can use whatever jam you like and some people may even like to mix different jams together. Experiment! Have fun! Mangia!

4) Also for Ilya's birthday, I made homemade pasta. Kate's mother sold me this beautiful pasta machine. I love it so much, and it's not as scary to use as it looks.

Here's my beautiful machine. Her name is Pastalina and she's the prettiest pasta maker in all of pasta-dom!

Sooooooo shiny! Don't get too mesmerized by her beauty. She's mine, all mine.

I'll tell y'all all about making pasta from scratch when I can cajole someone into taking pictures while I make it. My hands get way too messy to take pictures myself.

5) Coming up this weekend, I'm going to make Halloween cupcakes (Hi, my name is Sarah and I'm addicting to making cupcakes). Look out for pictures of those too.

Hopefully, my fellow bloggers will post soon too. Hint, hint, hint...

For my second try with lemon cupcakes, I used bellaluna221's recipe found here. I preferred the lighter taste and texture of these cupcakes in comparison to the first batch I made, but my friends and coworkers disagreed. They really liked the first recipe's rich texture and lemony taste. The people have spoken and I guess I should follow mob rule.

Shelly was kind enough to come over and help me with these lemon cupcakes. She also took lots of pictures documenting my experiments in decoration. In the picture to the left, you can see that the cupcakes at the top of the photo have been sprayed with edible pearl luster and then topped with various candy or zest decorations. The cupcakes at the bottom have only been sprinkled with edible glitter dust mixed with powdered sugar. It's difficult to see the glitter in photos, but in person they are very pretty.

After my great success with the lemon cupcakes, I moved on to the "Blue velvet cupcakes." The idea was to use the recipe for red velvet cupcakes, but use blue food dye instead of red. I warned the bride that the blue might not mix very well with the cocoa, but I told her I'd give it the old (post) college try. When I saw the color of the batter, I laughed out loud. The final baked cupcakes weren't much better, but they really taste great - very moist and delicious - you just have to get past the fact that they look like moldy, green rocks.

There's no way in heck I was actually going to share these at work, so I saved a few to scare my friends and threw the rest away. I can't have people associating my baking with swampy cupcakes.

Moving past the "blue velvet" disaster, I decided it was time to try out the Devil's food cake recipe I have. These came out perfectly rich and delicious. I topped them off with pretty blue cream cheese frosting and sprinkles.

I used a variety of toppings including non-pareils, sugar crystals, and the sparkle dust (which didn't show up against the blue very well).

I'm making the lemon cupcakes by request for my father's 60th birthday (!), and then I'll make the devil's food cake cupcakes with mocha icing. Once the wedding is over, and my cupcake journey comes to its end, I think I'll take a long and well-deserved break from the world of cupcakes.

Maybe I'll start experimenting with beef.

As some of you know, I have been asked by my dear friend, Kate, to make cupcakes for her wedding in October. These cupcakes (Lemon, Devil's food, and Blue velvet) will be a cheaper, cuter, and yummier substitute for a traditional wedding cake. Serving cupcakes at weddings is a fairly popular trend now, and we are whole-heartily jumping on the band wagon. Considering that wedding cakes are typically over-priced, dry, and covered in fondant (blech!), this trend seems pretty reasonable in the wacky world of wedding wallet wastage.