Hi Ho Silver Away!

 I made these equine cupcakes for a co-worker for her birthday.  She, like me, loves horses.  The horse cupcake toppers are chocolate and the cupcakes are Martha Stewart's strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream.  They were so light and tasty!  The only drawback is the frosting will melt if it is too warm in your car, which I learned the hard way with some leftovers :(

Horse Cupcake Toppers adapted from various places
1/2 bag dark chocolate Wilton Candy Melts
1 12" piping bag
outline of horses (hand drawn or from an image you like)
wax paper

Melt candy melts according to the directions.  If you have a disposable plastic piping bag, you can melt the chocolate right in the bag, if not, fill piping bag with the melted chocolate  Snip the teeniest tiniest end off of the piping bag.  Place wax paper over the image you want to outline.  Carefully trace over the image with chocolate.  Fill in the outline if desired.  I chose to fill in the outline because the horses' legs were extremely fragile.  Allow to dry for several hours or overnight.

Coconut Cupcakes

I had a special request a few weeks ago at project night for coconut cake. Since I had a few other projects going on at the same time, I ended up making coconut cupcakes instead.  There are so many coconut cake recipes out there that only have coconut frosting, but I was looking for a nicely flavored coconut cake.  I mean really, can you call it a coconut cake if it is just sprinkled with coconut on the outside?  This recipe I found from Martha Stewart, combines both shredded coconut and coconut milk for an amazing coconut flavor without being overwhelming.  Her recommendation is to make a seven minute frosting, but I have always been told that kind of frosting needs to be eaten the same day and I was looking for something that could easily sit overnight.  I chose a cream cheese frosting, using coconut water for a bit of coconut flavor instead of just plain water.

I tried to be ambitious and make my own fresh coconut curls, but I ran out of time.  These cupcakes are topped with store bought, sweetened shredded coconut.  If I were to make them again, I think I would like to try and make some cute pineapple flowers for the top.

Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 3 teaspoons coconut water (or coconut milk) (you may need more or less depending on the consistency you are looking for)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla (you can use coconut extract here for extra punch, I don't have any)

100 Day Cupcakes

My mom teaches first grade and she asked me to make some cupcakes to share with her students to celebrate their 100th day of school.  I made these cupcake toppers out of chocolate and white chocolate candy melts.  The cake is just box mix chocolate cake with Wilton's Chocolate buttercream frosting, slightly adapted because my mom has a student who cannot consume dairy.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting adapted from Wilton.com
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup dairy free margarine
3 ounces melted and cooled bittersweet chocolate (I used 70 percent cacao)
4 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
4-5 tablespoons of water

Beat together the shortening and margarine until creamy.  Add in the melted chocolate and beat until combined.  Slowly add the powdered sugar.  Add vanilla.  Add as much water as needed until the frosting is the desired consistency.

Goat Cheese Mini Cheesecake

Once, many years ago now, I went on a double date with a boy from high school and a couple of his friends.  I did not know his friends and they were older than me so I was quite nervous.  We did some activity, I have no idea what anymore, and then we went for pizza.  The girl was a vegetarian and so we ended up ordering a Mediterranean type pizza with lots of veggies and feta cheese.

The pizza came, we ate, we chatted, altogether it was a pleasant evening.  When the time came to pay the check and the leftover pizza was in its box.  The girl commented that she was going to have to hide the pizza in the refrigerator so that her family would not eat it because she thought is so delicious she wanted the leftovers for herself.  And then I felt the need to open my mouth.  I said "Well, you should just tell them it has goat cheese on it and then they will stay away." 

The three people at the table looked at me for a moment and then the girl finally said.  "Heather, feta is goat cheese."

Awesome.  Such an embarrassing moment in my young adolescent life.  Obviously since then I have come to know and love goat cheese dearly.  My husband and I ate at a nice restaurant for our anniversary this past year.  For dessert, the menu offered goat cheese cheesecake.  We decided to try it, as my husband loves cheesecake.  It was AMAZING.  Cool and creamy but tangy and sweet.

I saw that Tartelette had a recipe for mini goat cheese cheesecakes and I had to try it.  Mini cheesecakes are great because you only need to bake them for 20 minutes and they are already individually portioned.  A full size cheese cake is a multi hour endeavor that I rarely manage to plan for.  You should should check out Tartelette's post too, she has stunning photos, a recipe for gluten free crust, and a blood orange sauce I ran out of time to make.  And I typically like my cheesecake unadorned anyway, maybe a bit of fruit on the side.

Goat Cheese Mini Cheesecake adapted from Tartelette
          makes 12-15 standard sized cupcakes
Filling

• 8 ounces soft goat cheese
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 3 large eggs
• juice and zest from one lemon
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar

Beat together the goat cheese and cream cheese until smooth.  Add granulated sugar and beat until incorporated.  Remember to beat the cream cheese mixture until completely  smooth, once the eggs are added the lumps won't beat out and cream cheese does not melt in the oven.

Beat eggs in one at a time, scraping the bowl after each egg.  Add the zest and juice from the lemon and beat until incorporated.

Crust from the Keebler Graham Cracker box

• 1 1/4 cups Graham cracker crumbs
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/3 cup butter, melted

Whisk together Graham cracker crumbs and sugar.  Pour in melted butter and stir together.  Press into the bottom of greased muffin tins. Its actually a good idea to grease both the inside of your muffin pan and the muffin papers themselves.  Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 5-6 minutes.  Allow to cool.

Once the crusts are cool, pour the filling in the muffin tins until about 3/4 full.  Cheesecake doesn't raise much, but it does puff up a bit.  Bake at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes.  You want to pull them out of the oven when they are still a bit jiggly.  A friend of mine told me that the cheesecake should wiggle as one unit when you get it out of the oven instead of having many ripples when moved like when it's put in the oven.  I found a water bath unnecessary but to be on the safe side you can use one.  Just fill a pan larger then your muffin pan with about an inch of water.  Allow to cool.

Lemon filled Lemon Cupcakes

 Sometimes cupcakes are the best way to tell someone that they are special.  Filled cupcakes are the way to go the extra mile in that regard.  Filled cupcakes from scratch with homemade frosting always do the trick.  These are great for birthdays, parties, and just to say hey, you are awesome.  I urge you to make your lemon curd from scratch.  I have used lemon pie filling from a can for recipes before, but it is nowhere nearly as good as lemon curd from scratch.  After a couple of tries, you will be able to make this stuff in your sleep.  This was my first try with the Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but it was awesome.  You can pile this frosting high on your cupcake and not worry about killing anyone with a sugar overdose.  Its light and fluffy and contrasts nicely with the tart lemon.  It also pipes like a dream.


LEMON CURD FILLED CUPCAKES adapted from Martha Stewart Cupcakes

CUPCAKES
2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tablespoon baking powder (my cakes were a tad heavy, I might increase this to 3/4 were I to do it again)
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs
grated zest of 2 lemons
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup buttermilk (use buttermilk, it neutralizes the baking powder)

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the rest of the ingredients.  Mix until just incorporated.  Plunk (yes, plunk, this batter is thick) into muffin pan lined with cupcake wrappers.  Fill the wrappers about 3/4 full.  Bake at 325 degrees for about 25 minutes.

LEMON CURD
8 egg yolks plus 2 whole eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup lemon juice
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract (optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a heavy pan mix the egg yolks and sugar together.  I read in Rose Levy Beranbaum's book The Cake Bible that mixing the egg yolks and sugar together helps to keep your curd from curdling.  No curdling equals no straining, which is awesome, because I hate straining.  After mixing the egg yolks and sugar together, add the lemon juice and mix together.  Heat over medium heat until mixture thickens to where it coats the back of the spoon.  Do not let the mixture boil or really even almost boil or you will have curdling problems too.

Once the mixture thickens, remove from the heat. Add the butter and stir until melted.  If curdling occurred (i.e. there are little bits of scrambled egg in your curd) strain through a fine mesh strainer.  For a long time I only had a splatter screen, which works but is kind of lame.  A fine mesh strainer is like $5 in the grocery store and makes my life much easier when I curdle my curd.

After straining, mix in the extracts.  If you prefer, you can use the zest from one lemon instead of the lemon extract.  I was out of lemons after the cupcakes so extract it was. The high amount of lemon juice in this curd recipe makes it very lemony with or without extract.

SWISS MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM
5 large egg whites
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla
pinch of salt (optional)

Combine egg whites, sugar, and salt in a bowl and set over a pan of simmering water.  Cook until the sugar is melted and warm.  You do not want to feel any of the sugar grain when you rub the mixture between your fingers.

Beat the egg/sugar mixture on high speed with whisk attachment until soft peaks form and the mixture cools down.  Switch to paddle attachment if you have one.  Add butter a few tablespoons at time until all the butter is incorporated.  Add the vanilla and beat until smooth.

To assemble:
1. Take cooled cupcake and with a paring knife cut a quarter sized cone out of each cupcake
2. Pipe (or spoon) curd into each hole
3. Pile high with frosting! (I used the Wilton 1M tip)

So Tricky!

Never have I put so much work into a cupcake.  Seriously.  My baby sister gave me Martha Stewart's Cupcake book for my birthday this past year.  I haven't really had the opportunity to try much out of it, but I flip through it at least once a week.  Those photos really inspire me to want to bake cupcakes all day and all night.  The only trick is, like many of Martha's recipes, they are complicated!

However, this past Sunday I had some time on my hands.  My husband had left for sunny California for business early that morning and I was due at my sister's for lunch and I was to bring dessert.  (I always bring dessert).  I decided on these Chocolate caramel filled mini cupcakes because my husband hates caramel and everyone else who was to be at my sister's loves it.

I did a quick read through of the recipe.  Ok, I had all of the ingredients. Sweet. (I am notorious for missing one or two things.  The concept of en mise seems to be totally lost on me.)  I figured the recipe would be fairly simple.  Chocolate cupcakes, fill them with homemade caramel sause, frost with really awesome chocolate frosting.  No problem.

For starters, they were mini cupcakes.  Which means a recipe makes like forty million cupcakes.  Since there would only be five us at lunch and my mini muffin tin only held 24 cupcakes, I immediately opted to cut the recipe in half.  The yield ended up being 24 mini cupcakes and 3 regular sized cupcakes.  Halving the cake batter was fine and halving the icing was about perfect, however, halving the caramel left me a little short.  But not to worry, that was not my only problem with the caramel sauce...

I followed the directions for making the caramel pretty much to the letter.  I do not like to do this, I prefer to tinker a bit with recipes, but cooking sugar is a tricky business, so I followed the directions.  I cooked the sugar to the recommended 360 degrees.  I was a little concerned because it kept getting darker and darker and darker and then in an instant, black.  Crud!  Well, I tried to salvage it and poured my cream in anyway.  It lightened up a bit, looking more like caramel.  But it smelled like burnt.  I don't know what possessed me but I then proceeded to pour my burnt caramel into my nicely hollowed out cupcakes.  Then I tried one.  Lo and behold, they tasted like chocolate cupcakes filled with burnt.  Gross.  At this point I had already made the frosting and had it on standby and had no time to make anything else.  What did I do, I dug all of the putrid caramel out of my cupcake shells and started over.  This time I only cooked the caramel sauce to 320 degrees.  It might have been a little light, but it tasted good.  In the end, the cupcakes tasted fine, but they had significantly less cupcake then intended.

Tricky but Tasty Chocolate Caramel filled Cupcakes adapted from Martha Stewart

Cupcakes:  yield 24 mini and 3 regular cupcakes
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/8 cup Hershey's cocoa powder
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder (both the soda and powder are reduced from the original recipe, I have an unnatural fear of tasting leavening agents in my baked goods)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3/8 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons peanut oil
3/8 cup very warm water (to activate the cocoa)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix together dry ingredients and then add the wet ones.  The batter is very runny.  Pour into mini muffin tins.  Bake at 350 degrees for 11-12 minutes.  Allow to cool completely.  Using a paring knife, cut out the middles of the cupcakes to allow room for the caramel.  I found the cupcakes very moist, so I ended up doing a lot of digging.

Caramel Sauce
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1/2 cup heavy cream (crucial, without it the caramel will get hard in your cupcake)
1 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Heat sugar, water, and corn syrup together stirring occasionally until mixture comes to a boil.  Allow to boil undisturbed until temperature reaches 320 degrees.  Remove from heat and stir in the cream and sea salt.  Be careful when adding the cream, the hot boiling sugar likes to bubble up furiously when adding the cold cream.

Spoon caramel sauce into the cupcake cavities.  You may have to go back and top off your cupcakes, because the caramel sauce soaks into the cake which tastes awesome but uses a lot of caramel.  You can also throw some additional sea salt on top of the caramel at this point for more flavor.

Frosting
5 oz milk chocolate,.melted (my family dislikes dark chocolate so I always have to use some milk chocolate)
4.5 oz semi sweet chocolate, melted
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/8 cup cocoa powder
1/8 cup boiling water
1 1/2 sticks butter (room temperature)

Beat together butter and sugar.  Mix together cocoa powder and boiling water.  Add to butter and sugar mixture.  Add melted chocolate.  Be sure that the melted chocolate has had a bit of time to cool, otherwise the frosting will be runny.  Beat until smooth.  Frost cooled cupcakes as desired.

Mini Cheesecakes

I made these mini cheesecakes for my sister's bridal shower last weekend.  They tasted fantastic and went over really well.  They were the perfect size and nice and creamy.  I was skeptical about making cheesecakes in muffin tins, because I always have anxiety over regular cheesecake (is it done, is it overdone, is it too wiggly still?)  These, however, were really easy and they did not take very long to bake at all.  The two hour baking time is another drawback of regular cheesecake.

I found the recipe in a wedding magazine from Martha Stewart, however it is also on her website here.  The hearts were such a cute addition and so easy.  All that was done, was drop some raspberry puree onto the top prior to baking and drag a toothpick through the middle.  The most difficult part was straining all of the seeds out of the raspberry puree!

These cheesecakes did not bake these in a water bath and I did not run into any difficulties, however, I did fill some of the tins too full of batter and it puffed up and cracked.  It is best to keep the tins only about 2/3 full.  Also, this leads to the best ratio of crust to cheesecake.  Another thing to note, as with all cheesecake, cream cheese does not melt so it is imperative to have the cream cheese at room temperature to be able to successfully beat all of the lumps out of it.

For practice the week before, I decided to try Taretlette's goat cheese cheesecakes.  These too were phenomenal.  The earthy flavor of the goat cheese was just the right compliment to the sweetness of the cheesecake.  I had been looking for a goat cheese cheesecake recipe ever since I tried it at The Turf Room, a restaurant my husband and I ate at for our anniversary a year ago.  This one really hit the spot.  Blood oranges are not available in my area, so we just ate them naked.  I ran into a bit of trouble with the muffin papers sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Tartelette specifically mentions spraying the pan before putting the muffin papers in, however, I failed to follow these directions.  The mistake was corrected when I made the above cheesecakes and had no problems pulling them out of the pan.

Overall, mini cheesecakes always seem to be a hit and are defiantly going to be made again.