Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

This blog hasn't been updated since well before the holidays, so I wanted to come back in with a bang. Warning: this post is a lot of going on about subtle tricks and tips, so it's a longer one. Still, if you really are looking for some good tips, hopefully this can help.

For the cake recipe, I half this 1-2-3-4 recipe of Paula Deen's, which I've used before. When I make cupcakes I usually use a box cake mix, because they taste just as good and are easier to handle. This is a good, easy cake mix, though, that I'd recommend to any beginners.

A quick word on "creaming butter and sugar." You will see this in many baking recipes. Something I've learned from my own experience is that you need to make sure you beat the butter for long enough. If you have enough butter (1 cup+) you can beat butter own its own. Most recipes, though, will call for you to beat sugar or powdered sugar or something similar with it. If it's less than a cup, like 1/2 cup (1 stick) I used for this recipe, it's helpful to add the sugar so there's something there to actually mix. In any event, make sure you beat the butter mixture for several minutes. Down below is a picture of my butter-sugar mixture after I beat it for 1 minute:

 And here it is after I beat it for a full 6 minutes:

You can (hopefully) see the difference in how fluffy it is. The air in your batter will make a big difference for many recipes. You can tell when the mixture has doubled (or more) in size. Sometimes I'll be mixing mixing mixing and look down and, "Oh! That definitely fluffed up." You can't over cream butter, so if you're not sure, just add a few more minutes to be safe.

One thing I've started doing is putting batter or frosting into ziploc bags and using them as piping bags. Since I was making cupcakes, and not a round or sheet cake, this was a handy and much cleaner to portion the batter into the baking cups. Simply snip a corner off and you can push the dough/frosting/whatever out. So easy and nice!

For my frosting recipe, I had to improvise. In the modern days of cooking with online recipes, I can be difficult to find the right recipe.

A really easy job of this is to find a highly rated recipe online. Look for recipes with five stars and a lot of ratings (in the hundreds). However, sometimes you can't find a recipe you want that has five stars and a lot of ratings, like with my orange frosting recipe search, and you have to decide to ditch it or fix it.

It's always a good idea to read the reviews recipes get. Even highly rated recipes have problems that get mentioned in the reviews. You'll find that some things people had a "problem" with (i.e. "I didn't like the nuts in this recipe," "This recipe didn't make as much as I wanted," "This recipe wasn't what I expected") are not things that would be problems to you. Other times there might be problems that you just need to be aware of or that you might want to change.

For example, I finally decided on this orange frosting recipe. The recipe only has three reviews (a minuscule number), but it used all the ingredients I had (i.e. butter and not cream cheese) when I had limited ingredients to work with. The two complaints in the reviews were that the flavor wasn't strong, and that the frosting wasn't thick enough.

Also remember to take reviews with a grain of salt, but to keep them in mind.

After looking at other recipes and deciding that this one was still the best suited to my ingredients, I decided to go ahead with this recipe. As I made it I paid attention to the problems that might come up (I wouldn't recommend changing a baking recipe before you make it as written in case it turns out okay in the first place). While I didn't want an overly strong orange flavor in the first place, I did end up adding a teaspoon of orange peel and 2 additional tablespoons of butter. The flavor was good, and not overpowering or artificial, and the frosting was so thick that it peaked like beaten egg whites.

Here's the modified recipe I ended up with:
5 Tb Butter (added 2 Tb from original recipe)
3 3/4 C Powdered sugar
5 Tb Orange Juice
2 1/2 t. Orange peel (added 1 t. from original recipe)
2-3 Shakes of salt

The frosting turned out pretty well. I put it in a ziploc bag (just like my cake batter) in the fridge while the rest of my cupcakes finished baking. I'm notorious for frosting things before they cool, but I've found that refrigerating frosting while everything else bakes will help it to thicken even more and be easier to work with.

My orange zesting set up:

 Cupcakes fresh out of the oven (I over baked this batch by about 2 minutes):

 Piping in the second batch of cupcakes:

 This is the frosting after I added the orange and salt and beat it for an additional 3 or 4 minutes:

 You can see how thick it is:

 Aaaand this finished product (I also piped the frosting on with a ziploc):

 

A few last notes on polishing up your cupcakes:

Keep it in mind that you may not always have enough frosting to frost all the cupcakes your cake recipe makes. I usually frost my best cupcakes first, going down in quality, so that all the best cupcakes were frosted.

If you want to add some kind of garnish on the top, just be mindful of the effect it will have on the overall cupcake. I considered adding chocolate flakes to the tops of these cupcakes, but decided against it since there was already a lot of chocolate in the batter. I also considered more orange zest, but decided against that because peel tends to bleed over time and can look strange after a day or two. Always experiment, though, and do whatever you think is fun.

German Apple Pancakes

Again, thanks to Bountiful Baskets, I've had had more than enough apples around. This morning Hilary and I woke up to a foot of snow, and I wanted to make something special for breakfast. I found this recipe online. I choose it because I don't have an oven-proof skillet, which most German pancake recipes call for; what I do have is a cake tin. I halved the recipe because I only have one cake tin, and also because there would only be two of us eating anyway.

First: slice the apples and cover them in the lemon juice, brown sugar, and cinnamon mixture. I also added pinches of ground cloves and ground allspice to mine. Set this aside. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and put the cake tin in the oven to heat.

Now you want to mix up the batter, including the milk, eggs, flour, and salt.

Mix it until frothy (top will be covered in bubbles and will continue to bubble). It may be a minute or two. Set this aside while you get your pan ready.

In your preheated cake tin (the oven should now be preheated to 400), add 1/4 cup butter and place back in oven until it's completely melted.

(Melted butter. Yes, you really will need this much.)

Once the butter is melted, place the sliced, spiced apples in the pan. In halving the recipe, I should have used one apple, but I still used two apples. You can use however many apples you like.

Cover the apples with the batter that's been sitting aside. Place back in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes. I baked mine for about 25.

It turned out beautifully! Remember that German pancakes are still moist and spongy in the middle when fully baked. If you insert a knife and it comes out clean, it's finished, even if it still looks undone.

I served mine with this caramel sauce, which I love. It tasted wonderful together. If you don't want something too sweet, simply sprinkle the pancake with powdered sugar and serve.

I like this recipe because it didn't have a lot of ingredients, or a lot of them. It was easy to whip up and would also be easy to make in bulk. The most expensive ingredient would probably be the apples, if you had to buy them in bulk, and that's saying something.

Loved it!

Banana Pear Chocolate Muffins and Mexican Wedding Cookies

Thanks to Bountiful Baskets, I've had several Asian pears around that I've had no idea what to do with. I'm not crazy about eating pears just as pears, so I wanted to find a recipe I could use them in. Thankfully, I found this recipe (I also had bananas from the load, which are easier to eat/deal with but there were a lot of them and they were going bad), and got to work.

In addition to bananas and pears, I added--yes--Dove dark chocolate. I'm all about being healthy and fresh, but let's not get too crazy. I used one and a half chocolate bars, or about 1/4 cup - 1/2 cup after chopping. When I prepared these ingredients, I was originally going to use two pears instead of the suggested one, but when I got one chopped up I realized how much it was.

First step: mix the banana, eggs, sugar, vanilla, olive oil. (I have to say here--I love that this recipe calls for olive oil. It's so unusual for a muffin recipe. The ingredients are listed as "olive oil" and "vanilla (if you have any)," like someone was more likely to put olive oil than vanilla in muffins. Made me laugh).

Adding the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt. DO NOT OVERMIX your muffin mix! They will come out like rocks. Mix only until the dry ingredients are just incorporated.

I roughly chopped my chocolate instead of using chocolate chips, because 1) the chocolate bars are what I had and 2) it give the muffins a more rustic look anyway.

Waiting to be mixed together. (I added the pears and chocolate just before the dry ingredients were fully incorporated, so as not to overmix.)

I can't tell you how impatient I was for these to be done baking. They were SO good, and a great mixture that's somewhat unusual.

Some things you should know about this recipe as written:
-The recipe claims it will only make 10-12 muffins, which worried me. However, my batch made 23 muffins, so the work is worth it. (It might help that my pears and chocolate were roughly chopped and took up more space.)
-These muffins didn't puff up nearly as much as other recipes I've made, so don't be afraid to fill the cups a little fuller.
-The recipe says to bake them for 20-30 minutes, which seemed like waaaay long to me. I baked mine for 15 and it was plenty of time. Plus, my oven cooks fast; know what you're working with and adjust as needed.
-Anything baked with bananas has a distinct flavor; I was afraid that one of the banana, pear, or chocolate flavor would overwhelm the others, but the balance was great (unless you want more of one thing, then I'd recommend upping the amount).


Also this week, I made Mexican Wedding Cookies from this recipe. They are my favorite under appreciated "Christmas" cookie. I won't write up the tutorial, since the process is so similar to the shortbread or tart shell tutorials you already know from the blog. They didn't have many ingredients, were quick to make, and are fun to powder and have around. Highly recommend them.

For Future Reference...

I think it's important to note that I believe halving desserts is deplorable.





Sinners.

Chocolate Ganache Tart

Something magical and surreal just happened in my kitchen. It's called "ganache". Ganache is a delicious mixture of dark chocolate chunks stirred into boiling heavy cream. AKA: "If this dessert was a man you'd have to pull me away before we went too far".

Because of my new found obsession with all things Martha (or M. Diddy as her cell mates knew her by) we used this recipe.

A few things I feel obligated to note:
1. I do not own a food processor. Thus, Megan smashed our almond slivers by hand with a spoon.
2. I do not own a food processor. So the butter was mixed into the flour mixture with my freshly washed hands.
3. I do not own a tart pan. Thus we used a disposable pie pan that will indeed be disposed of as I cut through it while slicing up the tart. (Also, I would recommend using a non disposable pie tin, as they are very flexible and hard to press the crust into).
4. We did not add any kind of citrus zest.
5. Screw the sieve. There was zero point to it and it added to our dish pile.
6. I'm impatient. There was a lot of fridge usage so that I could partake sooner.

I would also recommend drinking a large glass of milk while enjoying, as it is very rich indeed (as are people that own tart pans and food processors).

Here are some pictures (obviously I took them because they're not high enough quality to be Megan's):

Chocolate Caramel Fudge Cupcake

Nothing too unusual for some Saturday baking when I made a dozen Chocolate Fudge cupcakes with Pink Vanilla Frosting (I love that they have this; testament that little girls everywhere are turning five every day) (both store bought).

 (You can imagine what they look like, I'm sure, but here are some pictures because, well.. they're pretty.)

After the first dozen, though, I decided I wanted to use the caramel left over from the crepe post a few posts back and incorporate it somehow. Since there seems to be a bake-it-into-the-middle-of-the-cupcake theme on this blog--cookie dough, Nutella--I decided I'd do the same.

 When they had finished baking, I "frosted" them with what was left of the caramel (which went a long way, I was surprised), and also with dark chocolate shavings.

 When I bit into one I found that the caramel had sunk to the bottom of the cupcake. I'm not sure why this surprised me; it's pretty usual MO for a bake-it-in-the-middle-of-the-cupcake. Obviously, this doesn't make them the easiest things to eat, but the flavors were brilliant together.

 A lovely Saturday bake indeed.

Shortbread Tarts with Cream

This is one of the best tasting desserts I've ever had. And I've eaten a lot of desserts. I used the recipe found here.

Having said that, they were tricky to make. The shortbread tastes incredible but was incredibly crumbly and hard to get out of the muffin tins. As I baked batch by batch, decreasing the amount of batter in each tin and the baking time seemed to help. Still, they were difficult to get out and many of them didn't make it out.

Don't let it scare you. Shortbread is an amazing recipe worth mastering; it just takes some practice. Here are some tips:

Let's be real; creaming butter and sugar together is always an excellent way to start a recipe.

 When you cream, the shortest amount of time I would recommend is 2 minutes; the longest I've seen a recipe call for is 20 minutes. Don't skip this part, it gives shortbread and similar cookies their texture (putting air into the batter, making it "light and fluffy").

Because shortbread dough is light and fluffy, do not handle it too much. Handle it as little as possible to keep the effect you got when you creamed it. Also, I think one of the problems with my shortbread cups was that I made the bottoms too thick; don't push down very far, just make an indentation. 

 This recipe calls for fresh lemon zest and juice. A different recipe Jessica and I made last night called for fresh lemon juice as well, and we talked about how to juice a lemon (sans juicer, not really necessary). Here's how:

1. Obviously, if the recipe calls for zest, you'll want to grate it first.
2. Roll the lemon on a hard surface with the palm of your hand. Don't push too hard, you don't want to squish it, but you should feel it loosening up.
3. Slice the lemon in half.
4. Squeeze the lemon with one hand into your other hand (to catch the seeds and unwanted pulp) over a bowl underneath. This will guarantee you don't have seeds in your juice because they can be hard to pick out, and no one wants to munch on one.
5. Viola! This recipe calls for 1/3 cup lemon juice; I just juiced two lemons, which was about right. 

 Ready to assemble.

 Finished!