Chocolate Raspberry Champagne Cupcakes

Happy New Year!

What a busy 2013 it has been! Besides blogging - My biggest accomplishments this year has been my promotion at work, building up and coaching a first year girls lacrosse program, traveled to California (twice!) for the first time, tasted beer I actually really liked! (Thirsty Bear - Panda Bear brew), made my first wedding cake, and met new people that have enriched and brought very special meaning in my life.

There were lots of challenges and growth involved this year - but overall - I feel so blessed. I hope in the New Year, I can continue to improve myself, and provide a positive impact to my life, those close around me, and to the community.

For today's festive occasion, I made dark chocolate cupcakes filled with raspberry preserves, and frosted with a whipped white chocolate champagne ganache - can't forget the bubbly!

Click here for the chocolate cupcake recipe; then fill with homemade or ready made raspberry preserves.

To make the Whipped White Chocolate Champagne ganache:

10 oz.  High quality white chocolate (Not candy melts)
90 g Heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup champagne

1. Place white chocolate in a bowl
2. Heat up whipping cream and champagne in a saucepan on medium heat until it begins to simmer
3. Pour hot cream over chocolate and stir until smooth
4. Allow to cool in the fridge for 3 hours - the consistency should be a little thick and run off the spoon.
5. Whip on high until ganache is pale in color and fluffy
6. Pipe onto cupcakes!

To add some shimmer and glam to the cupcakes - I used gold food coloring spray and gold sprinkles, and also garnished with some fresh and chocolate dipped raspberries.

Have a wonderful, blessed new year!

Holiday Macarons

This holiday, instead of cupcakes - I tried tackling my nemesis - Macarons.

My first batch I used the French method, which you make the meringue and fold in the almond/powdered sugar mixture. Some had feet, most didn't, and lots of cracked macarons - was a sad day of many macaron casualties.

My second batch, I use the Italian method, which I read provided more consistent results. With the Italian method, you make a sugar syrup and pour it into a soft peak meringue. For some reason, this creates a much more stable meringue - but I am no expert at this and of course everyone has their own preference on which method works best, but with this second batch, while I am sure not *perfect*, they all had feet and no cracks!

This doesn't mean I have given up on the French method - I will definitely try it again. What I have found, is that there are many different versions of macaron recipes because different methods, techniques, environmental factors, and experience all factor into the end results. Macarons may seem very intimidating at first, or even discouraging the first couple of failures, (the last time I tried making macarons was a year ago!) but if you keep practicing and trying new recipes, it helps narrow down the method that works best for you.

The fillings I used:

Gingerbread Buttercream

(Brown sugar buttercream** with 1 tbsp vanilla, 2 tbsp molasses, 1 tsp each of ground ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Buttercream

(Brown sugar buttercream** with 1 tbsp vanilla and 1 cup mini chocolate chips)

Egg Nog Buttercream, fresh grated nutmeg

(Vanilla buttercream with 4 tbsp eggnog, 1 tsp nutmeg)

Chocolate Ganache and marshmallow cream

(8 oz semisweet chocolate, 1 cup heavy cream, 1 tbsp butter)

Chocolate Ganache and crushed peppermint candy

(8 oz semisweet chocolate, 1 cup heavy cream, 1 tbsp butter, 1/4 cup crushed peppermint candy)

Matcha Buttercream 

I made this flavor with leftover macaron cookies and vanilla buttercream

(Vanilla buttercream with 4 tsp matcha powder or more to taste)

**To make brown sugar buttercream, simply substitute brown sugar for the white sugar in the Swiss meringue buttercream recipe.**

The recipe I used to make macarons is from The Baker Chick -  she also has great photos and detailed instructions and troubleshooting tips, so I didn't reinvent the wheel on this post :) I did make one modification to adjust to humid Florida weather - yes, even in December, its averaging about 75-80 degrees here. Ew.

To get the recipe, click on this link. If you are attempting to make macarons in humid weather, add 4 tsp of cornstarch to your almond flour/sugar mixture to help the macarons dry and develop a nice shell.

Resting Macs - rested them for an hour, meanwhile, I got my buttercreams/fillings ready and cleaned my kitchen.

I cooked in the oven propped open with a wooden spoon to avoid the temperature getting too hot.

We got smooth shells and nice little feet!

Gingerbread, Hot Cocoa, Green Tea, and Chocolate Peppermint (not pictured, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Egg Nog)

This was full of 65 macarons - within the hour this is what was left. By the end of the day it was completely empty.
Win!

Butter Pecan Cupcakes with Maple Swiss Meringue Buttercream

I made cupcakes for Thanksgiving for the first time this year - not that we really needed it, since there was going to be plenty of dessert!

But nevertheless, I hauled my mini cupcake pan and my Cuisinart Mixer up to Maryland - I bet TSA did a double take when scanning my luggage. 

Anywho - I love pecan pie, and I love butter pecan so I took those flavors as inspiration for this cupcake. A vanilla butter cake base with maple Swiss meringue buttercream, candied pecans, and maple butterscotch sauce. 

Buttery, caramel, pecan maple goodness going on here!

Vanilla Butter Cake - this recipe is *gasp* a doctored up cake mix recipe modified for my taste - you can find the original recipe by clicking here. This recipe is great when you are in a pinch, and it never fails.

This recipe can yield:

72-75 mini cupcakes

48-50 standard cupcakes

3 eight inch cake layers

1 box white cake mix (I used Betty Crocker brand)

1 cup all purpose unbleached flour - sifted (I use King Arthur brand)

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 tsp salt

1 1/3 cup water

4 egg whites ( or 3/4 cup pasteurized egg whites - much easier!)

1/2 stick melted butter

1/2 tsp LorAnn vanilla butter bakery emulsion (optional)

1 cup sour cream

1 Tbsp vanilla

Let's Bake!

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees, prep your cake pans or cupcake pans
2. Place all dry ingredients in a large bowl
3. Add water and egg whites and mix on medium speed until well combined. 
4. Add melted butter, vanilla and mix well. 
5. Mix in sour cream on low speed. 
6. Fill your mini cupcake pan 2/3 full
7. Bake cupcakes for 10-12 minutes or until comes out clean with toothpick check. 
8. Remove from oven, and remove cupcakes from tin and and let cool to room temp. 

Maple Brown Sugar Candied Pecans

1 cup chopped pecans

1/2 stick butter

2 tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp pure maple syrup

1/2 tsp vanilla

Let's Cook!

1. In a sauce pan, melt butter on medium heat.
2. Add brown sugar and whisk until sugar is no longer grainy. 
3. Add in pecans and continue to stir frequently until the sugar mixture is bubbly and the pecans smell toasted. 
4. Remove from heat, stir in maple syrup and vanilla.
5. Allow to cool to room temp. This sugar will crystallize and make a delicious crunchy shell on the pecans. 

The maple Swiss meringue buttercream is vanilla buttercream with about 4 tbsp pure maple syrup added in - the buttercream recipe can be found by clicking here.

The maple butterscotch/buttery caramel sauce recipe can be found by clicking here, and then add in 2 tbsp pure maple syrup in the end after taken off the heat.

To assemble the cupcakes, pipe the buttercream, top with pecans, and drizzle with the butterscotch sauce. Enjoy!

Fall Frosting Flavors and the Easiest Caramel Sauce You Will Ever Make

Today's post is just about perfectly warm and fuzzy flavors for the Fall season: 

Chocolate, Pumpkin, and Caramel. 

Chocolate cupcakes (click here for recipe) with 

Pumpkin spice and Buttery Salted Caramel Swiss meringue buttercream.

Pumpkin Spice SMBC

2 cups vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream
2 Tsp pumpkin spice extract ( I use Lorann bakery emulsions)
1/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 Tsp pumpkin pie spices
Orange gel color (optional)

Blend together, pipe onto cupcakes or frost cake. Garnish with ginger snap cookies (or crumbs!)

Buttery Salted Caramel SMBC 

This caramel sauce incorporates brown sugar, it comes out smooth and with a butterscotch flavor but not overpowering. Mix everything into a saucepan. No thermometers, no worrying about sugars crystallizing or burning. Easy Peesy.

2 cups vanilla swiss meringue buttercream
1 cup caramel sauce:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 whipping cream
• 1/2 tsp vanilla 
• Fleur de sel to garnish (or coarse sea salt)

1. Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat. 
2. Add in sugar, brown sugar until well combined, use a whisk.
3. Continue to whisk slowly on medium low hear until sugars are dissolved and consistency can coat a spoon. Add in whipping cream.
4. Remove from heat, add in vanilla, and mix well, and allow to cool at room temperature.
5. When cooled, slowly incorporate into buttercream.
6. Pipe onto cupcakes or frost cake.
7. Drizzle with extra caramel sauce, and sprinkle Fleur de sel right before serving (or else it will dissolve).

Japanese Soufflé Cake with Pumpkin Spice Whipped Cream

I told almost everyone that after the wedding cake I didn't want to see cake or cupcakes for a while....

Clearly, this was the sleep deprivation speaking and I was seriously lying to myself. 

Here I was the very next day, plotting (after catching up on sleep) the next recipe I was going to pounce on. 

This has been on my to do list for a while. Pictures on Pinterest of this airy dessert caught my curiosity - some of the pictures titled this confection "Japanese Cheesecake", but I think soufflé cake is more appropriate after making and tasting eating devouring it.

This gets it's cheesecake name because cream cheese is an ingredient, but it is far from the likeness of the traditional cheesecake in my opinion.

Because whipped meringue is incorporated into the batter, the cake comes out light and fluffy, while the butter and cream cheese add some richness and a melt in your mouth experience. Just like a soufflé.

Warning: This cake is deceiving to your conscience because it feels like you are eating air. Sweet, delicious air that has sugar (well, not that much) and calories. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I adapted the recipe I found on the Sprinkle Bakes blog very slightly. I Just added 1 teaspoon of vanilla - because it just felt weird not to add vanilla in a cake recipe. Feel free to omit. I, however, was not able to stray from my vanilla comfort zone. I also topped it with some pumpkin spice whipped cream - Yum! See the recipe below or click on the Sprinkle Bakes link above to get the printable version:

Cake Ingredients:

9 oz. cream cheese (one 8 oz. brick plus 1 oz. of another brick)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/3 cup fresh, whole milk

6 eggs, room temperature - whites and yolks separated

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

1/2 cup plus 1/8 cup extra fine granulated sugar

1/3 cup plus 1 tsp. cake flour

3 tbsp. corn starch

1 tsp vanilla or flavored extract                             

Let's Bake!

1. Melt cream cheese, butter and milk in a heat-proof bowl over a pot of simmering water.  Stir occasionally to break up cream cheese and combine the ingredients.  Remove bowl from heat and allow to cool. Mixture will be thick.  If lumpy, use a whisk to vigorously beat the mixture until smooth. Set aside.
2. When mixture has cooled, fold in the egg yolks, flour and corn starch.  Fold until thoroughly incorporated.
3. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
4. In a large bowl, whisk egg whites with an electric mixer until foamy.  Add the cream of tartar and mix again, gradually adding the extra-fine sugar a little at a time until soft peaks form.  Note: Soft peaks:  mixture should be white and opaque, and meringue will fall onto itself when the beaters are lifted from the bowl.
5. Add the cheese mixture to the egg white mixture and fold together until well incorporated.  
6. Pour into an 8-inch round spring-form pan that has been lightly greased and lined (sides and bottom) with parchment paper.  Place a piece of aluminum foil over the top of the cake so it does not brown.
7. Bake in a water bath for 1 hour 10 minutes.  When timer sounds, bake for an additional 10-15 minutes with the oven door cracked.
8. Carefully remove pan from water bath and let stand until cake pulls away from the sides of the pan.  Remove spring-form ring and serve.

6 Eggs at room temperature, separated.

Double boiler on medium heat; melting cream cheese, milk and butter.

When cream cheese mixture cools, slowly mix in egg yolks and cake flour mixture.

Whip meringue with cream of tartar and superfine sugar into stiff peaks.

Gently fold in cream cheese mixture into meringue.

Set up a water bath in a pan with a rack (this prevents condensation on the bottom). Pour batter into a lined pan and bake. 

Pumpkin Spice Whipped Cream

3 cups heavy whipping cream

1 Tbsp vanilla

1 Tsp pumpkin spice extract (or 1 tbsp pumpkin spice syrup)

1 Tsp

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1 Tbsp Powdered Gelatin

1 Tsp pumpkin pie spice

1. Make sure your bowl and cream are very cold. I like to pop my bowl in the freezer for a few minutes. 

2. Whip up the heavy cream until it gets to a thick viscosity.

3. Add in powdered sugar and gelatin and whip until medium peaks form

4. Add in vanilla and pumpkin spice extract and pumpkin pie spice

5. Whip until there are stiff peaks. 

6. Dollop or pipe onto frost and pipe onto cake and enjoy!

Wedding Cake Project - Recap

Yesterday was the wedding day ! All the months of planning finally coming together. I learned a lot of lessons for this project. Overall, the cake came out beautifully and got good reviews!

Lessons learned:

1. Planning ahead and setting timelines for each activity was a complete life saver. Making all of that buttercream, gumpaste and candy seashells, cake stands - doing all of that up front made the final hours less stressful. I had a binder with all my recipes, a timeline for each activity, and inventory of all tools, ingredients, and equipment I needed.

2. Don't leave your cake planning binder at Publix. Yep, that happened - thankfully I was able to retrieve it.

3.  Practice, practice, practice. I practiced so many recipes, troubleshooting, tweaking - all of that helped me find the right balance of flavors, texture, and quality of cake and frosting.

4. Some cake recipes do not do well with freezing. I tried baking all my layers and freezing 3 days ahead - the chocolate cake and gluten free cake came out fine - but the regular (middle and bottom) tiers ended up having a different texture and flavor. I decided to dump it all and bake fresh layers with a back up recipe and the cake came out tender, fluffy, and delicious. I recommend testing the freezing method with recipes first before your final batch. Sometimes the flavor or texture can be changed - and I found this out the day before the wedding. Yikes! For this particular recipe baking fresh layers the night before worked out best. I was up very late because of the emergency baking - but it was well worth knowing that I was going to provide cake that was up to my standards.

5. Take the time to set  up your cake boxes with no slip pads to ensure your cakes to not slide around when driving. All my cakes were delivered in good shape.

6. Do NOT look at cake disaster pictures. Just, No.

7. Make your own cupcake wrappers - it is so much cheaper and extremely easy. I saved about $60 making my own.

8. Little imperfections are OK - I didn't get the buttercream as smooth as I wanted it to be, or piped the perfect waves, but don't stress - those imperfections are minimal and are only really noticed by you, the cake maker. Everyone else is looking at the whole picture and plus, the cake will be eaten anyway!

Now, some snap shots of the process:

Filling, layering, and crumb coating

Bavarian cream and chocolate ganache

Vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream

Smoothing top and bottom tiers 

Piping blue ombre buttercream waves

Applying gumpaste seashells

Inserted dowels for stacking tiers

Gumpaste seashells hand molded, painted, and dusted.

Filling and frosting cupcakes

Topped with white chocolate molded seashells

Edible pearls

Frosting grooms cake 

Topped with chocolate covered strawberries

Boxed the cakes, placed in my trunk

 and drove to the venue (1 hour drive)

Fitted snugly in the car and placed towels around to ensure nothing moves
and also to keep the cold temperature insulated.

Finally, I delivered the cakes, set up everything and was able to breathe! My hands were shaking while I was stacking the tiers, I was so nervous. I had some smudges here an there, but I brought a back up kit of extra frosting, smoothing tools and spatulas, etc. 

After I stacked the tiers I touched up the cake, piped the borders, and applied the finishing touches with the cake topper and the coral pieces on the sides. Last, I sprinkled raw sugar on the top and the sides for a sandy effect. 

I set up the Grooms cake, the strawberries were juicing a bit since the chocolate was pulling the sugars out but I just dabbed with a paper towel and touched up the frosting. Luckily, I was going for a rustic look for the grooms cake so I could get away with irregular texture. 

The cupcakes were set up and they looked so adorable! 

Finally I cleaned up the table and was able to stand back and admire all the work put into these desserts. All of these ideas swirling in my head finally came into fruition. The cake looks very close to my sketch, no?

I was so nervous until the cake cutting - I knew everything looked pretty, but I had to wait and see if everyone thought the cake tasted as good as it looked! Since I have been taste testing for the past month my tongue has become weirdly numb to sweets so I can't always tell if everything tasted well balanced - which, thank goodness for Meghan, she helped me out on that one and let me know if something was too sweet or needed more vanilla, etc. 

To my relief, after the bride took a bite, she looked over at me and gave me a thumbs up... haha! That had to be my favorite moment. Then sadly, I watched my cake get whisked away and chopped up by the servers. I watched a graveyard of cake appear in front of my eyes:

It was all worth the effort as I saw lots of empty plates and cupcake wrappers. The little ones all wanted the cupcakes, which was my goal - kids love cupcakes! It was so cute. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, I was really happy.

**UPDATE** 

Pictures of the cake and cupcakes from the photographer

Mark Dickinson Photography

Special Thanks

Danielle and Cody - Thank you for the opportunity and experience to be a part of your special day. Best wishes to both of you for a long and happy marriage!

Liz - Thank you for letting me use your kitchen these past few months! It was a huge life saver to be able to prep and store everything in one place that was close to the venue. Thanks for also letting me use your co-workers as taste testers. 

Meghan - Thank you for your support. Sorry for shoving buttercream and cupcakes in your mouth almost every day as a taste tester, and subjecting you to molding gumpaste, cutting cupcake wrappers, and even helping me cook! You are the best and I couldn't have gotten anything done on time without your help. 

Bert Fish Rehab Center - Thanks for being my cupcake guinea pigs! You all gave great feedback and motivation during this project. I truly appreciate it. 

My co-workers and friends - for your wonderful comments!