Everybody loves a cupcake

If you want to keep up to date on my baking and my goal to test the ever living crap out of a bunch of recipes/ideas rattling around in my brain, check out my latest endeavor, Cupcake Friday.

You won't regret it, I promise.

Baking Cupcakes for Amanda Hesser

Any time I have an excuse to bake cupcakes, I take it and run like the wind. You should know that by now.

Wednesday night, Ray and I attended The Essential New York Times Cookbook Philly Food Blogger Potluck and Book Signing, hosted by NYT food columnist and food52 founder Amanda Hesser, Audra Wolfe of Doris and Jilly Cook, Marisa McClellan of Food in Jars and Victory Brewing. Attendees were encouraged to bring their favorite dish from the NYT, whether it be the paper, a cookbook, or even the newest cookbook. 

I'll admit, I'm not much of a Times girl, or really any newspaper for that matter. I knew roughly what I wanted to bring (cupcakes!), so I scoured the online NYT in search for a wild and crazy cupcake recipe.

Unfortunately, my search only brought up approximately three recipes. One contained peanut butter, which I skipped because of Ray's allergy, another was a "Hostess" style cupcake (ew), and the final and acceptable recipe was for Devil's Food Cake cupcakes with chocolate ganache. Classic, yet a little boring for the likes of me.

My first thought was to take some of the lovely raspberry jam my friend Jen gave me this summer and fill the chocolatey delights with it. But being that it was 8:00 when the cupcakes came out of the oven AND the cake seemed very light, I nixed this idea. No need to massacre 30 cupcakes in an effort to fill them with jam and stay up until midnight. Not on a week night.

Instead I let them cool in my office, with the window thrown open. I took that time to shower and make the ganache, which was suspiciously simple. Then after an hour or so of cooling, I dipped each cupcake in the thick chocolate, gave it a twirl and voila! Cupcakes.

Ray and I had a great time at the potluck. There was a great variety of finger food-style dishes, including three pimento cheese dips (oh so good). I thoroughly enjoyed Marisa's broiled lemon and spinach salad, and my friend Derek's peanut-topped sesame noodles.

I enjoyed chatting with Amanda in between bites of the aforementioned noodles, discussing peanut allergies and the joys of homebrewing. She seemed intrigued by Ray and my beer-making hobby, and we were more than happy to talk about recipes, mishaps and the benefits of a good homebrew. The cupcakes were a hit, and I encouraged people to pair them with Victory's Storm King Imperial Stout, a beer that I spent a lot of time with that night.

Ray and I also chummed up with Dave from Victory Brewing, sharing some of our homebrews with him and some fellow potluckers. Definitely a fantastic night.

Baking for Parties

This past Saturday I had 45+ cupcakes in tow with me as Ray and I ventured over the river and through the woods to our very good friends' house for their daughter's first birthday. When I originally made the lavender honey nut cupcakes, I was texting back and forth with my friend, who seemed interested in the cupcakes. So I did what any sane (or maybe not so much) person would do and offered to bake the same recipe for her daughter's birthday.

I took Friday off 1) to recover from a nasty cold and 2) have more time to bake. I stuck with the original recipe, and purchased frosting pigment to make the cupcake frosting a lovely lavender. The recipe yields more than noted in the book, so 4 batches (which should have yielded 48) landed me with 55+ cupcakes. More than I planned for, but all the better to practice frosting.

I tinted the frosting and got to work making a rose design on each cupcake. I found out quickly that a firm hand and steady pressure was needed to make the lined crisp—otherwise the frosting looked a little droopy. By the end of my mega frosting session (making the buttercream 3 times to cover all the cupcakes), I had a steady hand and was able to knock out multiple cupcakes without stopping.

At the party everyone loved the cupcakes, which had me a little taken aback. Okay, wait, maybe that wasn't it. What surprised me was when people assumed I was a professional baker. They wanted to know where my shop was. My shop? You think I'm a professional? This was the first time I had ever colored frosting!

But it was great to hear. I'll be baking cupcakes for Ray's 30th birthday party in November, and I've made it clear to friends that I'm interested in cupcake-catering their parties as well. I'll be interested to see where this goes.

One thing to note: Strangely enough, a majority of the cupcakes' frosting paled to a light shade of blue-lavender.  I was very surprised, but they did ride in the back of the car in a clear container. My thought is that they were somehow light-struck. Has anyone had experience with this?

The Boozy Baker—a review

I love to bake, I love cookbooks, so entering Bon Appetit's contest to win a copy of the freshly printed The Boozy Baker: 75 Recipes for Spirited Sweets plus 25 Cocktail Recipes was a no brainer. What made it even better was that I won, which is a pretty rare thing for me.

Written by Lucy Baker (I envy her last name!), a food writer and recipe tester, and a contributing columnist and recipes editor for SeriousEats.com, The Boozy Baker is the kind of cookbook that all the other cookbooks want to be—a little naughty, fun, yet still classy and chic. The photography is great, the book's design is playful with a little hint of kitsch, and there is an excellent variety of baked goods (and cocktails) represented.

Baker provides a rundown on the standard baking ingredients, as well as a breakdown of the liquors used throughout the book, describing the flavor profile. Very helpful, especially to those who may not have spent a ton of time perusing the liquor store shelves or pulling themselves off the local bar's floor at 2 a.m. (kidding!)

From "Old-Fashioned" Snickerdoodles (insert bourbon) to Red Wine Caramel Tart, from the Double Mint Fizz to Almond Iced Tea (both cocktails), there is plenty in this book to keep the creative and slightly offbeat baker entertained in the kitchen. The recipes also leave enough room for the intermediate-to-expert baker to play around, swapping out certain liquors for others to change the dessert at hand. 

My only criticism of the book—which has been echoed by other reviews—is the lack of photography. It would have been nice to see more photos of the finished desserts (there were 28 photos out of the 75 recipes), but the images that were included were superb, cohesively styled to match the rest of the book. I also understand that producing and printing a book isn't cheap, so 28 photos in 4-color is better than nothing.

After paging through the book several times, I decided to make the Lavender Honey-Nut Cupcakes and was happy with the results, though slightly tweaked to my liking (seriously, who doesn't make changes to a recipe?) I found the buttercream to be a bit too sweet for my liking, so I backed off the amount of confectioner's sugar that Baker calls for an added a bit more amaretto. The recipe was super easy to follow, and the cupcakes came out DIVINE. So far everyone who's eaten them has raved. It was totally worth winning this cookbook!

Lavender honey-nut cupcakes

Say hello to the Lavender Honey-Nut Cupcakes, packed lovingly for a lunch in Philly with friends. And yes, they taste as good as they look.

I sourced the recipe from The Boozy Baker: 75 Recipes for Spirited Sweets by Lucy Baker, which I won in a Bon Appetit cookbook giveaway.

I didn't alter the cake recipe (containing almond meal, lavender buds and amaretto), but I did make some changes to the honey-amaretto buttercream. The recipe called for a start of 2 cups of confectioners sugar, then adding an additional 1-2 cups of confectioners sugar. I only had approximately 2-1/4 cups in my cupboard, so I made it work. However, I still noticed that the buttercream is a bit too sweet for my tastes, so next time (I'll be baking these for my friend's daughter's first birthday), I think I'll start with a cup of confectioner's sugar and add a little bit from there.

Because I found the buttercream's sweetness to pop too much, I added a little extra amaretto and a smidge more light cream. I also have lavender honey, but I opted for clover honey because I didn't want one flavor overpowering the rest—I think that was the right decision.

The recipe calls for lavender buds as a garnish as well, but they're kind of hard to manipulate on the buttercream (my objective was not to mangle the tops of the cupcakes with my clumsy fingers). So, as a test, I garnished two of the four cupcakes I gave to my friends and told them to report back.