Cupcakes - - Page 7

by C. Christy Concrete

Cupcake Rampage: Aztec Xocolatl Cupcakes

_{¡Ai ya! ¡Las magdalenas del monstruo están sobrando la ciudad!}

I have a problem with chocolate. Not an addiction kind of problem, it’s more like the complex gauntlet of feelings a married couple goes through leading up to a separation or estrangement. My problem isn’t with chocolate per se, but rather the lofty pedestal it’s been placed upon as food of the gods. The appeal of chocolate has become so pervasive and universal as to make it ubiquitously available, which has invariably led to a massive spectrum of quality, the majority of which have been dulled and flattened to appease the less sophisticated Western palate. Most commercially available chocolate shares the same stigma as boxed macaroni and cheese; so many people are used to the low balled version that the “real thing” would taste almost alien to them.

Now, I’m not trying to be a snot-nosed foodie and say that you haven’t tried real chocolate until you’ve tasted a raw cacao bean or anything, but I’m also of the mind that the more often chocolate is utilized or abused in products, the less special it becomes. This is why I don’t bake with chocolate very often, not because I don’t like it, but because it’s such a mysterious, multidimensional, powerful ingredient that I want to make sure I use its magic properly.

Then again, the ancient Aztecs didn’t quite think that way when it came to their version of hot chocolate. Before that asshole Cortez came along and wrecked everything, they were known to guzzle gallons of what they called xocolatl, (pronounced “HOCK-a-lottle”) and since they didn’t know from sugar, they tempered its natural astringency with hot peppers and other spices. The recipe that follows isn’t an attempt to recreate that brew with any degree of authenticity, but rather an experiment to see what other kinds of personality traits can be brought out of something that usually tastes the same every time you eat it, like chocolate.

by C. Christy Concrete

Cupcake Rampage: Frosting 101

_{Mini vegan orange vanilla cupcakes with orange buttercream, adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World.}

Even though I’m only a recent arrival to the home baking scene, I’m an even more recent convert to the merits of frosting. Like any newbie fumbling and grasping about for a culinary bra clasp, I started out with a battery of failures, but once I got the basics and the wheels came off, an iconoclastic cockiness set in. Paper liners? We don’t need no stupid cupcake diapers! We’ll bake these bad boys commando! Sprinkles? Say “sprinkles” again! I dare you! I double dare you! Frosting? Pah! Frosting is the opiate of the baking world! People’s tongues have become numb with sugar and can no longer appreciate the subtlety of pure, unadulterated, naked cupcake meat!

Of course, I learned my lesson. Paper liners don’t just ease cleanup, they can provide a color accent and give people that Christmas morning feeling of unwrapping a gift just for them. Sprinkles and other garnishes may be little more than pieces of flair on the uniform of a baked good, but remember, half of your score comes from presentation. And frosting? Well, if cupcakes make the world go around, then frosting is the axis upon which it spins.

Making your own frosting is one of the easiest things in the world to do. While it isn’t necessarily cheaper than store-bought frosting, it does allow you to control the quality and quantity of the ingredients that go into it. My basic guide, after the jump…

in Desserts / Endless Cupcakes / Recipe 9 comments

by C. Christy Concrete

Cupcake Rampage: Hummingbird Cakes

_{I know what you’re thinking: Hummingbird cake? WTF? That’s okay, I’d never heard of it, either.}

You could call this the third leg of a twisted Triple Crown of Southern-style baking, following the Kentucky Derby day mint julep cupcakes and the beloved red velvet ones before that. To carry the analogy further, if red velvet is Man o’ War, and mint juleps are Secretariat, then hummingbird cake would be Seabiscuit.

Get it? Of course you do.

Hummingbird cake is another creation peculiar to the Deep South with an even more convoluted and obscure history. Also called “granny cake” and “cake-that-doesn’t-last,” some sources claim the original recipe hails from Australia, where it’s also popular for some reason, while others say it started in Jamaica and was bastardized into its current incarnation along the way. The oldest recorded appearance of hummingbird cake is 1978, when it appeared as a reader-submitted recipe in Southern Living magazine. However, Jamaican newspapers have mentioned something called “Doctor bird cake” as early as a decade before that. The national bird of Jamaica is the red-billed streamertail hummingbird, also called the Doctor bird because its long tail feathers and top-hat-like crest makes it look…kind of, sort of, maybe if you squint and pretend it has a tiny birdie stethoscope around its neck…like the nappily-dressed Victorian doctors of old.

What all this has to do with a cake, no one seems to know. The Jamaica story is a stretch, at best. It could just be called what it is because this cake is so sweet, thanks to sugar from three separate ingredients, even a hummingbird would be attracted to it. However it came to be, the recipe is after the jump…

in Desserts / Endless Cupcakes / Recipe 8 comments

by BS

Pick of the Pics: Best of the ES Flickr Pool

Rkazda‘s delectable Cajun chicken sandwich isn’t the only thing making us salivate over on the ES Flickr pool. The taste-tastiest shots, after the jump…

in Desserts / Food Travel / Fowl / Photos / Sandwich 0 comments

by C. Christy Concrete

Mint Julep Cupcakes

_{No more for me, thanks; I’m driving.}

May isn’t the most holiday-heavy month of the year, and because of that, most people tend to associate it with one of two days: Memorial Day, which is a real holiday, and Cinco de Mayo, which is not. For people of the Southern persuasion, however, May is all about the first Saturday of the month: the running of the first leg of the Triple Crown, the most exciting two minutes in sports, Kentucky Derby Day. Big hats, mint juleps, blue grass, Hot Browns, mint juleps, bourbon, fried green tomatoes, mint juleps, etc. Oh, and there’s a horse race or something, too.

But you needn’t celebrate horse racing for only three days of the year. (Fine, just two days – only douchebag frat boys celebrate Preakness.)

Like most legacy cocktails, the history of the mint julep is clouded in the hangover of the past. The name itself is a mutation of the Persian word for “rosewater,” and we can see how far it’s come from that simple definition. Even just a debate over the proper preparation of the drink is equivalent to fightin’ words in some circles of the Deep South. Muddle the mint or no? Simple syrup or superfine sugar? Cracked ice or seltzer water? It hardly matters, since a long drink like the mint julep is little more than a bourbon delivery system anyway. Besides, we’re making cupcakes today, albeit those of the boozy, minty, julep-y variety.

My horse lost, by the way. Stupid longshots. Off to the glue factory, you worthless flea biscuit!

in Desserts / Endless Cupcakes / Featured / Holiday / Recipe 18 comments

by BS

Who Cooked It Better? Bacon Cupcakes

Chalk up another win for the blogs over the MSM, as Sushi Day’s steak sushi rolls over Gourmet, 58 percent to 42 percent in last week’s Who Cooked It Better.

For this week’s contest, we’re going with a hot new trend that combines a possibly tired trend with a classic taste to make everything new and creative again. Confused? You’ll understand in a second.

As you know, cupcakes have been quite the ubiquitous presence over the past few years, to the extent where some are declaring them so over already. I liked them better myself in grade school, when they weren’t trendy and didn’t cost nine dollars, but I think we can all agree, overexposed or not, these little devils are delicious.

One thing that is definitely not over is bacon, so it was only a matter of time before bacon collided with cupcakes to create something God is kicking himself for not inventing. Bacon cupcakes are here indeed, and all of a sudden they seem to have taken over the food blogosphere. I browsed through said blogosphere to find the best of the best, and there are no half-assed bacon-topped cupcakes here, each of these three contenders mix actual bacon into their batter to present three tantalizing recipes.

On the left is one of the first known versions of the mythical bacon cupcake. From the Vanilla Garlic blog, this maple bacon cupcake is for “those who eat with no fear,” and it sure lives up to that claim. Diced bacon is mixed into the brown sugar-maple syrup cupcake, which is then topped with a maple syrup-butter frosting and finished off with a sweet and salty kick from turbinado sugar and kosher salt. (Note: This does not make the cupcake kosher in any way). Full recipe here.

Appearing in the middle, No One Puts Cupcake in a Corner throws a chocolate spin on the BC, dreaming up an amazing coffee-buttermilk-dark chocolate-bacon batter. While she doesn’t give us a chocolate frosting recipe, she more than makes up for it by sprinkling bonus bacon (crispy, of course) on top of the cupcake. Full recipe here.

A Good Appetite, on the left, also goes with the dark chocolate theme, whipping up a batch of Hershey’s dark cocoa batter, topped with some dark chocolate frosting and a sprinkling of fleur de sel for that extra salty (and artsy!) touch. Extra points for some creative black and white photography. Full recipe here.

Wow I am hungry after writing all that up. I, for one, will surely be trying one of these recipes soon – so which one?

Find more cupcake commentary in Endless Cupcakes

(Photos: Vanilla Garlic, No One Puts Cupcake in a Corner, and A Good Appetite)

in Bacon / Desserts / Endless Cupcakes / Trends 17 comments