Babycakes (and a Couple Ugly Stepsisters)

Book clubber Carolyn held a baby shower for book clubber Amy, and asked me if I would like to bake anything for dessert.  WOULD I??? 

Wheels started turning.  How ‘bout cupcakes?  How ‘bout three kinds of cupcakes?  Wait!  Mini-cupcakes!  (Get it: BABY CAKES!) OMG what if I could turn that Lime-Yogurt Sherbet into teeny-tiny ice cream pies?  Could I store them on some sort of tray of dry ice for serving?

At that point, the wrench of reality was thrown firmly into those turning wheels and so I backed up and decided to just stick with the cupcakes, four kinds: carrot cake with cream cheese icing, flourless sunken chocolate-orange, brown sugar with caramel sauce injected in them and chocolate icing, and lemon-buttermilk with raspberry-lemon curd injected and a raspberry-lemon glaze.

Things didn’t exactly work out; I got three pretty cupcakes…

(Clockwise from top left: Sunken Chocolate-Orange with Whipped Cream, Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Icing, and Brown Sugar with Dark Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.  And yes, the penny is there for size comparison.)

…and two batches of lemon-buttermilk messes. 

 

About ten minutes after I should have been in the shower, I started half-heartedly glazing the second batch (both tasted good, just looked like crap), but once I realized the lemon-raspberry glaze was quite pink, I decided to abandon the idea of the fourth cupcake entirely.  Amy’s not the kind of person who would be uptight about sticking rigidly to boy and girl colors, but she is having a little guy, so there wasn't much point in making myself even tardier to bring aesthetically-questionable pink cupcakes to a baby boy shower.

Here are the useful bits of information I gained through this particular bake-a-thon:

Very Successful Flourless Chocolate Cake Recipe: This Epicurious recipe for Sunken Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes was a BIG hit with everyone.  It was also very easy to make.  As I often do, I used more zest than the recipe called for (and a teeny bit of Cointreau) so it had a great orange flavor. I also had almond flour on hand, so I used that in place of the home-ground blanched almonds (I used ¾ cup of flour in place of the 1 cup of slivered almonds, assuming that they would probably deflate that much after being ground.)  I used some Guittard Bittersweet Chocolate, which is not my first choice, as it wasn’t their Oro kind, which I learned at the Chocolate Tasting is one of my favorites.  But I didn’t hear any complaints.

Injecting Fillings into Cupcakes: I got a couple of recipes and techniques from Demolition Desserts, which is by Elizabeth Faulkner, the pastry chef behind San Francisco’s Citizen Cake and Citizen Cupcake.  A lot of the desserts in the book are very creative, composed dishes, such as “Battleship Potemkin,” which was inspired by the bloody Odessa Steps scene in the Eisenstein film, and includes “Odessa Step Chocolate Shortbread” and “Bloodshed Raspberries.”

She also, though, has a lot of basic techniques and tips (like a recipe for vegetarian marshmallows made with Xanthan Gum), and one is a way to inject fillings into cupcakes. 

Basically you fill a plastic squirt bottle with the warmed filling (so it’s more liquid), push the filling to the tip, and insert the tip into the top of the cupcake.  You squeeze the filling into the cupcake, and she says “you can almost feel the cupcake take on weight.”  You watch for the top of the cupcake to rise slightly, and then cover over the hole with the icing.

I tried the method, and it worked, but unfortunately the filling I chose (a mixture of lemon curd and raspberry jam) got a thumbs-down from my friend Aimee as I frantically made her try it on our way to the Bourdain show.  I think maybe just plain jam would be nice inside a lemony cupcake (and in fact that was the original idea), but that will have to wait until next time. 

The brown sugar cupcake (recipe also from Demolition Desserts) was supposed to have a caramel sauce filling.  “Don’t burn yourself!” my sister warned when I told her what I was making, and I didn’t, but I did burn the sugar.  Rats.  At this point, I believe the score is now closer to Caramel Sauce: 4, Leslie: 1.  Don’t get comfortable, Caramel Sauce: I HAVEN’T CONCEDED ANYTHING.  (Except the feeling in the tip of my right index finger.)

Successful Raspberry-Lemon Glaze Recipe: The actual lemon cupcakes I made were from Demolition Desserts (just added a bunch of zest and extract to the Buttermilk Cupcake recipe and they tasted a lot better than they looked), but the pink glaze is from this Epicurious recipe, and it is delicious.  I think the construction issues with the cupcake were caused by my not knowing how far to fill the mini-cupcake tins.  I would really recommend, though, trying a lovely lemon cupcake with this glaze for a baby girl shower.

Relatively Successful Carrot Cupcake Recipe: Folks liked this Epicurious carrot cupcake recipe; I felt it was a smidge flat.  I might use a teeny bit more salt for better flavor next time, and maybe bump up the spice a bit.  But the texture was very nice.  I did not use the icing in that recipe; instead I made a cream cheese frosting that was sweetened with maple syrup rather than powdered sugar, just took a basic cream cheese and butter recipe, and added maple syrup until I liked how it tasted.

Carrot Cake Prep Tip: I used my Microplane zester to grate the carrot into itsy-bitsy shreds.  Requires more time and upper-body effort, but you get a) more even distribution of carrot and less likelihood of big awkward carrot chunks, b) more orangey color and c) a little more intense carrot flavor.

(Orangey!)

Cupcake Tin Buying Tip: CUPCAKE TIN MANUFACTURERS: please leave enough actual pan around the edges of the cup so that the baker HAS SOMETHING TO GRAB WITH AN OVEN MITT AND DOESN’T SQUISH THEIR CUPCAKES WHEN REMOVING FROM OVEN.  Look at how little space you have to work with on those pans below. If I used something thin enough to avoid the cupcakes, I burned my hands.  If I used something thick enough to protect my hands, I squished a cake.

Quantity Tip: Despite the fact that it is, in fact, only 1.5 actual cupcakes per person, 2 dozen each of 3 different kinds of mini-cupcakes for 20 people might be way over-cupcaking.  I asked Carolyn if she had any play dates coming up where she could use them up.  She said no, but she would schedule some.  Note to current and future potential friends with kids: I might be handy to know when it’s bake sale time at your kids’ school.

Another Endorsement for Ingredients on Hand: My little garnishes on the cupcakes were to help illustrate what the cupcakes contained, and alert those with nut allergies.  The garnishes (walnuts – which I had also thrown into the carrot cupcakes since I had them on hand, slivered almonds and Demerara Sugar, the sparkly brown sugar on the chocolate frosting) I just happened to have in my now super-stocked pantry.  It was great to be able to put a pretty little finished touch to them when the thought occurred to me without it requiring another visit to the grocery store.