Flan, Chocolate Tiramisu, Strawberry Shortcake & Almond Cupcakes

For a combination of reasons, a friend came over to have a bake date last Saturday and we made 4 varieties of cupcakes. It was amazing how much quicker it went with the extra help! And the input and feedback was great. We had a couple genius breakthroughs that wouldn't have happened if I were working through it on my own.

I think the highlight of the day was the Flan cupcake. I had been experimenting with custard frosting before, with less than enthusiastic success, so was determined to get it really good this time. I had a recipe I swiped off the interwebs that went something like:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 heaping tbs of flour
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 tbs p. sugar

It sounded believable. The first time I ever made it, I was trying for a mocha frosting and thought that custard would be a really nice way to richen it up. I should have taken better notes on how thin and runny the result was the first time, but I hadn't figured out the science of why, so blazed on.

The instructions for this custard frosting:
mix sugar and flour, then add egg and milk and mix together with vanilla. Heat until thickened, then cool completely. Then, whip together the butter and powdered sugar, gradually adding this custard to the butter.

STOP.

Don't do it. I don't know why. I almost don't care how. Just DON'T do it.

Separation. If you want your custard look like grits, yes, use butter. If you want your custard to be a runny mess, then yes, powdered sugar is the answer.

Is it because the milk in the custard is JUST too liquidy? Too much for the powdered sugar to compete with that it turns your delightfully firm and gelatinous custard and whips it down into a confectioner's icing instead? Does the liquidy milk fight with the fatty butter?

So after 2 batches of custard were basically wasted, we figured out that just piping cooled custard straight on to our caramel cupcakes was good enough, that's just what we did. And quite a delightful texture it was. In our excitement, we piped up a bunch of cupcakes, mini and regular alike, and set little pools of highly viscous caramel into the custard cup. Merrily we worked until I realized: wait. The custard is breaking! Literally cracking apart under the weight of the caramel. Slowly, all our efforts began to look like remnants of some ancient cupcake culture as they crumbled to their decripit fate.

So now what? Is this project supposed to fail miserably? I want so badly for it to work because the potential is so high. One batch of custard more and we realized that patience was the only ingredient we were missing. Custard, like most milk-based products, once heated develops a sort of protective skin. We simply hadn't waited long enough for that skin to form in order to load the heavy caramel onto it. Once the custard had set, this experiment finally received the seal of deliciousness.

Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

This post is a few days over due, and sadly, all the evidence of the project has been consumed. But it was great while it lasted.

The idea for these cupcakes was inspired/completely ripped-off of the genius that is Michelle Yu. Knowing that our mutual friend, Barbara, had an insatiable love for the once "Mile High Boston Cream Pie" from Marie Calendars, Michelle made Barbara Boston Cream Cupcakes for her birthday last year, and they were amazing. I'm not positive what her recipe consisted of (whether she used cake box or homemade and whether she filled them with custard or pudding), but I opted to make my own rendition of them using the from-scratch method. I poked around for some recipes online and pieced together the things I liked about a few of them. The end result was a sturdy yellow cake filled with a creamy vanilla custard and topped with a thin, semi-sweet, chocolate ganache. A winning combo, but with room for improvement.

So I don't have much experience with Boston Cream Pies, so I don't actually know what to expect. Maybe that makes me a well-qualified creator of the confection, because my standards are not based on comparisson, but rather compelled by a general expectation for all the flavors and textures to work well together and simply taste good. I did a little research about the original concept, and apparently it is supposed to be a sponge cake, which is not what I used. Maybe that would make the cake a little more delicate, which might better compliment the creaminess of the custard that goes inside it, unlike the denser yellow cake that I used in my recipe where the custard was sort of lost in the texture of the cake. I also think there could have been a stronger presense of the chocolate (but really, when is that not true?), so would opt to make a thicker ganache next time.

But the real fun part was figuring how we'd get the custard inside the cupcake. Method #1, in retrospect, was a crude attempt to beat the laws of physics dealing with volume and mass displacement. Apparently forcing the custard into the bowels of the cupcake by way of injection results in a minimal custard to cake ratio, as well as a gradual un-jection of custard as the so called pressure of the cake form slowly returns back to its unbloated shape and rejects it's forced filling.

So the best method I came up with was actually taking this fancy little apple-corer contraption I had and drilling a 3/4" diameter hole into the top of the still warm cupcake. For some miracle of science, this process actually worked, and worked very well. I would dig down a little over an inch and the perfect cylinder of cupcake would neatly be extracted. After filling the hole in with custard, I then covered up the operation by putting the tip top of the cake cylinder back on the custard-filled hole in order to "protect" the custard filling and give it a barrier from the ganache I was about to dip it in. The only side effect that came about from that process was the evidence of a little, what Barbara referred to as, belly button. Once the cupcake was dipped and the ganache had settled, there was a distinct trace of where the hole had been cut, and a slight elevation of the cylinder top through the ganache. What does this mean? Well. I guess more experiments will just have to be made to perfect a more seamless method.