Browned Butter Cupcakes

I didn't lie; I told you this year's theme was browned butter.

I have made browned butter cupcakes a few times this year, but my favorite iteration has to be the one with the rosemary infused maple syrup and toasted pecans. It was inspired by a very delicious ice cream I had at a lovely restaurant in Oakland. Vanilla ice cream studded with salty pecans and topped with this rosemary maple syrup drizzle. Outstanding combination of salty and sweet, and very rich. I thought it would work very well with a browned butter base, so turned it into cupcakes.

Browned Butter Cupcakes
Makes about 2 dozen

1 1/2 sticks butter, browned (instructions below)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped, toasted pecans (optional)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350˚.

First off, toast a handful of raw pecans. Spray them very lightly with some oil and sprinkle with some kosher salt, roasting from anywhere between 200˚-300˚ for about 10 minutes or until you smell the nutty aroma. Don't burn them, so keep an eye, and toss them around halfway through if needed. Set aside to cool.

Then make a quick infusion of rosemary into maple syrup. I don't think I did a good job of measuring out how much syrup or rosemary I used here. Let's say 1/4-1/3 cup and a 4" piece of rosemary. I do recommend trimming the rosemary into small clusters first (versus sticking the whole stock in the syrup) so that you have small pieces to top each cupcake with. In a small pan, bring the syrup with rosemary in it to a boil, then remove from heat and let it steep until it's cooled off on its own. Oh, just in case it's not a given, you should only be using real maple syrup for this - not the fake stuff. 

Next is the batter, starting with browning butter. In a medium size sauce pan, melt butter slowly over a low heat. Keep a close eye on it and stir frequently. The butter will probably try to boil or sizzle, so don't let it do that. Stir frequently, scraping up any bits from the bottom as you do. First it will foam up and be hard to see what's going on underneath the foaming. Then the foam will subside and you'll start to see little "bits" floating in the butter. That's the good stuff. Keep your eye on those bits and when they start getting to a caramel color and the aroma is nutty, remove from heat. This all takes between 5-10 minutes depending on how much butter you're browning, width of your pan, and how low your heat is.

Set that aside for a minute, and in a medium bowl whisk together your dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt (and nuts if using in batter).

Mix brown sugar into the browned butter (in the sauce pan is fine), then quickly whisk in the eggs one at a time until combined. Add vanilla, then alternate adding the flour mixture with the milk (typically 1/3 flour, 1/2 milk, 1/3 flour, 1/2 milk, ending with remaining 1/3 of the flour). Try not to over mix.

Pour batter into prepared baking tins (1/4 per cupcake works great for me) and bake for 20 minutes.

While cupcakes bake, make frosting.

Rosemary Maple Buttercream
Side note: I have found that 1 stick of butter to ~2 cups of powdered sugar is just enough frosting for a dozen cupcakes. Consider it a good rule of thumb if you decide to start experimenting. Likewise, you can gauge how many cupcakes you'll get out of recipe (roughly) by following the formula that with every 1 cup or so of flour in a recipe you'll get about a dozen cupcakes. Give or take. Anyway...

2 sticks butter, softened (1 cup)
3-4 cups powdered sugar (depending on your sweet tooth and the consistency of the frosting you like - more sugar = stiffer and will form a kind of crust once it's set for a while - great for making shapes/flowers, less sugar = less stiff and creamier.)
2-3 tbs of infused maple syrup
dash of kosher salt
1-2 tsp milk as needed

Whip butter, adding powdered sugar until blended. Drizzle in syrup and dash of salt and beat until it gets fluffy. Add a little milk to smooth out the consistency. You're now ready to decorate.

Another side note: I didn't do it with this recipe, but if you're REALLY loving the browned butter flavor and want to make it really pop, you could make a little extra browned butter and scrape some of the nutty caramelized bits into the frosting at this point as well. I did make just browned butter cupcakes with browned butter frosting once and they were delicious, albeit extremely rich.

Pipe your frosting onto the cupcakes and top with a pecan or two and LIGHTLY drizzle with the remaining maple syrup. You don't want to put too much because it will just drip off the cupcake and make a sticky mess. Do try to include a little piece of rosemary that was infused in the syrup on the top of each cupcake though. And if your nuts didn't hold onto their salt while roasting, definitely make sure you sprinkle a little extra onto each cupcake. It makes all the difference.

Vegan Samoa Cake Pops

This will officially be my first vegan recipe post. I am by no means a vegan (easiest indicator might be the 12 pounds of butter that I keep in my fridge at all times), but there are sometimes requests from friends for recipes, or people who ask if I bake anything that accommodates their dietary restrictions, so I figured it would be good to get a couple recipes in my back pocket for such occasions. I would like to try a couple more vegan recipes, as well as gluten free. Sugar free will be a harder test for me, as I'm really not a fan of artificial sweeteners, but we'll see what I come up with.

For this recipe, I had been thinking about making Samoa cake pops since my Somoa cupcake recipe turned out so well and since I have a new found appreciation for this thing called a cake pop. But as it happened, a couple weeks back, I noticed Trader Joe's started selling coconut oil in the jar. I wondered if I could use that as a butter replacement in baking, even though I hadn't really seen any recipes that called for it (mind you, I don't actively peruse the web for vegan recipes, so I'm sure there are a ton out there that just haven't hit my radar). So yesterday I had these 2 unrelated ideas floating through my mind and decided I might as well try putting them together: Samoa cake pops + vegan. The use of coconut butter seemed like the perfect opportunity since coconut is already a flavor for Samoas. As well, not having much experience with dairy and egg free baking, I was worried about how well a vegan cupcake would present: Would it rise well? Would the crumb hold together or fall apart without eggs? Would it be dry or moist? Not knowing how all these factors would pan out, the idea of being able to smoosh the cake dough into a cake ball did alleviate a lot of my concerns about presentation. In simpler terms, it was a cop out.

But how to make the caramel vegan? I thought this was going to be a big stretch, and after doing a quick search, did not see any recipes out there for a caramel sauce made with anything other than butter and cream. But why not coconut oil and coconut cream? I mean, I'm no scientist, so don't have any reason to back my hypothesis that this might actually work, but I do have the tools and the gall to try it, so I did. I do not recommend making this vegan-ified caramel sauce for your first go-round at making caramel sauce though. There were a couple distinct differences in how it came together that unless you know what to expect, you would probably assume you botched it halfway through (well, at least I did). Most striking "problem" was that once the sugar had browned and I put the coconut oil in, the combination was not what they would literally call a "solution" - the fat floated on top of the sugar in a completely clear, separate layer. Butter usually incorporates itself with the sugar much more uniformly. I thought for a second that maybe there was just too much water to fat ratio in the coconut oil, but knowing that butter actually has a really high water content itself, I figured that wasn't the problem. In any case, since I had already gotten that far, I figured, why not? and dumped the coconut cream in. It reacted similarly enough to how I would expect regular cream to react in that it foamed up violently and I had to whisk it steadily to start incorporating it all. Instead of removing the caramel from the heat like you would if you were using dairy, I continued to cook the sauce over a low heat as I whisked it, as well as scraped the bowl as some of the caramel had simply hardened and was sticking to the whisk and the sides and needed to be re-warmed to soften up again.

After a couple more minutes of whisking and scraping, I decided that most of the sugar had transformed into the soft caramel sauce, but there were still chunks of hardened sugar attached to my whisk and the pan when I was done. I accepted that, and let the sauce cool. I still wasn't sure if it was a success, as the cooling process could have still had an effect on the outcome, but luckily, a couple hours later everything was still looking nice and caramelly, and un-separated. Success! Definitely tasted like a very coconutty caramel sauce.

That cake managed to turn out fairly well, too. I followed this recipe with a few modifications that I'll describe below. The end result was that it baked to a nice round top, but it fell once it cooled. The cake was VERY moist, and dense, but otherwise had a pleasant flavor and texture. I do think it fell apart much more easily than an egg bound cake, but it wasn't dismally crumbly.

The cake was so moist (and oily) that I don't think it needed a binding agent to form it into cake balls, honestly, but I wanted to get the caramel flavor incorporated, so drizzled a bit of the sauce over the cake crumbs to make them into the balls. I want to make sure nobody here who is reading this so far thinks that just because these are vegan that they are healthy. Pretty sure these were more oily than any other cupcake I've baked. Maybe coconut oil is one of those healthy fats or something (fingers crossed).

Vegan Coconut Caramel Sauce
Adapted from Simply Recipes
- 1 cup sugar
- 6 tbs coconut oil
- ½ cup coconut cream

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan over medium low heat, slowly melt sugar until it is lightly brown and smells caramelly (careful not to burn the sugar). Add in coconut oil until melted. Working quickly, whisk coconut cream into mixture (it will foam up). Keep whisking over the heat until most of the hardened caramel has softened and the sauce is incorporated. Let cool.

Vegan Coconut Cake
adapted from Culinate which was reprinting of a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World



- 2 cups coconut milk
- 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 2½ cups flour
- 4 tbsp cornstarch
- 1½ tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup coconut oil
- 1½ cup sugar
- 4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350˚. Spray cake pan with a little bit of vegetable oil. No need to flour the sides or anything, since you're just going to destroy the cake anyway.
Mix together coconut milk and vinegar. Supposedly this would make soy milk curdle, but I don't think that the same principle applies with coconut milk. I did it anyway because I think the vinegar reacts to the baking soda.
Whisk together the dry ingredients.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat coconut oil and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add vanilla extract, and then reduce speed of mixer and in 3 parts, add flour mixture, alternating with the milk mixture until incorporated.
Spread mixture into prepared pan and bake for about 45-50 minutes, or until top is golden brown and springs back when you tap the top.
Let cool. Cake will fall slightly.

Prep a bowl of chocolate for dipping. For the full vegan effect, make sure your chocolate does not contain any milk solids. Pretty sure most high end "semi-sweet" chocolates would qualify as vegan, but your standard nestle chips won't make the cut. Melt about 8 oz of them in a bowl (I just microwave them in 30 second increments until most of the chocolate is melted, and then I just stir it until the rest of the chocolate melts). I add in about 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil at this point to make sure my chocolate doesn't bloom, which is a real problem I have when doing chocolate dipped items. The oil seems to help a lot.

Once cake and sauce are cool, demolish the cake and mix caramel sauce into cake until balls are easily formed out of the mixture (hey, use your hands! why not). Form roughly 1 inch sized balls of the mixture and lay out on a cookie sheet lined with wax or parchment paper. I typically freeze them for about 10 minutes so that they are a little more sturdy for dipping. Don't freeze for too long though. The next step involves poking the popsicle stick through the tops of each, so make sure they're not too firm to do that. Once the cake balls have their popsicle sticks, dip each one in the chocolate until covered, let the excess chocolate drip off, then roll lightly in toasted coconut. Put back on parchment until chocolate has set.

Black and White Cookie

A true New York specialty, I definitely miss having a good black and white cookie after grabbing a sandwich at the deli. There is a lot of history and culture surrounding the black and white. It is by definition a cookie that is actually cake. Supposedly created when bakers had leftover batter, they just added a little extra flour to thicken it up so it wouldn't spread too far on the pan. Proof that some of the most amazing things are based on very simple ideas.

There is also quite a ritual that goes into eating the cookie. Which side do you like better? Do you eat the black or white first? Do you take a little bit of each? I was reminded of a Seinfeld episode that touched on the process of eating the cookie and it's ability to defy racial barriers. Regardless of which side you like or eat first, the cookie is overall quite delightful. Spongy like cake, with a high cake to frosting ratio, it is the perfect sweet end to any meal.

After an experiment and advice described by smittenkitchen's entry (thanks), I ended up making my cookie dough by varying my basic off-white cake recipe. Yielding only about a dozen large cookies, this recipe can be doubled, halved, made into a bunch of small cookies, made into bigger cookies (not recommended, as the cookies are actually quite fragile and will easily break in half if made too big). They are also best served fresh. Deli's tend to wrap them in plastic wrap to ward off the elements, but I doubt if you brought these cookies to a party there would be any concern for what to do with leftovers. They also don't do so well with stacking because the glaze is tacky and although "hardened" - still pretty moist. putting layers of wax paper in between the cookies seemed to work well enough to keep them separate for transport though.

Ok, so recipe goes:

• 6 tbs butter, room temperature
• 1 C sugar
• 3/4 C flour*
• 3/4 C cake flour*
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• 3/8 C milk
• 1/2 tsp lemon extract
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375˚. Line baking sheets with parchment.

Sift together dry ingredients. I usually don't sift, but this time I thought it would be important to keep the cookies light and incorporate both flours evenly. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Mix milk and extracts together. Beginning with dry ingredients, gently mix into butter, alternating with milk, ending with dry, being careful not to over-mix.

Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. *I found that they were hard to make into perfect circles, and might have been easier to work with if I added a little more flour, probably up to 1/2 cup more at most. Depending on the size you make the cookies, bake for 10-15 minutes, but check to make sure you just lightly brown the edges.

As they're cooling, start the glazes.
My proportions are not generous, but the recipe can be easily added to even as you're working, so if you need more you can make it as you go.

White Glaze:

• 2 C powdered sugar
• 1/4 C boiling water

Slowly mix water into sugar, making sure not to put too much water in. You might not need all of it. I like the consistency to be easy to spread and not very drippy.
So, these cookies are actually frosted on their bottom side, covering up the baking brown. Using a frosting or butter knife, spread the white glaze on one half of each cookie. The glaze develops a skin quickly, so make sure to move quickly so your unused frosting doesn't get too crystallized.
You will have about half the frosting left. Place that over a pot of boiling water to make a double boiler and then, add to glaze base:

Chocolate Glaze:

• 1.5 oz dark or unsweetened chocolate
• 1/2 tsp corn syrup
• 1 tbs cocoa (optional, but I think it makes the "black" side look richer and darker than without)

Whisk together over the heat until chocolate has melted. This glaze is even more sensitive to thickening and crystallizing while you're working with it, so be sure to have more boiling water handy to thin it out as you work. Spread chocolate along other half of cookie.

Let them set up for a while before diving in, but then enjoy! I was told by a kind lady in my office that these were better than some she's had at Deli's in both New York and LA. My only defense was that I knew mine were very fresh, and that the deli's might not have been as much. Of course I'd love to believe that mine were actually better, but in the interest of keeping the peace, I will "look to the cookie."

Gooey Butter Cake

It is what it sounds like!

The idea was brought to me directly from St. Louis via my boyfriend's parents who were visiting over Memorial Day weekend. Having never heard of it, the name was a quick selling point. Apparently a very St. Louis kind of thing, I figured the west coast needed to be introduced (including myself) so ventured to try it.

Not sure if she was the founder of said Gooey Butter Cake or simply the one who made it popular, but it appears we have Paula Dean to thank for it. So saying, I believe the confection holds up to the Southerner stereotype that if it's going to be good, it's going to be clogging your arteries. Yum. Luckily it's pretty rich, so unlike some of those scorpion-style confections that you find you can eat tons of, but are extremely bad for you, this treat should and really can only be consumed in small portions.*

So the original recipe calls for a box of cake mix. Once we look past that minor indiscretion, we can get excited about the recipe that is the "gooey". I find it's a close relative to that cream cheese filling you can optionally put into brownies, which is also a close relative to cream cheese frosting. Yeah, I said cream cheese frosting. But it's BAKED in. Genius.

For experiment's sake, I made what you would consider half a batch. Please double at your own discretion.

So I started with a variation on yellow cake. My variation went something like this:

sift together and set aside:

• 1 C flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 C sugar

mix together:

• 1/2 C butter, melted
• 3/4 cup milk, curdled with a tsp of vinegar (aka buttermilk - I didn't happen to have any, hence the substitute)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg

Add dry ingredients to wet.
Yeah, that's it.

Pour this mix into the bottom of a 9x13 pan (I line mine with parchment to keep things easier to clean/cut). You could also do a 9x9 with the final product being a bit taller (could be good).

Next, make the gooey:

• 1/2 package cream cheese (4 oz.)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 box powdered sugar (approx. 8 oz.) (if I had to guess, which I did have to, I'd say that's somewhere between 2-3 cups)
• 1/4 C melted butter

Blend cream cheese until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla. Then add the sugar (I dare you not to make a mess of it) and make sure it's smooth. Then pour in the melted butter.

Pour that mixture over the cake batter evenly. I smoothed mine out and made pretty swirly designs which ended up being visible after baking, so I recommend it (if you care).

Bake for 30-40 minutes (and add more time if you double the recipe). But I guess this is where you just do what you think is best because if you insert a toothpick in the center, well... it's going to be gooey. So I just make sure the cake looked pretty well browned on top (where it was popping through the filling) and made sure it cooled completely before digging in.

Cut, and enjoy!

I also tried one variation with chocolate cake and peanut butter gooey, but we ate it before it cooled so the photos would have been discouraging. They were adored by the consumers, nonetheless.

*That is totally an opinion. I'm sure there are those who would challenge my position. At their own risk, of course.