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.

Browned Butter Rice Krispy Treats with Nutella

 

Happy Nutella Day!

My contribution this year is going with the browned butter theme I established in my first post this year.

These were ridiculous. I am typically pretty good about not over-indulging in the goodies I make (caramel popcorn being the glaring exception), but I knew these had to leave the house almost as immediately as I finished them.

So, you obviously don't have to make your own marshmallows, but I have a ridiculous amount of gelatin leftover from holiday baking that I take every opportunity to use up, so prefer to make my own (and so long as you have a stand mixer, it's actually really easy). Also, I followed my dear Smitten Kitchen for the rest of the recipe. She never does me wrong. Another side note, I actually doubled the recipe. Making 2x the  marshmallow in one batch is fine, but I don't recommend trying to brown 2x the butter and mix in 2x the rice crispies into one pan. I just did it twice (so unlike me! I am notorious for preferring to make "one trip"

For the Marshmallow
In the bowl of a stand mixer:
1 ½ envelopes gelatin
¼ c cold water

In a Medium size pot:
1 c sugar
¼ c water
¼ corn syrup
dash salt

to add in later:
½ tsp vanilla

For the Krispies
4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus extra for the pan
10 oz of prepared marshmallow (it actually will make closer to 11.5 oz... I just used it all) or a bag of them
1/4 tsp kosher salt
6 cups Rice Krispies cereal (about half a 12 oz box) (I used brown rice crispies. Probably some delusion that I'd be adding a smidgen of healthiness to the recipe. I couldn't taste the difference, so go for it if you are as equally delusional as me.)

For marshmallow: In the bowl of a stand mixer (set with whisk attachment), pour in ¼ cup cold water and sprinkle with gelatin and let sit for at least 5 minutes while you prepare the syrup. Meanwhile, in a medium sized sauce pan, heat sugar, ¼ cup water, salt and corn syrup on medium heat stirring until dissolved. Once it starts boiling, stop stirring and bring it to 240˚. Turn stand mixer on low and carefully pour hot syrup down the side of the bowl. Once all syrup is in the bowl, turn speed all the way up and let it go for for 5-8 minutes until fluffy. Whisk in vanilla until incorporated. Set aside.

For krispies, first butter an 8 inch square cake pan or pyrex (for ease of removal, I actually line my pan with buttered aluminum foil or wax paper).

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over 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. Don't get impatient for it to start browning; the period between the time the butter begins to take on color and the point where it burns is often less than a minute (good advice from Deb).

Once off the heat, stir in the marshmallow goop (this will be VERY sticky and hard to work with, and you will not be able to scrape every bit out from the bowl of the stand mixer. I'm sorry, but you'll just have to tackle that after you're done making the treats). The residual heat from the melted butter should be enough to melt the mallow mixture, but if it is not, turn the heat back on low until the marshmallows are smooth.

Remove the pot from the stove and stir in the salt and cereal together. Quickly spread into prepared pan. Smooth out with a silicon spatula (I found that worked best).

I put it in the fridge and let it set for about an hour then went to town adding a schmear of Nutella across the top of it then let it cool again before cutting into squares. 

Bacon S'mores - First Annual Porktober

My roommate and I hosted our first annual Porktober Party this past weekend, and for the occasion I whipped up a gourmet variation of s'mores that featured bacon.

First step is removing graham crackers and making a crust of bacon in its place. Then you melt rich, bittersweet chocolate over the bacon strips, forming a solid sheet of chocolate covered bacon, and top that with homemade marshmallow cream, and voila! Cut that into squares and torch until crispy and caramelized. No harm in using only the good stuff. We made a special trip to Fatted Calf for the occasion and bought a couple packs of their thick-cut bacon for the purpose. Be sure not to choose a bacon that is seasoned with anything like pepper - the applewood smoked or similar varieties are best for this purpose.

So here's how you do it. I am personally a big fan of baking bacon. I like how I can just pop it in the oven and not mess with it for 30-40 minutes (for thick cut bacon - at 375˚), flipping it only once halfway through. I also like how when you say baking bacon out loud, you sound redundant. Make sure your bacon is super crispy; you don't want chewy, wilted bacon for this. For the full recipe, you'll need 12-14 pieces of bacon, depending on how big it is and how much it cooks down. Seems safe to always have more than you think you'll need.

While the bacon cooks, chop up some nice, high quality dark chocolate. Or milk chocolate. Whatever your preference, just make sure you use a good one. I featured some Scharffen Berger bittersweet in this recipe (70%). I sort of eyeballed the quantity here, but I'd say it was about 8 ounces of chocolate altogether. You can always add more if it doesn't look like enough.

Place a sheet of aluminum foil along the bottom and up the sides of (2) 8x8 or 9x9 inch baking pans and lightly spray with oil or spread with butter on all sides. Once the bacon is finished, and cooled slightly, layer along the bottom of the pans as close-knit as possible, filling in gaps with pieces of bacon if you want full coverage. Then sprinkle with chopped chocolate as evenly as possible and pop back in the oven for 1-2 minutes until the chocolate has started to melt and is easy to spread with a spatula. Be careful not to work too hard to spread it so that the bacon stays in place on the bottom of the pan. I aimed to have a roughly 1:1 ratio of bacon and chocolate, focussing mainly on the chocolate acting as the mortar holding the wall of bacon together. I'm sure there are some who would have had no problem with more chocolate. Your call. 

You can let this set up at room temperature while you make the marshmallow, or if you're an excellent multi-tasker and will have the marshmallow done before chocolate normally sets, you can pop it in the fridge until firm. 

Bacon before and after chocolate spread. 

Now to make marshmallow. I just used the recipe I found ages ago on Smitten Kitchen and have had great success with. I would disclaim that it's not a vegetarian friendly version of marshmallow, but as you have read this far into my post about bacon s'mores, I'm guessing you don't care. Marshmallows are actually one of the easier candy items to make, in my opinion. They don't require getting the boiling sugar up to that high of a temperature, and if you have a stand mixer, they basically just whip themselves for most of the process. A note about the recipe: the only thing you don't need to do is dust these with powdered sugar, so you can skip that ingredient. 

Once you have your marshmallow fluffed and ready, spread it over the tops of the bacon chocolate bars until smooth (or as smooth as you can get considering it's difficult to work with). You need to let it set up in the fridge for about 3-4 hours, at which point it will be ready for torching. 

Lift the aluminum foil out of the pan and cut into roughly 1 inch cubes. A trick with cutting marshmallow is to have your knife blade be slightly wet. This means getting it wet in between each cut, so might as well keep a tall glass of water to dip the blade in by your workspace as you are cutting to speed up the process. Once your squares are cut, they're ready for flame. I happen to own a lovely creme brulee torch which does the trick better than anything. I am sure a more resourceful person could come up with a way to use a regular cigarette lighter, or the oven on "broil," but I enjoy having more control over the toasting process. After all, marshmallow can go from perfectly caramelized to carcinogenic in seconds. 

These were not universally enjoyed, but most people who liked them loved them, so if you're into the sweet, salty, savory flavor combo, I'd say they're worth trying at least once. 

Scharffen Berger Bakery Crawl

Last Friday, I had the fun privilege of being invited on a Scharffen Berger Bakery Crawl in San Francisco. A very fun event where 30+ unsuspecting members of the media (hey that's me!) hitched a ride on a trolly bus and drove to 4 lovely bake shops to sample wares that featured Scharffen Berger chocolates within them. The company is launching another, newer adaptation of their chocolate adventure contest; this year the idea is to elevate a classic recipe. 

Meeting point was at the Scharffen Berger Ferry Building shop where we were picked up by the trolly bus. It was a gorgeous October afternoon, and none other than the beginning of Fleet week, so the Blue Angels were doing a couple practice fly overs when we started. *awesome*

Our first stop was Anthony's Cookies where we sampled a double chocolate chunk cookie with walnuts. It was pretty much a perfect cookie: gooey inside and chewy/crispy outside. The nuts were a great add in with the chocolate and the flavors were well balanced. It was at this moment though that I had my first experience of being a member of the foodie paparazzi. I think everyone around me was more interested in taking a picture of the product than tasting it (not to say that they didn't get devoured in the end). Also of note: the cookie was still fabulous 2 days later when I got around to eating the rest of the "take home" sample. Delicious. 

After spending a little time chatting with Anthony himself and interrogating him about what his Twitter handle was, we packed back into the trolly and headed for Citizen Cake. 

I had been there myself a couple years back, but it has since moved, expanded, and transformed into what feels like an old fashioned ice cream parlor. Very cute interior, and the desserts in the cases looked impeccable. But we were there to try a sundae, hand made especially by Elizabeth Falkner, owner and celebrity chef/baker herself. Running with the idea of elevating a classic, she created an egg free chocolate gelato that she froze on the spot with liquid nitrogen (that she keeps a tank of right by the cash register!) and was an epic crowd pleaser to watch her make (more food paparazzi on that one). 

Apparently, liquid nitrogen was a Victorian era method for making ice cream, so while it sounds all spacey, scientific, and futuristic, she's actually harking back to ye old days when making this dessert. The final sundae was a dollop of gelato, a dollop of home made marshmallow cream (using xantham gum instead of gelatin - gotta remember that one), and fudge, nibs, and chocolate curls. It was very tasty. I enjoyed the marshmallow cream a lot, and while the chocolate gelato was good, I felt it could have been richer (it melted into a very low viscosity pool as I was eating my sample), which made me think it was unnecessarily low in fat. But the chocolate flavor was very good, and since this tour is all about chocolate, that is what I will take away from it.  

Jumping back in the trolly we swung over into Ghirardelli Square to sample a special Kara's cupcake flavor. She designed a "candy bar" cupcake featuring a chocolate cupcake, a dollop of caramel in the center, peanut butter ganache frosting and a sprinkling of sea salt. Yeah, it was pretty good. Very rich, as peanut butter often does for dessert. Sadly, I don't think I ended up getting a good sample of the caramel in the half a cupcake I tasted, which was disappointing, as I was looking forward to it.

By this time, we were running a bit late, so we headed back to the Ferry building for another quick stop at Miette to try a triple chocolate cream cake, but had to get it to go to make it to our final engagement, a baking demo by Yigit Pura. I did sample the Miette cake the next day when my stomach was mostly recovered from the sugar overload of Friday night, and it was quite delectable. Very moist, rich, creamy and chocolatey, with a lovely ganache topping. No complaints.

Moving on quickly to the baking demo though, our host Yigit was very charming and filled in his baking tips with funny anecdotes such as making chocolate and cream get along (2 unlikely couples: fat and water) by adding a little invert sugar, kind of like giving you and your in-laws a few gin martinis to get everyone relaxed. Silly and memorable. He also said not to whisk ganache, which I am definitely guilty of doing, so glad I took home a few good pieces of advice in addition to all the chocolate desserts.

He created a dessert using his go-to chocolate cake with chai tea spices added in, filled with a dulce de leche filling, and topped with ganache and a little pretty gold leafing. Initially I thought the cake was dry, but after further inspection (yeah, I ate the whole thing), I feel like it was just really dense, and I was already really parched from eating so much chocolate already. The spices were pretty good, but it's not my favorite combo for a chocolate dessert. It was well done though, so if that's up your alley, you would enjoy it. 

To culminate the evening, we did get more swag, like an apron (chocolate stains won't show on that!), a lovely (huge) whisk (you can never have too many whisks, right?), and of course, chocolate. This is on top of the take home samples, and tasting squares they fed us in between bakery stops, of course. 

I may have made myself a little sick on chocolate desserts for dinner, but the whole experience was completely worth it. It was also very fun to meet with other foodies, bloggers, journalists, and chocoholics.  

If their intention was to get me pumped about the contest, they definitely succeeded. I am looking forward to "elevating" a classic of my own, and left feeling inspired by what the other bakers had created. 

Cinco de Mayo Churros

I know that this holiday is a highly fabricated, American excuse to drink Margaritas and eat chips, but I do embrace most holidays that are food-focused, so I went all out this time. I made desserts for a fund raising event that was being held today in honor of the dubious holiday. And what better excuse to make churros! I love these little treats. I made mine especially bite size - better known in the diminutive as "churritos." It's amazing how many of these little tasty treats you can pack away!

Churros:
• 3/4 C sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 C milk
• 6 tbs butter
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 C flour
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• frying oil (i used Canola)

Make cinnamon sugar for the final coating. Set aside in bowl or plate.

Begin heating frying oil over medium heat (looking for a temperature of 325˚).

Bring milk, sugar, butter, salt and 2 tsp sugar to boil over medium heat.
Add flour all at once, cooking and stirring (wooden spoon worked best) until it forms a ball; about 30 seconds. Removed from heat and let cool; 3 minutes is fine. Beat in eggs one at a time making sure to fully incorporate.

Fill pastry bag (or in my case, awesome pastry gun) with the filling. Using the star tip, slowly squeeze out desired length of churro. I did mine no more than 2 inches each, and just scraped the tip to release the batter for each churro. I'm sure there are many ways of doing it like cutting the dough with scissors or bribing someone else to help you, but this worked well for me. I only was able to squeeze 6-8 churros per batch since I was having to rotate them in the oil for even cooking. The recipe says to cook them for 5 minutes, but just use your judgment. I like them golden brown, and a little squishy, not crunchy. But they are incredibly resilient and taste great no matter what you do (aside from burning of course).
Pull each batch out and degrease on paper towels. When they're cooler, toss around in the cinnamon sugar mix until well coated.

Since I had to make mine a day ahead, I waited to put the sugar on and simply reheated the pre-fried tasty morsels on a cookie sheet in the oven for no more than 2 minutes at 425˚; then I gave them a good toss in the sugar.
They really are best warm, but who's picky?

Just a side note, taking photos with one hand while deep frying things in the other is probably a bad idea. I survived this round, but am going to exercise more caution if I ever get the brainy idea again.

Another note. Churros are really good, so they're worth any trouble they might cause in order to make them. My major complaint this time is how much I hate the smell of oil frying filling every crevice of my apartment. It gets stuck in on my clothes and in my hair for days after.

On a related note, I have a shameful admission: If the labor of making Churros sound daunting or time consuming, I can't help but recommend the quick, cheap and amazingly delicious alternative of a Costco Churro. I don't know how they manage it, but I actually have a hard time even driving by Costco without having to fight the urge to go in and get one.

Anyhow, feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Tiramisu Cupcakes

This last weekend I spent some time welcoming my friend Heather back to the state of California after a long couple of years living in Ohio. In the shuffle of trying to avoid helping her unpack and organize her stuff, I made a quick dinner and some fun Tiramisu cupcakes as my offer to "help" around the house.

They were well received by all who partook in their consumption, but for opposite reasons. Heather was a little sad that they didn't have a stronger coffee flavor, while my brother thought they were great as is. Keep in mind, he hates coffee, so his review is telling of how un-coffee like these were. I am somewhere on the fence about coffee flavoring myself, so have to admit I was ok with it being not too strong. Now what I think it needed was a little more Amaretto!

So my biggest concern with these cupcakes was the "soaking." I like to make my cupcakes pretty moist, so felt like getting them too wet with a coffee mix would make them too fragile and soggy. One recipe I saw recommended dabbing the outside of the entire cupcake and it's layers with the coffee. Mind you, the recipe also called for each cupcake to be sliced into about 4 or 5 layers. I didn't feel like doing that, and covered up my laziness with the excuse of it being a utensil dependent dessert at that point, rather than an easy-going cupcake. So I only cut the cupcakes in half and dabbed the cut side of each half with the coffee/amaretto mix. I then spread the layer with a marscapone and whipped cream mix. It was a very delicious flavor, but I think it was too fragile. I'm generally opposed to refrigerating cupcakes because it dries them out, but the frosting was too soft and perishable to manage being at room temperature indefinitely. As well, because it was so soft, it had the effect of a slip and slide with the top halves that were supposed to be resting gently on top.

In any case, they did taste pretty good for an experiment. I think they are a great concept for a cupcake, they just need some refining. Ideas for the next round include making a coffee flavored custard as a filling and doing a purer marscapone buttercream frosting (without whip cream).

As always, sprinkle with cocoa powder for a proper finish.