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.

Homemade Snickers Bars

Happy day after Halloween!

I'm so negligent. This will be my second post all year and it's officially November. I have so many things I could share, but I've landed on the urge to post this snickers bar recipe in honor of Halloween. I have a pretty serious soft spot for snickers. While I'm not your avid peanut butter + chocolate consumer, there is something satisfying about the combo, and sometimes it just gets me through the afternoon to snack on a few bite size snickers.

I'm constantly desiring to make things from "scratch" as much as possible, mostly for the challenge, but also partially to play the "then I know what all goes into it" card.

So what makes a snickers? Nougat with peanuts, chewy caramel, and chocolate coating. The recipes I found online for these snickers "bars" were following the same formula of creating the bars in these layers, though the one I replicated did incorporate peanut butter into the chocolate layer, making it too soft to count as a coating (hence the bar). My thoughts on the outcome are that these were very tasty (who is going to complain about chocolate, peanut butter and caramel though really?) but they were not quite snickers. Perhaps there is something special about the taste of partially hydrogenated soybean oil that homemade just can't compete with. Or perhaps I just need to experiment more.

I took the recipe from Brown Eyed Baker and added 2 extra homemade steps to it: homemade marshmallow fluff and caramel sauce.

Chocolate layers:
2 ½ cups chocolate chips
½ c creamy peanut butter

Make your own marshmallow fluff:
1 ½ envelopes gelatin
¼ c cold water
1 c sugar
¼ c water
¼ corn syrup
dash salt
½ tsp vanilla

Nougat layer:
4 tbs butter
1 c sugar
¼ c evaporated milk
1½ c marshmallow fluff
¼ c creamy peanut butter
1½ c salted peanuts, roughly chopped
1 tsp vanilla extract

Caramel Sauce*:
½ c sugar
3 tbs butter
¼ cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp salt

1. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan. Line with parchment paper, then grease the parchment paper; set aside.

2. Make caramel sauce: *So, in this recipe I just made a pretty standard salted caramel sauce, kind of like what you'd pour over ice cream or decorate cupcakes with. It's a bit runny, and I think a caramel chew would be better served in this recipe. Nobody complained about the flavor, but leaving these bars out at room temperature led to a lot of caramel leakage. I've made chewy caramels before, so not sure why I didn't think through to make it for this recipe instead of the sauce. If you make these, I recommend this recipe. The major difference in making chews versus sauce is a) you use corn syrup and b) once you've incorporated your fat (butter and cream) you bring it back up to a soft ball temperature. If you like your caramel soft, then by all means follow these tried and true instructions for making caramel sauce (but add a dash of salt in at the end). Let it cool while you continue on to the other steps.

3. Make the Chocolate Layer: Melt together the chocolate chips and peanut butter in the microwave on until completely smooth and melted, stirring every 20-30 seconds (or do it over a double boiler). Pour about half of it into the prepared baking dish and smooth into an even layer. Refrigerate until cool and hard, about 30 minutes. Set aside the remaining chocolate for last step.

4. To make the fluff, 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 small sauce pan, heat sugar, remaining 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 and then set aside (or better yet, pour mixture into a lightly greased bowl so it's easier to get out when you're ready to use it in the next step).

5. Make the Nougat: Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the sugar and evaporated milk, stirring until dissolved, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Milk on the bottom of the pan will start to brown slightly, so be sure to not let it get too dark. Remove the pan from heat and add the marshmallow fluff, peanut butter, and vanilla extract, stirring until completely smooth. Fold in the peanuts, then pour over the bottom chocolate layer. Refrigerate this layer until cool, about 30 minutes.

6. Once your nougat is set, pour the caramel sauce (or chewy caramel) over it and let it set about 30 minutes.

7. Once the caramel layer is cool, you'll put the final layer of chocolate peanut butter on and let it set up in the fridge for at least an hour before serving. If you chocolate mixture seized up in all this time between making it in step 3, just pop back in the microwave 10 seconds at a time, stirring between to get it back to a spreadable consistency.

Brown eyed baker says that the consistency is great at room temperature, but if your house is a little warm, the chocolate gets melty, so might have to store in the fridge. Since I used the runny caramel sauce, I've just been keeping them in the fridge until ready to serve.

Happy baking!

Some festive cupcakes I made for Halloween this year: Pumpkin cupcakes with a honey flavored cream cheese frosting decorated like candy corn. 

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

I never cease to be amused by transforming things into cupcake flavors. I am actually rather backlogged in showing off some of the things I baked lately, but long story short, I made a cupcake a couple weeks ago that was an homage to cheesecake, and it made me think that it could really go one step further.
Utilizing the always dependable Smitten Kitchen's epic recipe stash, I incorporated her black bottom cupcake cream cheese filling (with some adaptation) into a honey and graham flour cupcake base, and then topped with freshly sliced strawberries and a homemade strawberry glaze, with a decorative cream cheese frosting border (intended to add structural support in case the glaze decided to get slippery). I am happy to report that everything seemed to work out swimmingly, even for a first experimental try. Love it when that happens.

Honey and Graham Cupcake
- 6 tbs butter, room temp
- 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 egg and 1 egg yolk
- 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup graham flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup milk

Preheat over to 350˚. Line baking tins. This recipe should make just over a dozen regular sized cupcakes.
Whisk together flours, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.
With electric mixer on high, beat butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Add in honey until incorporated, followed by eggs. Beat until the point of being fluffy again, then turn mixer down low and in batches, mix in flour and then milk until incorporated. Do not over mix.
Dollop mix into cupcake tins to just about half full (aren't we so optimistic). Set aside while making cream cheese filling.

Baked-in Cream Cheese Filling
- 8 oz cream cheese
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tbs cornstarch

Beat cream cheese and sugar together until smooth, then add in egg and beat until smooth, then add in vanilla and cornstarch until smooth. This is more filling than you will need (go ahead and double the cupcake recipe then!)

Dollop a spoonful of filling into the cake battered cupcake tins. Since the batter is actually kind of thick, I took a spoon and sort of hollowed out the inside of each cup before adding the cream cheese filling. I think it helped keep the filling mor or less in the middle versus resulting in being a top layer of the cupcake.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Cupcakes and filling will rise very nicely, but will fall a little when you take out of the oven. The filling may seem a little giggly while it's still warm, but once they get to room temperature, everything solidifies nicely. Sort of a typical cheese cake reaction, so don't freak out and over bake them.

Strawberry Glaze
So I happened to have about a half a cup of strawberry puree in my freezer from some previous strawberry project, so used that. If I had to guess, I'd say it was about the equivalent of a dozen large strawberries. Maybe 6-8oz. Give or take. To it, I added some undetermined amount of water... let's say 1/2 a cup, and 1/3 cup of sugar. I let that boil until it started foaming up, then strained out the chunks and seeds and put back over low heat and added a surrey of about 1 tablespoon water and 2 teaspoons of cornstarch. Once that started boiling again, I just whisked it all together to make sure it was incorporated and removed from the heat and let set for a couple minutes.  Should coat the back of a wooden spoon easily. And yes, another case of having too much glaze for the number of cupcakes I made. This made a lot of glaze... Enough for maybe 3-4 dozen cupcakes. I will find out how well it freezes and report back in a few months.

Cream Cheese Frosting
This (again) will make way more frosting than you need for this project, but I'm sure you can think of other things to do with leftover cream cheese frosting. You own a spoon, right?
- 8 oz cream cheese
- 8 oz butter, room temperature
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
Beat cream cheese and butter together until smooth. 1 cup at a time, add in powdered sugar until mix is fluffy. Add in vanilla and continue to beat (scraping down the sides as needed), until the whole thing is fluffy and elastic.

Once things have cooled down a bit, gently wash off as many strawberries as there are cupcakes (1 per cupcake for medium sized berries - if they are particularly large, 1 strawberry can top 2 cupcakes). When presenting berries, I typically don't drown them under running water, but instead dab them with a moist paper towel to clean them. Otherwise, I guess you could rinse them off earlier in the process so they're are dry again once you're ready to slice them - basically, you just don't need a bunch of excess water ruining your set up at this point.

You then top each cupcake with a splayed strawberry, then using a pastry brush, dollop and spread glaze over it.

With a small tip on a pastry bag, pipe frosting around edges. You can be as decorative as you please, my only goal was to encase the strawberries in an attempt to contain them. The glaze wasn't runny though, so in the end, the frosting ended up being purely decorative (oh, and tasty). 

Homemade Vanilla Extract

I think it's safe to say I go through a LOT of vanilla extract with all the baking I do. About a year ago I decided to look into making my own extract. After perusing a few sites, I found that it was actually ridiculously easy to do, and could be mildly cost effective, too; just takes time.

Someone actually went through the bother of calculating the cost difference, but basically I was spending $5 for each bottle of Bourbon Extract at Trader Joe's which only took me 1-2 months to polish off. Making it yourself doesn't save you a ton of money in the long run, but at least I have 1 liter batches to work with at any given time.* And you can say you make your own extract. I think it's worth the 6 months wait time just to say that.

So, basically, get a bottle of vodka (I've tried 3 different brands so far, not sure if the price/quality of the vodka has a huge effect on the flavor, but I try not to get the cheapest stuff, just in case) and remove about 1/4 of liquid from the bottle first. What you do with that, I won't question. Next, take about 10-12 vanilla beans, split lengthwise, and plop them into the vodka jar. Seal the jar, then give it a good shake, label the bottle with the date, and let it set somewhere safe for about 6 months. Be sure to give it a good shake every couple of weeks. Sediment will collect at the bottom, which you can strain out when you get to it, or just leave it.

The other fun part about making your own extract is that you can play with the different varieties of vanilla. I've bought and blended Tajitian, Madagascar, Bourbon, & Mexican varieties so far. I am fairly clueless about what makes them different though. I've been baking with a blend of Tajitian, Mexican and Madagacar beans and think it tastes as lovely as anything, but would fail a deciphering taste-test for sure. Might be worthwhile to make separate batches of each some time just to taste test.

The other beauty of this plan is that you can make however much you want. A recipe from Simply Recipes gives you a 1 cup option. As much as it is technically science, I don't think you could really screw it up however you decided to mix it up. Just don't add simple syrup. You just don't need it, and I think it detracts from the extract if you do add it.

* If you're curious about my calculations, I spend approximately $20 on a bottle of vodka, plus about $10 on the vanilla beans (including the cost of shipping). So, $30 that is then split into approximately (8) 4 oz. batches makes them about $3.75.)

Also, I bought the beans at beanilla.com

Homemade Marshmallows

So it's apparent that I'm not a good blogger. I've gone over a month without a word, but certainly not without turning on my oven!
Alas, I'm back, and my first treat this year is homemade marshmallows. I have been eying the idea for some time, but after a few candy making snafus, I almost lost my nerve. Luckily I have been saved by the good fortune of this recipe. My dear friend Kristy sent me this beauty earlier in the weekend, Hot Chocolate Layer Cake with Homemade Marshmallows, but I was a little scared off by the intensity of the cake (I just had chocolate molten lava cakes for dessert 3 days ago and am still recovering), but was interested in the marshmallows. After cross-examining a few online recipes, I dutifully followed one of my favorite food bloggers, Smitten Kitchen, and found her recipe for marshmallows, which, unlike most others, included egg whites (as well as a couple key tips on how not to get your fingers involved in the sticky mess!)
I tried not to pull from her site verbatim, but I didn't change much in her instructions.

Ingredients:

• About 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 envelopes (1/4 oz) unflavored gelatin
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large egg whites
• 1 tablespoon vanilla

Directions:

Oil bottom and sides of 2 9x9x2 inch metal baking pans and dust bottom and sides with powedered sugar.

In bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl sprinkle gelatin over 1/2 cup cold cold water, and let stand to soften (about 5 minutes are needed).

In a heavy saucepan cook sugar, corn syrup, 1/2 cup water, and salt over low heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. When it begins to boil, stop stirring. Boil until candy thermometer reaches 240°F. Pour sugar mixture over gelatin mixture, stirring until gelatin is dissolved.

Beat mixture on high speed until white, thick, and nearly tripled in volume, approximately six minutes.

In a separate bowl beat egg whites until they hold stiff peaks. Beat whites and vanilla into sugar mixture until just combined. Pour mixture into baking pan (it was suggested to not worry about scraping the bowl down - I was satisfied with how much of the solution I got out, so second the recommendation). Sift powdered sugar evenly over top. Chill marshmallow, uncovered, until firm, at least three hours, and up to one day.

Run a knife around edges of pan and invert pan onto a large cutting board. Gently loosen marshmallow and ease onto cutting board. With a large knife cut marshmallow into roughly one or two-inch cubes. Sift remaining powdered sugar over marshmallows, and roll the marshmallows through it, making sure to get the sugar on all six sides. Shake off excess.

Ok, so then you eat them. But I didn't have to tell you that.

I'm thinking of trying this again but with a different flavoring. I think the vanilla was a bit overpowering too, which I would consider cutting down on the amount. I saw a recipe for strawberry flavored ones, which sounded inspiring.

Homemade s'mores, anyone?