Happy Nutella Day - CupCrepe™

Nothing better than a holiday celebrating Hazelnut Chocolate Spread. And to top it off, it's apparently Crepe month in France. Is there anything better than Crepes smothered in Nutella? And is there anything better still than a cupcake built with crepes and nutella? I think not, which is why I've been conniving a way to make that happen for quite some time. So with the news of this world wide holiday approaching, I decided to take action. I am proud to introduce: the CupCrepe™.

Many discussions of how to put the project together took place. Do I make a cup out of crepe, or cut rounds and stack the crepe? Do I cut the circles, put on the spread, then stack? Do I use fresh strawberries, puree, or jam? How will they stay together without falling apart? How will the crepes stay tender, and not dry out. What crepe recipe do I use? I don't think I answered all my questions this first time, but I do think the concept is genuinely tasty, so no harm in having a couple more rounds of experimentation to work out the answers.

To start, the crepe recipe. A lady in my office exclaimed to me about a week ago that a client of hers, who is officially 100% French (thick accent and poor English to boot), gave her the "official" French Crepe recipe, and she so generously passed it on to me. I feel the need to reiterate it verbatim, simply because it was that authentic:

Begin quote:
French Crepes

Make a dozen Crepes

2 Cup flour
2 cups of Milk ( 2% is good if you want light crepe)
3 eggs
1/4 cup of butter
2T sugar
2tsp vanilla
2 T Rum or other alcohol like orange liqueur. [I used Brandy]

Firstly, put all the flour in a bowl, add one cup of cold milk and mix slowly with a wisk until it's smooth.
Add all 3 eggs, already beaten in an other bowl, you have to mix again very carrefully.
Put the butter in a microwave for a few seconds after it's melted and add it in a mix.
Combine the rest of the cold milk with sugar and vanilla.
mix again until it's smooth.

it's almost ready.

If desired, you can add a hint of rum or orange liqueur to taste.

wait for an hour before baking or no if you have hungry............

To fry the French crepes, you need a pan with just a little bit butter for the first crepes.
French crepes are very thin so you could put only a small amount of mix in a pan just enough to coat the bottom.
When the crepe is golden (it should take only a few minutes), you should turn it over and cook the other side just another minute or two.
You can eat them with powder sugar or butter or fresh lemon juice or chocolate of course!
end quote

Shamefully she did not mention Nutella as a topping, but I allowed myself the option to deviate from the recipe slightly.

So I went ahead and whipped up about 10-11 crepes with that recipe. (I did let it sit for about half an hour... even though I did have some hungry). While they were still warm, I began to layer nutella on each layer. I tried to keep it pretty thin since there were so many layers. Truth be told, I still went through half a jar of nutella to put this project together, so yeah, there's a lot of nutella per bite. But then I also snuck in 2 layers of fresh strawberries. My hope hope was that the nutella would work as the glue to hold those strawberries in place, but I think the juiciness of the strawberries was too strong and ended up liquefying the nutella instead. Still tasty, but messy. That's where I thought maybe a jam would work better, but there really is no replacement for the taste of fresh strawberries.

After building the stack up, I wanted to stick the whole pile in the fridge to let it cool enough that the nutella glue would set, but it was getting late, so I just went in for the cut. I used the shell of a Linzer cookie cutter I have since it's about the same size as the bottom of a cupcake wrapper. Punched it down through the multiple layers and lifted the whole stack up to transfer to a new plate. I'd say for the most part it worked. The top layers got stretched a bit on the initial cut, but they seemed to recover (having a nice a spongy crepe helped). Some of the strawberry layers got eschewed and were popping out in places, but the column was mostly intact. I also would prefer a taller cutter to get through so many layers. In the end, I think this method saved me some time, but will have to try it again where I cut each crepe round individually, THEN layer them altogether. It will give me more control and less worry about squeezing the toppings out through the layers. It will definitely take more time though.

So, once I had cut through as many full circles as the crepe would allow, I had quite the mess of leftover crepe and nutella. Not that it's a bad thing, but It could be put to "prettier" use. I donated this pile to my dear friend and co-worker, and she didn't mind the presentation one bit.

For the final touch, I topped each round with a dab of nutella "glue", some strawberry slices and powdered sugar. After letting them refrigerate over night, I was able to easily scoop them up and put them into cupcake liners for final presentation.

Final thoughts: The strawberries look sad and dry the next day, so this is best served fresh. I think it would be good to do with banana and maybe make a puree for every other layer of nutella. If layered individually, I think it will stay together pretty well. The other thing I would do is make the whole thing single-bite sized. Call them mini-cupcrepes, but they will be much easier to just pop in one serving. Maybe the, you could just do nutella layers with the topping only on the top, too. Let the experiments continue!

So, happy nutella day, world. I hope you enjoy my offering!

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?

Poached Pear Tart

Wow did my apartment smell good while I was making this! They should make a candle that embodies the smell of pears poaching in a pot of wine, sugar and spices. Or I could just make this all the time...

So I offered this tart up as one of the many pies I'm selling for Thanksgiving this year, but hadn't really decided on a recipe for it yet, just knew it could be done, and that I would do it. So I experimented and came up with this pretty keen combination. I followed a recipe posted on Epicurious fairly closely, but with some modifications. First and fore most, I had created a poached pear crepe last year that had a honey mascarpone filling, so figured I'd work with that some how in the tart. I also love almond and almond flavors, so swapped out the called for pistachios and used almond meal in it's place.

This is what I came up with:

Pastry cream

• 2/3 cup almond meal
• 6 tablespoons sugar, divided
• 1 tbs honey
  
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 8oz pkg mascarpone cheese
• 4 egg yolks
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 5 tablespoons whipping cream

In medium sized saucepan, place 3 tbsp sugar, almond meal, honey mascarpone and milk and bring to boil. At first, I was concerned about whether or not the cheese would boil or melt, but it worked out just fine. In separate bowl, whisk remaining 3 tbs sugar, yolks, and cornstarch and blend. Gradually whisk 1/2 cup hot milk mixture into yolk mixture. Return to milk mixture and whisk constantly over medium-high heat until mixture boils and thickens, about 1 minute. Remove from heat. Transfer mixture to a bowl; press plastic wrap directly onto surface. Cover and chill. Stir in cream. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled.)

Poached pears

• 1/2 bottle fruity red wine (such as Zinfandel)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 sage leaf (remove after 10 minutes of boiling, or so)
  
• 4 medium-size firm but ripe pears peeled, with core and stem removed

Add all ingredients to a large pot and bring to simmer. Depending on the ripeness of the pears, simmer for 30 minutes up to 1 hour. Transfer pears to a separate dish and reserve poaching liquid to boil down to a syrup for serving, to reboil more pears later, or to discard. Cool pears to room temperature. (Pears can be prepared 2 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate.)

Crust
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 9 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 large egg yolk

Preheat oven to 375°F. Blend flour, sugar, and salt in food processor. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add egg yolk and pulse until moist clumps form. Press dough onto bottom and up sides of prepared pan tart pan. Freeze crust 15 minutes.

Bake crust until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Cool completely in pan on rack. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Let stand at room temperature.)

Once all ingredients are ready, smooth a layer of pastry cream into the pie shell, and top with slices of poached pears in a decorative manner. It is best to pat the pears dry before arranging on the tart. I had the better part of a pear leftover when I was done arranging my tart, but it worked out since I was able to choose only the prettiest pieces of pear to lay on my tart, and will gladly gobble up the rest of the pears, or maybe use them in a recipe in the next day or so. They really are super tasty.

It was shown in the previous recipe that they arranged their pears in a rosette-like formation, which looked very pretty, but I couldn't quite get myself to do it. I just love the fan-like look of the fruit tarts.

Anyhow, now that I've come up with a recipe, I feel better about offering to make them for people's thanksgiving dinners!

Maple Pecan Pie

It's high time for pie time!

Pies are amazing. I especially love a good pumpkin pie, but honestly, just use the Libby's recipe, so there's not much to blog about. But I do have a very special Pecan Pie recipe that I have every intention of sharing.

Inspired originally by my dear friend, Liz, who is always so willing to accommodate those with special dietary restrictions. She made a pecan pie that used no processed sugars. Knowing that most of the recipes out there for Pecan Pie are 80% corn syrup does make them high on the processed sugars list. Our friend who had this restriction did say that Maple syrup was natural, therefore he would eat it. Bingo. With a little experimentation, she whipped up a batch of pecan pie tarts using only maple syrup in place of the corn syrup. I was skeptical at first, thinking they would taste like a gallon of maple syrup with some pecans thrown in, but I was sure wrong. Delicately sweet, chewy, and super nutty, they fulfilled everything you'd ever want from a pecan pie, and were actually not as painfully sweet as their corn syrup counterparts. Nor was the flavor overwhelmingly mapley. I mean, I like maple syrup, but I do have my limits on how much of it I can take in.

It did take me a couple years to make my own version, but well worth the wait. Adapted from a recipe on Simply Recipes.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs, slightly beaten

• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 
1 tbsp molasses

• 2 tbsp melted butter

• 2 tbsp flour

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1 tsp bourbon or brandy
• 1 1/4 cups pecans (enough to cover bottom of pie tin)
• 1 Removable bottom tart pan lined with pastry crust
  

Preheat oven to 375°F. Spread pecans along the bottom of the pie shell. I tend to be meticulous about it and fan them out from the center, but then am disappointed when I pour the mix over the nuts and they proceed to be displaced chaotically. Just a warning, if you happen to be a perfectionist.
Mix the remaining ingredients and pour over pecans. The pecans will rise to the surface.
Bake at 375°F for 45-50 minutes until the filling has set.
Cool completely.
Cutting can be messy, because I keep the pecans whole, so you have to chop through the whole nut AND crust. You can of course chop them before you put them on the pie crust.

I use a trusted pie crust recipe that is basically 1/2 cup of butter to each cup of flour, with a tsp of salt and sugar tossed in. I keep some of the butter chunks pretty big too, which makes the crust super flaky (but reliable - how ironic!).

I hope you enjoy this treat as much as I do. It definitely competes with pumpkin pie in the ranks of my favorites. But apple is so good too.... ooh, Dutch Apple. mmm. I guess I have more posts to work on.

Caramel Spiderweb Chocolate Cupcakes

Happy Halloween!

This week I did a festive chocolate cupcake with caramel buttercream and caramel swirl topping, with a little spiderweb style.

The caramel sauce turned out quite tasty. I followed a food network recipe from the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. It was nice because it didn't require candy thermometers.

Carmel Sauce

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Mix the water and sugar in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan. Cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat and boil uncovered until the sugar turns a medium brown, about 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Watch it carefully at the end, as it will go from caramel to burnt very quickly. Stand back to avoid splattering, and gradually add the cream and vanilla extract. Simmer until the caramel dissolves and the sauce is smooth and thick, about 2 minutes. Serve warm, or add another 1/4 cup of heavy cream and serve room temperature.

Just a note, don't try and make a smaller batch. I did the other week, and it became an overheated mess of stringy caramel and chunks. Not very appealing. Other than that, the 1/4 cup of cream after it's been removed from the heat is also important for keeping it from crystalizing too much.

Ok, so I took my Devil's food cake recipe and experimented with a couple of the cupcakes by putting a dollop of the caramel sauce in the middle of them before baking. Results varied. Most of the cupcakes reacted by getting a gaping hole in the center/bottom of the cupcake and leaving a crispy sugar crust on the wrapper where it decided to go when baked. From what I heard, it did make those cupcakes extra moist, but am not sure it was worth it due to the fact it left some parts hard to eat or... empty.

So, I just kept the rest of it straight-forward and made an easy caramel buttercream with the sauce.

Caramel Buttercream
1 cup butter, room temperature
approximately 4 cups of powdered sugar
1/4 C + caramel sauce
milk

Beat butter until smooth and add powdered sugar 1 cup at a time until frosting is thick and almost crumbly. Add caramel sauce a little bit at time until you reach the desired consistency. I did add a little cream (you could use milk) to help smooth it out a bit too.

Warning, it's very sweet. I'm sure this would go well as a cream cheese frosting too, to cut down on the sugar content a bit.

After I piped the buttercream on the cupcakes, I took a pastry bag with a small round attachment and filled it with the remaining caramel sauce, swirling it on top of the cupcakes. Then with a toothpick, I pulled the frosting and caramel down in little spiderweb like trails from the center of each cupcake, achieving the desired effect.

Yay Halloween!

Apple Cider Cupcakes

Ah. Fall. How I love thee.

This time it's tasty Apple Cider Cupcakes with a delectable spicy cream cheese glaze and apple cutout. My friend Kristy sent me this recipe a year ago and I made it then, before I really jumped on the cupcake bandwagon. They were SO delicious and I remembered them a year later just as I saw the apple cider hitting the supermarket aisles.

I did do a little research on some other apple cider cupcake recipes posted online, and I modified the original slightly and was very please with the results. There's really nothing better, in my opinion, than having a spicy cupcake loaded with chunks of juicy apples. I also liked having the apple cider reduction ready to go for the cupcakes as well as the frosting. It really intensified the flavor. I actually used Trader Joe's "spicy cider" which already has a lot of flavor in it.

• 2 eggs, at room temperature*
• 1 2/3 cup flour
• 1 cup apple cider**
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 -1 granny smith apple, cored, peeled and cut into 1/4-1/2 inch chunks

Preheat oven to 350˚. Grease or line 12-16 cupcake wells. In large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, beat well. Combine the baking powder, cinnamon and salt to the flour and add to the butter mixture alternately with the apple cider until thoroughly combined. Mix in apple chunks. Pour into prepared cupcake pan, filling each cup 3/4 way full. Bake 20 minutes or until the tops spring back when lightly touched.

Cider Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1 cup apple cider

• 4 oz. cream cheese, softened but still cool

• 1 - 2 cups powdered sugar

• a pinch of salt

Put the apple cider in a small pan and bring to a boil over high heat. Continue to boil until the cider is reduced to about 2 tablespoons (it will be slightly syrupy). Set aside to cool completely.

With an electric mixer, beat together cooled reduced cider, cream cheese, pinch of salt, and 1 cup of the powdered sugar. Add enough additional powdered sugar for desired frosting texture.

* I learned a neato trick with room temperature eggs. If I don't have enough time ahead to get them to room temperature, you can place your refrigerated eggs into a small glass of warm water for about 30 seconds-minute to bring them to room temperature. The science of eggs is that cold eggs separate more easily, and room temperature eggs will fluff and incorporate air more easily than cold ones which is good for a lighter cupcake.

** I read a recipe online that suggested using 2-3 cups of cider and boiling it down to the approximately 1 cup you'd need for the the cupcakes. If you have enough time ahead, I recommend it because it really packs in a whole lot more flavor. And you can just make enough for the frosting at the same time while you're at it.

My little added touch was the apple cutout on top. I took a granny smith and used a handy little apple shaped cookie cutter that happened to be the right size, and was able to pop out the shapes from the apple slices. I actually just used the remnants of that apple as the chunks in the cake, which worked out to be about half an apple's worth. I recommend peeling the apple before hand though, something I didn't do.

While I made the cupcakes, I let the apple shapes rest in a bowl of water with a splash of lemon in it to keep them from browning. When the cupcakes were done and cooling, I pan fried the slices with a touch of butter and cinnamon and let them go until they were slightly browned, but not mushy. I did lose a couple in the process, so it's best to have a couple more than you think you'll need.

When the cupcakes were cooled, I made the frosting. It was pretty runny because I was trying to pack in a lot of flavor with the cider syrup, but it was good. I frosted and then placed a nicely browned apple slice on the tops of each of them. Make sure your apple slices have had a chance to cool though, because they will slide around on the cream cheese frosting and melt it if they're not.

A delightfully rich, tangy treat. Enjoy!

Wedding Cupcakes

So, I'm a little delayed in getting these posts complete, but I've been pretty busy in the kitchen and really want to share some of the adventures!

Mainly, I had the pleasure of baking cupcakes for my friends' wedding this September. It was a beautiful wedding down in Pasadena at the CalTech campus where they both went to school.

As Pasadena is nearly a whole state away from me, I had to migrate my kitchen for the weekend in order to accomplish the cupcakes. Transplanting all my tools into the Avery dorm kitchen for a couple days was not as incredible of an undertaking as I imagined, but still quite a hefty chore. I was really grateful that the few kids who were roaming the dormitory halls were very courteous and respectful of me in their space, especially as my cupcakes overwhelmed their common areas, and that the ominous emails the bride-to-be sent to them before my arrival (relating to missing cupcakes) were dutifully noted. I'm not sure how many dorms you could get away with leaving 250 cupcakes lying around overnight without there being some kind of cupcake massacre.

In any case, the task was 125 Banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and 125 Chocolate cupcakes with semi-sweet ganache frosting. I was able to prep a few things beforehand, and did some last minute supply shopping, but mainly just dove right in hoping I'd calculated the quantity of my ingredients correctly. And there were some issues. For example, I had figured I'd need 16 pounds of butter when it was all said and done, but really ended up only using about 10 or 12 pounds. I had to buy 2 more bananas because I had not calculated in the mini-cake I was making (so they'd have a little something to cut into). But overall I was quite pleased with how close I came to my guesses... er... calculations.

So the baking went very smoothly and all the cupcakes were cooled and frosted by 10 or 11 the night before the wedding. The kicker was the little decorations I made on them. Having finished a class in cake decorating, I was feeling pretty good about my buttercream roses, so decided to put a mini one on top of each cupcake. The wedding colors were burnt orange and eggplant purple. So, I thought the orange would look lovely on top of the cream cheese frosting and the purple would go well with the rich chocolatey brown of the ganache. And yeah, I think they did come out looking rather cute. But oh my god did my hand cramp like nothing else! That is a muscle I have yet to develop. So after 3 hours of gently piping one little rose onto my fancy little rose-making spinny-pin, then gently transferring each one to the top of a cupcake and repeating that process until I had a full tray or so of them, then piping on a little stem and leaves to each one of those little rose buds... then, after 250 of those I was able to call it quits. It was that moment I realized using a mouse at work was not going to be the reason why I get carpel tunnel!

But was it worth it? Yeah, I think so. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the cupcakes, and the little girls in their cute little pink dresses at the wedding were in so much awe about them, they had to have been good!