Cupcakes are forever



Some people say that cupcakes are passé. These people are wrong.

Cupcakes have never felt more of-the-moment. At a time when we are all cooped up at home, worried about a litany of things big and small, small pearls of sinful indulgence are just what we need to make it through another day in the Q-zone. 

The beauty, and tragedy, of cupcakes is in their fleeting nature - the first bite is surprising, sweet, a light crunch; the second reveals a softer interior, perhaps a better balance of icing and cake; the third an evolving marriage of flavours that build on the textures of the first two bites and sets the stage for the 2, 3, 4 mouthfuls to follow. Divine. But then, just as soon it started, the experience ends, and you are left with sticky fingers, a useless piece of paper... and a memory.

But most importantly, cupcakes are dope. Just, wash your hands before eating them.

Black bottom cupcakes + buttercream frosting
Shamelessly adapted from here and here 
Yields 12 cupcakes (but no one needs to know that)

Filling
- 8 oz regular cream cheese, room temperature
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 2 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (or 1/2 cup chocolate chips)

Cupcakes
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 5 tbsp natural unsweetened cocoa powder (for the love of God, don't use Dutch-process)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup firmly-packed light brown sugar
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup unflavoured vegetable oil
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract

Buttercream frosting
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature (be patient; do not rush the softening process by microwaving the butter. If you are truly pressed for time, use a grater to grate the butter, which will help it to soften more quickly)
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 2-3 tbsp heavy or whipping cream
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- pinch of salt, adjusted to taste

Begin by making the filling.

1.     Beat together the cream cheese, granulated sugar, and egg until smooth.
2.     Stir in the chopped chocolate pieces.
3.     Set aside.
4.     Do not sample.

Next, make the batter.

1.     Adjust the rack to the centre of the oven and pre-heat to 350F.
2.     Butter a 12-cup muffin tin (or line a tin with paper muffin cups).
3.     In a medium bowl sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
4.     In a separate bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla.
5.     Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and stir in the wet ingredients, stirring until smooth. Do not overstir – that would be wrong and bad.
6.     Divide the batter among the muffin cups, leaving just a few spoonfuls behind.
7.     Spoon a couple of tablespoons onto the centre of each cupcake, dividing the filling evenly.
8.     Spoon any remaining hatter back over the cream cheese centre and marble the tops, if you wish (or if are omitting the icing). If swirling, ensure that you do not insert the butter knife more than ½ inch into the centre of the cupcake batter. The cupcakes should appear to be about 90% full.
9.     Bake for 25 minutes, or until the tops are slightly golden brown and the cupcakes are springy.
10.  Remove from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

While the cupcakes cool (or if you are bored at any point), make the buttercream.

1.     In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment (or a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer), beat the butter on medium speed until smooth.
2.     Add powdered sugar and mix on slow speed at first, and then increase to medium for another 1-2 minutes until the mixture starts to come together.
3.     Add the cream (start with 2 tbsp and add more if needed), vanilla, and salt, and beat on medium-high speed until the buttercream is well combined.

Frost the cupcakes, however you wish. I did the following:

1.     Fill the piping bag, outfitted with a Wilton No. 12 icing tip, with buttercream. You want the consistency of the buttercream to be fairly soft, and may have to fiddle with adding cream to get the desired consistency. If you choose to do this, return the icing to the bowl and beat again briefly to evenly distribute the added cream.
2.     Pipe small mounds on the top of the cooled cupcakes, in concentric circles.
3.     Finish with sprinkles, chocolate shavings, nuts, or anything else your quarantined heart desires.

Do not feed them cupcakes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scone Witch

Image
There is an amazing little restaurant in the outskirts of downtown Ottawa called The Scone Witch, which makes scones in more varieties than you can imagine.   Savory scones with ingredients such as fragrant rosemary, cheese and scallions; sweet scones in which are embedded bits of candied ginger and tiny, tangy currants. M and I ate there recently, and our exceptional lunch reminded me of how much I love the decadent and infinitely adaptable pillows of butter and cream. I have previously only attempted to make scones once – the effort, thought valiant, was somewhat subpar – but this week I decided to try my hand at it again. In browsing the web, a recipe caught my eye, from my favorite food blog, Smitten Kitchen (featured prominently in many of my posts). The recipe, though not too labor-intensive, took more time than I had anticipated, and M and I ended up indulging quite late in the night. A delicious bedtime snack, no doubt, but also the recipe for a burnt
Read more

Birthday torte

Image
M loves chocolate, adores it in fact. He will always make a beeline for the chocolatiest dessert on the menu at dinner, and we always have some iteration of dark chocolate stashed away somewhere in the apartment. So, it seemed appropriate that his birthday cake request was as chocolately as birthday cakes get, in the best way of course. Home for the weekend, we spent a lovely, relaxed evening together, starting with a fantastic dinner at Brooklyn Warehouse, a low-key bistro in Halifax's North End; definitely a culinary gem in the city. Dessert was, of course, M's cake of choice; a luxuriously rich torte made with a sinful amount of dark chocolate and butter, bourbon syrup and just a touch of flour to hold the whole thing together. We paired it with a sweet-tart mixed berry-orange compote, scotch, and 'Blade Runner'. Bayou chocolate torte with bourbon and dark chocolate, with mixed berry-orange compote (recipe to follow) From 'Rebar Modern Food Cookbook&
Read more

Decadence

I am recovering from a weekend of gastronomic hedonism. Too much sushi, wine, 4 am pizza (incidentally, the best ever, even the next morning), poutine, more ethanol, maple syrupy French toast etc etc etc….so good, but 48 hours of indulgence leaves one feeling a bit….heavy. As would be expected, lethargy descended upon us on a cold and rainy spring Sunday night, and all I wanted to was to eat something filling, that was easy to make, and that was light . Because let’s face it, this squid’s diet can only take so much of a beating. So I turned to my old stand-by, Madhur Jaffrey, the queen of vegetarian and Indian, cooking. She hold a special place in my culinarily-inclined heart, ever since I discovered her classic cookbook in my mother’s cupboard a few years ago, “An Introduction to Indian Cooking”, which is unfortunately now out of print. Her’s is one of the only cookbooks that my mom has that is not annotated to death – it’s as though every recipe she writes has been tested to perfe
Read more