6 for 4

I love when Cupprimo has sales.

Strawberry Cupcakes

No quaint story to accompany this cupcake.  Just a recipe because it's 2:30 AM and I should be editing my paper.

strawberry cupcakes (makes ~30, adapted from Baked)
2 1/2 c cake flour
3/4 c AP Flour
3/4 t sea salt
1 T baking powder
1 t baking soda

2 sticks butter, softened
1 3/4 c granulated sugar
1 t vanilla extract
1 T water
1 egg + 1 yolk
1 1/2 c strawberry puree

1/4 t cream of tartar
3 egg whites

In a food processor, liquefy ~12 oz of washed and hulled strawberries.  Pass through a fine mesh strainer lined with cheese cloth (or, really, I passed the puree through a chinois) in order to get rid of the seeds.  Make sure it makes 1.5 c of liquid.  Preheat oven to 325 F.  In a large bowl whisk together flours, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the vanilla and egg+yolk and combine.  Alternate in the flour mixture and the strawberry juice. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form.  Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

I served these with cream cheese frosting and placed a strawberry atop each cupcake to reinforce the strawberryness.

Cupcake Telescopes

Last month I spent a week in Boston working with my collabadvisor, Anna. Whenever I come to visit, it's sort like an astronomy boot camp. That week's highlights included figuring out the surface temperature of a few of the oldest stars in our galaxy, sitting in a Herman Miller Aeron chair for a few days, and baking cupcakes. Not just any cupcakes, mind you, but cupcakes that were appropriate for astronopalooza.

I posted a teaser of what was to come a couple weeks ago, but here is the whole spread, plus an explanation of the assembly. If you look at a cupcake and squint a whole lot it starts to look like a telescope dome. If you use Wilton nut cups, then they totally look like telescope domes. The only thing that I can think of that's better than an observatory is an edible observatory. Nom nom.

To assemble the domecakes, you must first to bake cupcakes and a half sheet cake. This is enough for about 12 domecakes.

Soft+Hardware
Enough white cake mix (from scratch is best, because there's no reason these shouldn't taste good in addition to being totally cute) to make two 9x9 cakes
Wilton Nut & Party Cups
frosting (I used this recipe)
icing tubes (like these)
red wine glass

1) Preheat the oven to whatever it is that your recipe calls for. Grease ONE square (8x8 or 9x9 would work best) cake pan and prep the cups by placing one in each section of a muffin tin (or really, you can just put it on a sheet pan)

2) Prepare your cake mix and pour half the batter into the 9x9 cake pan and divide the other half among 12 or so of the cups. Fill each cup a little more than halfway. No more than that!

3) Bake the cupcakes and the sheet cake. The cupcakes will likely be done before sheet cake.

4) Allow the cupcakes and sheet cake to completely cool and prepare your frosting

Photo credit: A. Frebel

5) Once the sheetcake has cooled, crumble it and combine with ~6-8 oz of frosting. Start out small and add more if you'd like. This is basically a recipe for cake balls.

6) Take a scant 1/4c of the cake ball material and cram it into a wine glass. Don't fill it too high, or else it won't come out (see below). Take a spoon and loosen the edges such that you can use gravity to get it out the rest of the way.



7) place the dome of cake ball goodness atop each of the cupcakes and then generously frost



8) Decorate



9) Put them into formations of different observatories because you have 12 cupcakes that look like telescopes and, really, what could be more fun than that?

Now, pop quiz! Which observatory is which?









Photo credit: A. Frebel

Photo credit: A. Frebel


Photo credit: A. Frebel

Answers

nerdcakes

this is a mere taste of the sheer awesomeness that is going to be found in an upcoming post.

Cheesecake Cupcakes

It's apparently dairy week, which has sort of wreaked havoc on my lactose intolerant gastrointestinal system, but it's been rather delicious. I decided to make cheesecake cupcakes for a picnic that I never went on, but here's the general idea.

I used the cheesecake cupcake recipe from Cooking for Engineers so I won't reproduce it here, but instead of using a Nilla Wafer as the crust, I combined 1.5 T of melted butter with 1/4ish c of crushed Teddy Grahams to fill 6 cups. I then topped each with a blackberry. For the others, I used crushed chocolate cookies and topped with a chocolate chip. I think in the future I may try oreos.

These turned out wonderful, were super simple and quick.

Raspberry Filled cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting

Since passing, I've been a bit uninspired about posting. I went out to eat a bunch to celebrate (Estancia, 24 Diner, and Chinatown Mopac to name a few) and didn't cook much for a few days. Then yesterday, for whatever reason, I got inspired and made gnocchi with pasta sauce made with basil from my garden. And then I got invited to a cheese tasting party today and decided to make a dessert to bring and came up with raspberry filled cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting.

White cupcakes (from Baked)
2 1/2 c cake flour
3/4 c AP Flour
3/4 t kosher salt
1 T baking powder
1 t baking soda

1 stick butter, softened
1/2 c shortening
1 3/4 c sugar
1 T vanilla extract
1 egg + 1 yolk
1 1/2 c cold water

1/4 t cream of tartar
3 egg whites

preheat oven to 325 F. In a large bowl whisk together flours, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside. Cream together the butter, shortening, and sugar. Add in the vanilla and egg+yolk and combine. Alternate in the flour mixture and the water. In a separate bowl (that is SUPER clean), whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Be sure to not get *any* yolk into this because it won't turn out at all. Fold in the egg whites to the rest of the batter. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. I can't really give a better time estimate because my oven is horrible and some of the cupcakes had to be taken out at 20 minutes and some of them had to be taken out at 30.


Raspberry filling
2 c fresh raspberries (although you could use frozen, but it's what I had on hand)
1 T orange juice
1/3 c sugar
1.5 T corn starch

bring all ingredients to a boil, stirring and smashing the raspberries until thickened. Allow to cool.

Cream cheese frosting
8 oz cream cheese
5 T butter, softened
2 t vanilla extract
1 1/2 c powdered sugar

beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla together until well combined. Add in the powdered sugar in thirds.

To assemble:

cut a cone out of the top of each cupcake and shave off the bottom part so that you have a flat disk and a cupcake with a hole in it. Spoon in some of the raspberry filling, top with the cupcake disk and then cover in the cream cheese frosting. It's easier if the frosting is at room temp so it spreads well. Top with grated, sweetened coconut and enjoy. :)