The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Cupcakes

Before the cupcakes, the Share our Strength Food Blogger Bake Sale was yesterday and Stefani reports it went well.  I hope they sold absolutely every last morsel.  I hope next time I can actually be there in person.

Okay, now back to cupcakes.  Yesterday was the first opportunity I've had to bake since I did the wedding cake in April.  It's been almost a month and I was getting a little antsy.  Since it was a Saturday, I knew I would be home alone with cupcakes until Monday; therefore I decided to make cupcakes that wouldn't do quite so much damage if I ate them.  All.  So here's the (totally subjective) low down on the cupcakes:

The Good:

1. With just 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, they have very little added sugar.
2. There's no added fat - absolutely none.
3. With raisins, carrots and whole wheat pastry flour, they're high in fiber.
4. There are no eggs or dairy so they're vegan.

The Bad:

1. they have very little added sugar
2. there's no added fat
3. they're high in fiber
4. they're vegan

The Ugly:


Before.  Need I say (show) more?


Seriously, do not spend a lot of time analyzing the appearance of this batter or you may decide to just throw them out completely.  They do look slightly better after baking.

After.

This is a recipe I've been playing around with for awhile now.  I think this is the fourth time I've made some sort of incarnation of it.  My goal is to keep thefrom being nutritionally evil while still keeping them tasting like they're evil.  I've not reached that goal yet.

For this go around I made half the recipe for 10 cupcakes.  And I substituted most of the water with some flat Young's Double Chocolate Stout. 

Ingredients:

Volume	Weight	Ingredient
1¼ cups (½ + ¾)	10 fl oz (4 + 6)	boiling water, divided
⅔ cup	4 oz	raisins
¾ cup	2 ½ oz	natural cocoa powder
2 cups	9 oz	whole wheat pastry flour
1 Tbs		baking soda
½ tsp		salt
¾ cup	6 oz	finely grated carrot
1 cup	8 fl oz	water, cool room temp
1 Tbs		cornstarch
¼ cup	2 oz	brown sugar
1 ½ tsp		vanilla

Method:

Put the raisins in a small bowl with a lid and cover with ½ cup boiling water.  Cover and set aside to steep for 20 minutes.  In a large bowl, blend together the cocoa and ¾ cup boiling water.  Stir until no lumps remain.  Set cocoa aside to cool.  Over a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. 

  

Heat oven to 350°F.  Line muffin tins with foil cupcake liners. 

Transfer raisins and water a food processor and puree.  Add carrots and cool water to the raisins and puree until smooth.  Dissolve the cornstarch in the apple juice. 

Stir the raisin and carrot puree, dissolved cornstarch, sugar and vanilla into the cocoa mixture.  Before proceeding, this mixture should be at room temperature.

  

Quickly whisk the dry ingredients into the cocoa mixture.  Do not stir longer than needed, but do thoroughly mix the two.  Use an ice cream scoop to portion batter into the cups.  Bake for 15 – 17 minutes.  Remove to a wire rack and cool completely. 

  

Makes about 20 cupcakes.



There would be more cupcake to eat if I had used foil liners.
This stuff really sticks to the paper.

As you can see, I didn't use foil liners for this batch.  It makes a difference.  There's a lot of cupcake left on that paper.  I've not iced these, but if I do, I'll make a glaze of a bit of Young's and some powdered sugar.

What will I do differently the next time? 

For sweetness, maybe replace some of the water with unsweetened apple juice and swap the brown sugar for some agave nectar.

For texture, use a blend of whole wheat pastry flour and unbleached all-purpose flour and maybe add a tablespoon or two of olive oil or coconut oil. 

Or maybe next time I'll just make lots of sugar, full fat, non-vegan cupcakes.

A Farewell to Caramel



All the boxes they had

I thought about An Ode to Caramel but "ode" implies praise.  I'm not praising caramel right now.  As many ideas as I have for different flavors of caramels, they're going to have to wait.  I am totally and completely OD'd on caramels right now.  I was still obsessing about caramels when I went to bed Tuesday night.  And then I had this spine-chilling thought:  what if I went to Hobby Lobby to get boxes on Wednesday and they didn't have any?  I nearly caused myself an anxiety attack. 



One box down, nine to go



Hobby Lobby did have candy boxes.  Not very many though, and I bought all they had.  Fortunately, I had a few left from previous caramel endeavors.  What I didn't have enough of though, were the little padded sheets to put between the layers.  I ended up having to use parchment paper between layers for the boxes of samples.  C'est la vie.



Now all I have to do is get them there



It's time to turn my short attention span to other projects.  We have a peony plant here that bloomed on Mother's Day.  For some reason I had it stuck in my head that it had beautiful, red flowers.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  They're beautiful, snow white flowers.  Peonies are probably my most favorite flower of all.  Beyond the fact I think they are absolutely gorgeous and I love how they smell, they are also very nostalgic to me. 



Mother's Day bouquet



Until I was about 4, I lived with my grandma and grandpa.  Grandma had two peonies (she called them pineys) flanking the walkway, a pink one and a deep, dark red one.  They always drew my attention and she always let me cut some to bring in the house.  I cut some to bring in on Sunday and have been enjoying being greeting by their fragrance every morning when I come upstairs and I always think of Grandma.  Isn't it amazing how scent can evoke such powerful memories?

The disappointing thing about peonies is that the don't last very long.  So I'm going to try another round at making perfume in order to try and "preserve" the peonies.  This time, I'm going to skip the water and oil methods.  I'm going to for the booze method.  One of the articles I found recommended using vodka as a base.  I'll be stopping at the liquor store after mailing the caramels this afternoon.  And yes, it's quite possible I'll be leaving with more than vodka for my perfume.

Caramel Overload Take 2

There are days that truly cause me to question my own sanity.  I found myself doing that today. 

Back in March, I answered the call put out by Stefani of Cupcake Project for donors for the Food Blogger Bake Sale for Share our Strength to be held this coming Saturday.  I offered to make caramels and ship them to her since I'm not able to attend the bake sale in St. Louis.  I was thinking it would be a great opportunity to support a good cause and a good excuse to make some caramels.  I was thinking about goat milk, red wine and bourbon-vanilla bean caramels.  I was not, at that time, thinking about how much I really don't like cutting dozens and dozens of caramels.  I was also not thinking about it being almost 90 degrees in mid-May. 

(And speaking of crazy, I just received a call from Justin to see if I could do a graduation cake for him for May 21.  I said yes.  I am totally insane.)

But back to caramels . . . Yesterday I made two batches of caramels:  goat milk with sea salt and bourbon-vanilla bean.  If I'm going to continue making multiple batches of caramels in one day I am going to need to invest in at least one more 9 x 13 pan and get a quote on that caramel cutter.

When I've cut caramels in the past, I've either eyeballed it or used a cookie/fondant cutter.  While I am crazy, I did talk myself out of using a cutter this time.  But I did want them to be a little more uniform than the eyeballing method.  So I decided to mark and score them and hopefully be able to cut along the lines.



Nice, even caramel squares.

It actually worked pretty well.  Ordinarily I cut squares about 1/2 inch, but this time most of them are 1 inch.  If I were cutting all of them at 1/2 inch, I'd still be at it.  I do prefer them smaller though - one bite size.

Even though the scoring worked well for keeping the caramels uniform, it did nothing to protect the palm of my hand from the spine of the knife blade.  Because of having to ship the caramels in warm weather, I made them a little firmer than usual.  Which means harder to cut.  There has to be some "as seen on TV" product out there to avoid this.  If not, there should be.



Ouch.



In the end, for each flavor I had 6 dozen 1-inch pieces, plus 4-1/2 dozen 1/2-inch pieces for samples.  (I believe in try before you buy.)  Tomorrow I have to get to Hobby Lobby for more boxes.  In the meantime, the caramels have taken up residence in the oven to keep them out of harm's way.



Last week I had the pate de fruit in the oven to get it out of the way, so obviously our oven hasn't been used for much other than storage lately.  The hubs did ask what would happen if he forgot and accidentally turned on the oven.  I wasn't too worried about it with the pate de fruit, but I can't risk it with the caramels.

So this is my high-tech solution:


 It works.

So Close & Yet So Far

As I was prodding the corner of the pâte de fruit before bed last night, I was really thinking I'd nailed it this time.  Almost.

Beyond the fact that I didn't butter the parchment, cutting these things is a task to try one's patience.  First I tried a cutter dipped in hot water.  Nope.  After washing and drying the cutter, I smeared some butter on it.  Not happening.  I repeated these endeavors with a chef's knife.  Not so much.  My third attempt was a pizza cutter dipped in hot water.  Marginal success.

If you look closely you can see little white pectin blobs in a couple of them.

I say marginal success because these were just shy of having the firm texture I wanted.  So while the pizza cutter did a decent job of cutting, the pieces eventually melded back together.  Although I did get a few nice squares cut, the shape was totally lost when I tried to get them off of the parchment.  I tried to massage them back into shape with a small offset spatula dipped in water but, again, the results were marginal.

While I am a bit frustrated and it's tempting to give up, I'm too close to getting it right to throw in the towel now.  And while these are far from attractive, the taste makes up for their appearance. 

Given the fact that, by weight, there's more sugar than fruit I really thought they would be toothache sweet like my last batch was.  Surprisingly, not.  Ancho was my first choice for the chile.  The jar turned out to be empty though, so I used the cayenne.  It actually works really well.  It lets the mango flavor come through at first, and then the heat follows it up without being overwhelming.  Other than struggling to get them off of the parchment, I'm not mad at these.



But I still need to figure out how to get the firmer texture.  Do I need to increase the pectin?  Do I need to cook them to a slightly higher temperature?  Temperature may be my issue.  It's difficult to pinpoint 223 degrees F precisely on my Taylor thermometer.  I'm thinking it's time to look into a Maverick digital thermometer.

There are a few other things to clear off my calendar before I can make time to try these again.  Next week I'll be making my caramels for the food blogger bake sale in St. Louis.  And after that I have to do some cupcakes for a tasting with a potential wedding cake client.

In the meantime, this is my recipe.  I recommend the 8" pan vs the 9" x 13" I used, and definitely
BUTTER THE PARCHMENT.

Mango-Chile Pâte de Fruit

1 Tbs butter

13g powdered pectin (1 Tbs)*

625g granulated sugar, divided (about 2-3/4 cups), plus extra for dredging

1g ground cayenne pepper (1/4 tsp)

450g pureed fresh mango (2 cups)

10g glucose (1 tsp)

4g citric acid powder (1/2 tsp)

4g water (1/2 tsp)

Spray an 8” square pan with a small amount of cooking spray, or rub with some butter, and line with parchment.  (The cooking spray/butter keeps the parchment in place.)  Rub enough butter onto the parchment to create a smooth, thin layer.  You may not need it all. 

 In a small bowl, combine the pectin with 60g (1/4 cup) of the sugar and whisk to combine thoroughly.  In a separate bowl, combine 50g (3 Tbs plus 2 tsp) of sugar with the cayenne pepper and whisk to combine.

In a large pot, combine the mango puree and the sugar/cayenne mixture.  Bring to 120°F over medium heat.  Whisk in the sugar/pectin mixture and bring to a boil.  Boil for one minute.

Add the glucose and the remaining 515g (2-1/4 cups) sugar.  Heat to 223°F, stirring to avoid scorching.  Just before the mixture reaches 223°F, combine the citric acid and water.  Stir in the citric acid solution once temperature is reached and cook an additional 30 seconds.

Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and smooth the surface.  Allow to sit, uncovered, for 24 hours before cutting.  Remove from the pan to a cutting board and use a pizza cutter dipped in warm water to cut into squares or try using a buttered cutter to cut into desired shapes.  Dredge in additional granulated sugar.  Coarse turbinado sugar may be pretty as well.

*For this recipe I used Sure-Jell 100% Natural Premium Fruit Pectin

Pâté de Fruition or Pâté de Failure?

AKA:  More About Pâté de Fruit Than You Ever Wanted to Know.

Last month I decided I was going to join the party of attempting pâté de fruit (see April 11 - 13 for that saga).  It didn't work out so well.  Shae of Hitchhiking to Heaven summed this up the best in her post on her attempt entitled Clementine Pâté  de Oops.  But I knew I would try again because sometimes I'm just stubborn that way, and determined a little research would be in order before any further attempts.

I recalled that I had originally found a link for Capfruit's commercial pâté de fruit recipes from the French Pastry School's website so decided to see if I could find it again.  Indeed I could.  This time when I found their recipes for pate de fruit, I didn't have to worry about translating.

One of the problems with other pâté de fruit attempts I'd read about was suggested to be the use of homemade fruit puree versus commercially prepared.  I checked the Capfruit website to see if they listed ingredients for their purees.  What I found is that their purees are 90% fruit and 10% sugar.  Is that extra bit of sugar the reason home purees seemed to have a higher failure rate?  Maybe; but I'm not sure it's the only reason.  Since I was using their recipe for my pâté de fruit, I thought I should try to duplicate their fruit puree.  I decided that I would use the same 90/10 proportions:  for 500 grams of fruit puree (I cut the recipe in half), I used 450 grams of fruit and 50 grams of sugar.

Their recipe also calls for glucose instead of corn syrup and citric acid instead of lemon juice.  Believe it or not, I actually had both of these things.  The glucose came from Hobby Lobby of all places (it's used in cake decorating) and the citric acid from the International Grocery (on hand for my occasional forays into cheese making).  One thing I noticed right away is that the glucose is much, MUCH thicker and stickier than corn syrup.  Again, I'm not sure that would be a cause for failure in and of itself, but perhaps combinations of things . . .

Research in hand, now it was time to get started.


Mise en place:  everything in its place. 


Experience has taught me to be totally prepared before beginning to work with anything involving boiling sugar.  (And note the extremely large cup of coffee to the left.)  I took the time to make sure all of my ingredients were weighed out before beginning.  The recipes were in metric and standard, but since my scale only does 1/8 ounce increments, I went with the metric.  Grams are more precise anyway.  I did try to get volume measurements on all the ingredients, but the weights (metric or standard) will still be more accurate.



Getting a boil on the thick puree without burning it
was a bit of a challenge.



After heating my mango puree, I added powdered pectin mixed in with some of the sugar.  The purpose of this is to try to keep the pectin from clumping up.  That part was definitely not so successful.  Maybe I should have been whisking instead of stirring.  I spent a lot of time chasing pectin globs around trying to crush them on the side of the pan.  This mixture is then brought to a boil and boiled for one minute - kind of like making jelly.  At that point, the glucose and remaining sugar is added and it's cooked to 223 degrees F.  A digital thermometer would be really awesome here.  Once it reaches temperature, the citric acid is stirred in and the mixture is cooked for 30 seconds before pouring into the prepared pan.  Then the really hard part:  it's supposed to set for 24 hours before cutting it.  Antici . . . . . PATION!

I wasn't sure if the 9 x 13 would be big enough,
but as it turns out, it's just a little bit too big. 
I'll just have to be happy with skinny candies.

So I won't know until tomorrow if it's successful, but so far I'm extremely optimistic.  If it really is successful, I'll post my recipe tomorrow.  There was one step I forgot again though:  buttering the parchment.  Hopefully after all of this, they won't be ruined by my inability to get them off of the paper.

Honeysuckle Butter and Fruit Glue

Back in February, I made this really sticky concoction called spoon butter to condition my wooden utensils and bowls.  The idea came from Marisa at Food in Jars.   Marisa also made mention of how well the spoon butter conditioned her hands.  So I started thinking maybe I could use that formula for a hand salve.  And maybe I could use some of the sweet-smelling blossoms from the multitude of invasive honeysuckle bushes trying to take over our property to scent it. 



Not-so-sweet smelling eau de toilette.
May that's why it's called toilet water.



After a bit of research, I attempted a couple of different projects with the honeysuckle.  The first was simmering some blossoms in water for sort of poor-woman's eau de toilette.  Unfortunately, once it was finished the smell wasn't the same and not as appealing.  But instead of pouring it down the drain, I've been using it in the laundry when I wash towels from drying off the dogs.  Even though it didn't turn out the way I wanted, it still smells better than wet dog.

The second thing I tried was infused oil.  I put some blossoms in a bail jar, stirred them around a little to bruise them, covered them with some oil and let them sit in the sun for a day.  On the second day I strained them and added fresh blossoms.  I used olive oil, so I can still smell the oil a bit, but this project definitely turned out better. 



Honeysuckle blossoms in olive oil after a day in the sun.

(The sun has been scarce around here lately.)



So now back to the spoon butter.  I remembered that my first attempt at this involved some poorly recollected proportions.  That being the case, I decided to refresh my memory.  But then I thought since it was hand salve, maybe I'd use a 1:3 ratio on the beeswax and oil instead of 1:4.  This is how it looks so far:

  

hot from the pan





I'm really curious as to how this is going to turn out, but I won't get to find out first hand.  I had just enough to fill the jar and it's intended as a gift, so I can't just leave a gaping hole in the middle where I scooped some out.  I don't usually give gifts with conditions, but this one will have to have a report back.



starting to cool




And in other news, since I'm finally feeling better, I can return to food projects in the kitchen.  This week I'm going to give the pate de fruit (aka fruit glue) another go around. 

I remembered that some time ago I had found some recipes from a manufacturer of fruit purees.  The only problem was that they were all in French.  I am not fluent in French.  Not even a little.  I decided to check out the site anyway, thinking maybe Google Translator could help me out.  Much to my pleasant surprise, the recipes had been updated to include English (and Spanish and Chinese) translations.  Awesome!  It was also awesome that I could click a little flag and the entire site was in English.  Brilliant!!  Now armed with knowledge, I will again be entering into battle with pate de fruit.  I really hope I win this time because I hate getting my butt kicked by French fruit candies.