Stack 'em! Or, Maple Syrup Swoonings

I don't normally blog about the peripheries of cakedom, but I am pleased to announce that I have nailed the North American fluffy pancake! These guys stand fully half an inch high, and are light, sweet-salty, buttery deliciousness!

Here they are:

Who could say no?

My breakthrough was triggered by my recent visit to Canada, the home of the best pancake topping in the world, maple syrup. I went to British Columbia, which doesn't produce the syrup to end all syrups, and friends had warned me not to get too excited about the prospect of being able to bring much mapley goodness back to Australia, but I got excited anyway. Let's face it. Canadians do maple. From the oh-so delicious maple and bacon flavoured potato chips (the best chips I have ever ever eaten), to maple yogurt to maple candies, there was enough to keep me happy. But perhaps the happiest find was that in Canada, one doesn't  have to put up with quaintly designed but ultimately measly 250ml bottles of this heavenly stuff. I mean there are recipes out there calling for cups of the stuff to go in cupcakes, frostings, candied bacon, BBQ sauce and so on. Maple syrup is more than just a pancake topping up North. 

So it comes in litres. And it comes in grades... A, or 1, is the first sap from the tree, subtle and pale honey coloured. B, or 2, is the second sap, harvested later in the season. And finally there is the molasses of maple, grade C, or 3, which is deep caramel in colour, strongly flavoured and a little bitter. I hear that grade C is somewhat of an acquired taste, one held mostly by those who grew up in the maple syrup producing regions of Canada.

And so my trip yielded one litre of amber coloured grade 2, from a family farm in Ontario. I got it at the Maple's Sugar Shack at the Granville Island Public Market in Vancouver, which is a lovely place to visit if you are a foodie (check out the maple smoked wild salmon too!). It cost a fraction of what a 250ml jug of maple syrup, unknown grade, questionable origin, packed in the USA costs in the antipodes, and it's so good, now I've opened it, I'm going to have a hard time not chugging it straight from the bottle.

Where was I? Yes. pancakes.

Well thin crepes are fine, but the have low absorption characteristics meaning your precious syrup winds up dripping onto the plate. Not so with the fluffy pancake, which not only soaks in the syrup, but mops to perfection.

See the dripping action on the left? Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Perfect fluffy pancakes (worthy of proper real actual Canadian maple syrup)

Makes 12

2 cups flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

22ml baking powder ( 1 1/2 tbsp)

4 eggs

1 cup milk

4tsp butter, melted, cooled

1/2 tsp good quality vanilla essence

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl, mix to combine, make a well in the centre.

Add combined wet ingredients, and stir with a wire whisk until smooth.

Heat a cast iron pan and grease by swirling a 1-2tbsp lump of butter over the surface, removing any butter that's not melted. Reduce heat to medium.

Drop mixture by 1/4 to 1/3 cupfuls into pan, allowing them to spread naturally (you can assist with rounding the pancake a little with the blade of a knife if you like).

Cook pancakes in first side until bubbles form in the raw surface; turn with a spatula (they are quite tender with all that sir in them so take care!)

Serve hot with slightly more syrup than you think you're allowed :)

xxx K

Savouring

My mother can take cake or leave it and really doesn't like icing... which makes you wonder where I get my tastes from! Mum is a major fan of the savoury stuff though and I have finally found a cupcake recipe which she can really get into - including the frosting!

These are quite lush with all that fresh spinach and they feel healthy to eat... Unlike my usual items of deliciousness...

Spinach feta cupcakes with herb frosting

Ingredients (12 cupcakes)

For the cupcakes:

2 cups flour 

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup milk

60g butter

2 eggs

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

Pinch lemon zest

250 g Spinach torn into 1 inch pieces, or frozen spinach, thawed and drained very well

150 g Feta cheese, crumbled

For the Frosting:

200 gm cream cheese

4 Tablespoons Milk

Lemon zest, garlic, mixed fresh herbs to taste, finely chopped (about 4 tbsp)

Extra parsley, or candied/crispy bacon shards for garnish.

Line a 12 hole muffin pan with cupcake liners sprayed with non stick spray. 

Cupcakes

Combine all ingredients except for spinach and feta and beat with an electric mixer till just smooth.

Add the spinach and feta and mix until combined.

Spoon batter into muffin pan bake at 180 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Let cool a little and carefully peel cupcake liners away.

Frosting

Beat cream cheese with milk until fluffy, stir in zest and herbs.

Load mixture into a piping bag fitted with a star tip and pipe swirls onto cupcakes. Tis can be done while they are still warm if you are serving them immediately.

Garnish with parsley.

Enjoy xxx

Blueberry Fields

Blueberry Fields is the name of one of the off-piste powder snow stashes at the Hanazono ski area on Mt Niseko-Annupuri in Hokkaido, Japan. The snow there is softer than whipped cream, your skis float through it as you snake between the trees... It's a little bit of skiing Paradise.

I don't know if blueberries grow there or not in summer, but it's a cold climate island so I like to think that they do. There's also an area called Strawberry Fields, which brings to mind the Beatles song. 

Blueberry Fields doesn't have a song... So I thought I would commemorate it with some cupcakes.

I chose to use a white cake base. not everybody knows that you can make amazing cake with just egg whites (other than angel food cake that is). Egg white cake is really lovely, pale and soft crumb with a mild but still buttery flavour, and its a great thing to make if your freezer, like mine, gets full iff egg whites! This cake goes together with blueberries like Hokkaido goes with powder snow. The blueberries sink a little in the mixture, leaving a denser jammy layer with a float of fluffy white cake above. 

For the topping, a purple cloud of blueberry buttercream made with puréed blueberries, the sweetness offset by a hint of lemon. 

Top with a sprinkle of edible glitter and suddenly you are in a magical wonderland - Blueberry Fields. Enjoy! 

White blueberry cupcakes (makes 20)

125g unsalted butter, softened

2 1/4 cups flour

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup milk

4 egg whites

1 1/2 cups blueberries (preferably fresh)

Combine all ingredients except egg whites and blueberries and beat in low speed until well combined. Add egg whites, increase speed of mixer to full speed, beat about two minutes until the mixture is very pale and smooth. 

Fold in blueberries. 

Spoon mixture into muffin cases that have been greased with canola spray.

Bake cupcakes at 175 degrees Celsius 25 minutes or until golden and cakes have stopped whispering.

Cool on a wire rack.

When cold, place frosting in a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle, and frost cupcakes, allowing about two tablespoons of frosting per cupcake.

Blueberry buttercream

125 g unsalted butter, softened 

4 cups icing sugar

1/2 cup frozen blueberries, defrosted and puréed 

1tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp lemon oil

1tbsp lemon juice

2tbsp vodka

Cream butter, blueberries and half the sugar. Add flavourings and the remainder of the sugar, beat until light and fluffy. Add lemon juice and vodka, beat until very fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.

Chocolate; death by.

I don't know that these need much of an introduction except to say that I have been looking for a cupcake upon which to place a maraschino cherry for quite some time - there really is nothing like a cherry on top of a cupcake.
Call it oldschool, maybe it's a bit of a clichéd, but happily, in the cake world, clichés never never get trite.

If you don't dig cherries of course, you could leave them off and just bathe in the chocolate, chocolate, cocoa, and cocoa nibbed sensation that are these cupcakes. I have a suspicion that crushed candycane might be a complete winner on top of these babies too.

Clichéd Chocolate Cupcakes of Insanity

Ingredients:

For the Cupcakes (makes 18):

125g 70% cocoa chocolate, finely chopped
½ cup cocoa powder
1 ¼ cup hot water
1 ¼ cup flour
1 ¼ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
135g butter, chopped into small pieces
3 eggs
3 teaspoons white vinegar
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla

Frosting

1 cup sugar
¼ cup plus 2 tbsp water
Big pinch of citric acid
Pinch of salt
300g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup icing sugar
¾ cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
250g chocolate (milk, 70% or a mixture), melted and cooled
Cocoa nibs, silver sprinkles
18 Maraschino cherries, dried on a paper towel

Cupcakes:

Line two 12 hole muffin pans with 18 paper cases, grease with oil spray.

Combine the chopped chocolate and cocoa powder with the hot water and stir until smooth. Add the butter and beat until the butter is incorporated and there are no lumps. Cool to room temperature (this may have happened when the butter was added.   Add the sugar, eggs, vinegar and vanilla extract into the cooled chocolate mixture and beat until smooth. Add the flour, soda and salt and beat until smooth. The mixture is quite runny.

Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cases, using a 1/4 cup measure as a scoop. The batter should come about 2/3 of the way up the cases. Bake at 180 degrees C until the cupcakes are set and just firm to the touch, about 20 minutes. Let the cupcakes sit in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove and cool the on a wire rack.

 Frosting:

Combine the sugar, water and citric acid in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, making sure all the sugar is dissolved by swirling the pan occasionally. Boil without stirring until the syrup reaches 116 degrees C on a candy thermometer (soft ball stage). Remove from the heat, let cool to room temperature.

Beat the butter, icing sugar, cocoa powder and salt until smooth. Add the cooled sugar syrup and vanilla extract and beat until combined. Add the melted chocolate and beat until smooth and creamy. Spoon frosting into a large piping bad fitted with a star tip, and frost the cupcakes in a swirling motion. There is about 50g of frosting per cupcake – the frosting should be about an inch high.

Decorate with a sprinkle of cocoa nibs, silver sprinkles and a maraschino cherry.

Eat them; do not think about what is in the frosting. Thinking is bad for you anyway.

Kxxx

 
 

Vanilla Sky

My eye was well and truly caught the other day by a picture of a vanilla cupcake - the post said that it was a Starbucks recipe. I have never had a Starbucks cupcake, but the specimen in the photo was a warm, dreamy white with its sugar crystal sprinkled swirl of vanilla frosting... enough temptation to follow the link!

Of course, it was a copycat recipe, and the blogger actually said that it didn't really taste like the original, and some people commented that the cake was dry... but by then it was too late - vanilla cravings had hit and I was inspired to attempt my own version...

I'm calling them Vanilla Sky cupcakes, a nod to Monet's impressionist "vanilla skies", but I have to admit that this cupcake will do more than leave you with an "impression" of vanilla. Rather, it will leave you with an EXpression of vanilla.

The secret, like all the perfumiers say, is in the layering. French bourbon vanilla essence (the syrupy kind that costs $20 for a tiny bottle), Equagold vanilla pod powder, and Tahitian vanilla salt sprinkles will leave you floating in your own personal vanilla sky that will last all day.

Vanilla Sky Cupcakes

Makes 12

Double Vanilla Cupcakes

165g unsalted butter, softened
165g caster sugar
1 tsp bourbon vanilla essence
1/2 tsp vanilla pod powder
3 large (at least size 6) eggs
250g white flour
2tsp baking powder
80mL milk

Cream the butter and sugar with the vanillas until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Sift dry ingredients over mixture and add milk, stirring until well combined.
Spoon into a 12 hole cupcake pan lined with paper cases that have been sprayed with non-stick spray. The cases should be about 2/3 to 3/4 full.
Bake cupcakes at 180 degrees C for about 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centers comes out clean. The cupcakes should still be "whispering" slightly when you take them out.
Let cool completely on a wire rack, then frost with double vanilla buttercream.

Double Vanilla Buttercream

180g unsalted butter, softened
4 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp bourbon vanilla essence
1/2 tsp vanilla pod powder
about 50 - 60mL milk
Tahitian vanilla salt

Cream the butter with an electric beater until light and creamy. Add half the icing sugar and blend, then add half the milk, blending again. Repeat with the remaining icing sugar, but only add enough of the remaining milk to form a stiff but spreadable frosting. Add the vanillas and beat until the mixture is almost white and very fluffy. If you overshoot the milk, add more icing sugar, a couple of tablespoons at a time, and blend. You are looking for the consistency in the photo.

Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with the nozzle of your choice (I am a huge fan of a really deep star nozzle such as a Wilton 1M). Pipe thick swirls of frosting onto the cold cupcakes. Don't panic that you seem to have made a lot more frosting than pictured here - I made a conservative 1/4 of the recipe for the blog!

Sprinkle each cupcake with a pinch of Tahitian vanilla salt, or a little pinch of sea salt and a little pinch of vanilla pod powder.

Try not to hog them all.

xxx

K

PS - its right that the cake is relatively plain and the frosting is quite sweet (and a bit salty!). These are cupcakes where you need to bite through the whole cupcake for each mouthful... you poor things!

PPS if the frosting is too sweet for your tastes, you could substitute the Butter Roux frosting I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog - but keeping both vanillas and also the vanilla salt.

PPPS
A little note about the ingredients for Australian/ NZ readers:
Vanilla essence: I love the bourbon vanilla essence sold by the Essential Ingredient (also usually stocked in David Jones and some delis) http://www.essentialingredient.com.au/. If you can't find (or afford!) the really expensive kind, Queen makes a vanilla essence syrup which will do in a pinch. Make sure it is NOT imitation vanilla, or you will have imitation cupcakes.
Vanilla pod powder: Equagold is a NZ company - the vanilla powder isn't always easy to find, so when I am in Taupo I always get some from the Repleat. See also http://www.equagold.co.nz/Stockists.

Tahitian Vanilla salt: Can be purchased at Gewurzhaus - http://www.gewurzhaus.com.au/. Again its pretty expensive - it might be worthwhile, now that I think about it, of experimenting with a jar of nice sea salt and a couple of split vanilla beans... if you can make vanilla sugar, why not vanilla salt?

Ruffled

So last week I was telling you about how to make a gorgeous gluten free hazelnut cupcakes.
I mentioned that a big cake of this might warrant a bit of a strawberry buttercream effort. What better occasion than a dear friend's baby shower?

See?
Worth the effort.

The cake above consists of one quantity of the hazelnut cake mixture baked into two 20cm layers, and 3/4 quantity of the mixture baked into two 15 cm layers, sandwiched together with hazelnut cake crumb ganache.


I won't talk so much about the cakes - save to say that I learned this week the benefits of baking the larger cakes at a lower temperature for a longer time (and my last blog has been updated accordingly!), because the 15cm layers resulted in a catastrophic fall in the centers. Not to worry. When you have a wee cake wreck, it can always be used to your advantage.

For example, you can break up the cake and pour over an egg and cream custard mixture and re-bake for "cake and butter pudding".

Or you can crumb up the cake and use it as the base for your in-between layer filling. In this case, to sandwich the 15 and 20cm cakes, I used a plain chocolate ganache (160ml pouring cream, 100g 60% cocoa chocolate, 60g milk chocolate) with 2 1/2 cups of hazelnut cake crumb to make a cake truffle filling.

Its quite delicious this filling, nearly worth sacrificing a cake for - and when your cakes rise too much in the center you can use the trimmings in the filling - so it's delicious AND thrifty!

This post is really about what happened to the cakes after they got layered up.

Ruffles are rather in vogue these days, and I have been a little taken with the look of Peggy Porschen's Madame de Pompadour cake. A baby shower seemed the perfect opportunity to give the icing technique a try!

I used an Italian buttercream flavoured with freeze dried strawberry powder and vanilla for the icing. The recipe is below.

The cakes were coated with a thin layer of buttercream to seal them. Pay more attention to smoothing the top surfaces because these will remain exposed, particularly the top tier.

The piping nozzle to use is called a "ribbon" tip. Mine is made by Ateco and is a #9311. The nozzle is about 1cm in diameter. This I fitted into my trusty 18inch piping bag, and half filled it with buttercream. Because the buttercream is relatively heat sensitive, it is important not to have too much in the bag at any one time, otherwise the dregs of the buttercream will be sure to be a soupy mess! We don't want that!

To make ruffles, you can use the tip in an upside down smileyface orientation, or a smileyface one :-)! The ruffles below are made with the 

 :-( configuration - that is, with the rounded edge of the nozzle facing up.

Then, starting at the bottom of the tier, you gently squeeze the piping bag and move the nozzle up then down in a slightly overlapping motion, working towards the top of the cake. The nozzle does all the work, creating flounces of buttercream.

For a tiered cake, you need to work on the top tier first, then the bottom tier. This prevents the movement of the nozzle at the base of the top tier from messing up the pretty scalloped edges formed at the top of the line of ruffles (see the third picture below).

As you can see, the base layer of the buttercream can be pretty ugly, as it all gets covered up! (There is also a confession below as to why this particular cake has such a messy under layer). Once all the ruffles are on, nobody would ever guess!  



I have to confess I am quite enamoured with this technique. Not only it is it relatively quick and easy, the sheer french boudoir opulence speaks for itself - little or no embellishment is really needed, which makes this an extremely classy go-to icing technique.
I also like the fact that it kinda belongs to the Bringing Patisserie Back school of cake decoration. Sugarpaste is smooth and pretty, but doesn't have a great eating quality. Italian buttercream, on the other hand, is all about eating quality. Oh. And pretty. A few cherry blossoms made from flower paste and a little loopy gold ribbon, and we are done!
All the best for the coming of your little one, Emily!

Oh yes, I promised a confession. It is this. I originally coated these cakes quite tidily with a buttercream layer, and executed the ruffles using the nozzle in the smileyface orientation. This leads to a pattern of ruffles which more closely resemble curtain flounces as seen below. Personally I think this is a clumsier look, but it may have its place in cake decorating annals. Just not My Place!



But how is there photographic evidence of the Other Orientation? It is a sad tale. After photographing the cake as originally configured, I was manoeuvring the cake back to its storage container, and in doing so tipped the cake stand...
The cake did not hit the floor.
I caught it.
Hooray for me.
As you can imagine, the icing, and some of the handmade cherry blossoms, didn't exactly exit from this escapade unscathed.

The good news is Italian buttercream is really forgiving. I carefully scraped the cake of all the ruffles, and started again...

Even domestic goddesses have bad days.

xx
Kadri

Italian Buttercream

Makes about 700g  - you'll need most of it for the above cake.

300g sugar
150mL water
150g egg whites
75g sugar, extra
455g unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into 2cm cubes
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp freeze dried strawberry powder (or more, to taste)

Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan over heat, allowing the sugar to dissolve. Bring to boil, cook until syrup reaches 116 degrees Celsius on a candy thermometer (also known as the softball stage, but I always use a candy thermometer).
While the syrup is cooking (it takes about 8 minutes), beat the eggwhites in a large bowl (preferably of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment) to aerate, then add extra sugar. Beat until soft peaks form. Be careful not to overbeat.
As soon as sugar syrup reaches correct temperature, remove from heat and add to eggwhites, by pouring a thin stream of syrup down the side of the bowl while the mixer is running on full speed.
Once all the syrup is incorporated, continue to beat the meringue until it is cool and fluffy.
Swap the whisk attachment for a K or paddle attachment, and add the butter, a cube at a time, beating constantly. When all the butter is incorporated, add the flavourings.
If the buttercream seems too grainy or curdled, place the bowl in hot water for about 30 seconds, then beat again, and repeat until buttercream is smooth and silky. If the buttercream is too soupy, refrigerate the mixture for a while and beat again.
The buttercream can be kept refrigerated for a couple of weeks in an airtight container, or frozen for a month. It needs to be gently warmed and re-beaten until smooth before use.

Doing Deco

With the Great Gatsby coming out right now it was a good time for my colleague Chrystal Dare to choose an Art Deco themed bar for her thirtieth birthday (and surprise marriage proposal from her boyfriend!).

My present to her was cake- naturally. She had chosen a deco theme for her invitation artwork in green and gold, so it seemed obvious to run with that, articulately as I have a predilection for  deco cake as readers of this blog will know.

The flavours were obvious from the colour way: lemon (a mouthwatering combination of lemon victoria sponge, lemon vodka syrup, lemon curd and lemon buttercream) and double pistachio (ground pistachio Victoria sponge, pistachio and vanilla syrup and ground pistachio vodka buttercream).
The base colour for each tier decided, it was time to hit the sketch pad for some ideas on what the outside might look like.

We settled on a classic black deco starburst motif on the corners of the lower (sage green) pistachio cake tier, with a gold ombre fan pattern on the top (lemon cake tier).

Here's how you get a cake to look this stylish:

Plan-tastic

All good engineers start with a plan - and cake with ruffles is no exception. Here's what the concept looked like on paper (and with paper!)

Ombre: its the new black

I wanted to create a dramatic floral look for the cake which would both have the classic clean deco aesthetic but also be feminine. Colour on cakes takes careful planning, and so I always colour all the sugarpaste up and carefully consider how they look together before any actual icing happens.

 

Fan-tasia

Once the palest ombre layer of icing was on the top of the cake, I cut half circles from the lower edge to create a base for the first round of fans. I cut circles of each colour, layering them onto the cake working in the direction of the bottom edge. I allowed the top edge of each new circle to protrude from the cake, but flattened the lower edges down. This not only created fan shape without having to worry too much about cutting precise fans, but it also provided a shelf onto which to place my ruffles!

Ruffle my feathers

Using a slightly larger circle than the one I used for the fan, I cut circles of 2mm thick sugarpaste, then quartered them. Then I took quarters of sugar paste and ruffled the circumferential edge with a rounded tool. The V of each fan protrudes a little allowing the perfect shelf to fix the V of the ruffle to.  Here, edible glue comes into its own, allowing you to quickly fix the new ruffle to the cake.

Board games

I replicated the fan pattern from the top tier onto the board using a round cutter as a guide and painting alternating fans with edible glue before sprinking them with diamond black edible glitter.

 

Green with envy

Never underestimate the beauty of sage green. Acented with sleek be-glittered black sunburst patterns on each corner of the cake, we are in deco heaven. A slick of gold leaf on the edges of the sugarpaste sunbursts gives some lift and creates dimension.

Pearls of wisdom

Everything goes with pearls. In this case, gold leaf pearls connect the two tiers together.

 

 

Say it with flowers

Black carnations, edged with gold, and a tiny sage carnation leaf top the cake. Carnations are relatively quick and easy to make once you have mastered the ruffling technique, which is done by a quick back and forth rolling motion with your ruffling stick held at 90 degrees to the edge of the flower "petal". Its best to use flower paste rather than sugarpaste, but in a pinch, massaging gum traganth into regular sugarpaste will give you a stiffer and more dry-able medium to make your flowers. Because I was dealing with jet black sugarpaste, I opted for this method. About 1/2 tsp of gum traganth for 50g of sugarpaste is an acceptable ratio.

Cutting remarks

Everyone always sings the same song around cakes that look this good, and the song is "Its a Shame to Cut It".
Nonsense. Whats the point of making something so pretty edible if you're not going to eat it???

So we ate it.

xxx.

Kadri