Orange Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

This is birthday cupcake recipe #2.  I thought I ought to make something, well, less boozy.  And I wanted something light and summery, which these certainly turned out to be.

Recipe:

Cupcakes
1 stick Butter, softened
1 cup Sugar
2 Eggs, separated
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 3/4 cups Cake Flour (or 1 2/3 flour and 2 tablespoons cornstarch)
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 tablespoon Baking Powder
1/2 cup Orange Juice

Preheat oven to 350°.  Place cupcake papers in cupcake/muffin tin.  This recipe makes about 18 cupcakes.
Cream together butter, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla.
In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt, and baking powder.  Add dry ingredients to the creamed ingredients, alternating with portions of the orange juice.
Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into batter.
Spoon batter into cupcake papers, fill about 1/2 full.
Bake 15-18 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.  Cool completely before frosting.

Frosting
2 sticks Butter, softened
1 tablespoon Vanilla
3-4 cups Powdered Sugar
1-2 tablespoons Whipping Cream

Cream butter until fluffy.  Add vanilla and mix well.  Gradually add 2 cups of the powdered sugar and mix until smooth.  Gradually add remaining sugar and cream until the frosting is a good consistency for spreading.

These came out well.  Nice and summery!  The flavors are Orange Creamsicle-like, which is what I was going for.  The juice gives the cake a great orange flavor without increasing the sweetness.

Yum!

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Irish Whiskey Filling and Bailey's Buttercream

This is birthday cupcake recipe #1.  I was feeling kind of meh about what to make for my birthday this year and then I found this recipe over on Serious Eats and I knew it was The One.

Recipe:

Cake
1 cup Stout (Guinness)
1 cup Butter
3/4 cup Cocoa Powder
2 cups Flour
2 cups Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Soda
3/4 teaspoon Salt
2 Eggs
2/3 cup Sour Cream

Pre-heat oven to 350°.  Place cupcake papers in a cupcake/muffin tin.  This recipe makes about 24 cupcakes.
In a medium saucepan, melt butter and add Guinness.  Bring to a simmer and whisk in cocoa powder, stirring until smooth.  Remove from heat.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
In a mixing bowl, cream together eggs and sour cream.  Add chocolate stout mixture.  On slow speed, gradually mix in the dry ingredients.
Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 full (these don't rise too much).  Bake until tester comes out clean, about 20-22 minutes.  Cool completely.

Filling
8 ounces Bittersweet Chocolate (60-70% cocoa)
2 tablespoons Butter
1/3 cup Heavy Whipping Cream
1/3 cup Bailey's Irish Cream
1 tablespoon Irish Whiskey (Jameson, Bushmills, etc.)

Break chocolate into chunks and place in a heat proof bowl.  Add butter.  Heat cream to a simmer and pour over butter and chocolate.  Let sit for a minute or so, until the cream melts the chocolate (I made the filling while the cupcakes were baking, so I set the bowl on the oven and this helped melt the chocolate).  Stir until smooth.  Add the Irish cream and whiskey and stir until smooth.
Chill the filling until it is firm, but still workable.  It's going into the cupcakes, so you don't want it to be liquid.  I found that kind of a cream cheese firmness was good.  And if it's too firm, let it sit for a few minutes.

Frosting
1 stick Butter, softened
3-4 cups Powdered Sugar
3-4 tablespoons Bailey's Irish Cream

Beat butter until fluffy.  Gradually add about 2 cups of the sugar.  Add some of the Bailey's and beat well.  Add remaining sugar and Bailey's until the frosting is a good consistency for spreading.

Okay, now that all the components are ready, it's time to assemble the cupcakes:

Make a space for the filling in the cupcakes.  I used a small, sharp knife to cut a circle out of the top, and bore a hole in the cake.  Only go about 2/3 of the way down.
Fill the cupcakes.  I used a spoon to scoop out filling and then used a knife to press a glob of filling in, and then make it smooth and level with the top of the cupcake (just like spackling!).  You could also use a pastry bag to pipe filling into the cupcakes.
Frost the cupcakes!

So cute!  And here's a cross section:

The cake is good, not super intense, but a really good chocolate cake, and then the filling is fudgy and delicious, and the icing is buttery and Irish creamy.  They're super good together and this is maybe my favorite cupcake.  Certainly the best cupcake I've made.

Happy birthday to me.

And overall it wasn't a difficult recipe.  There's a lot of steps, but I was expecting to struggle with carving the hole out of the cake and filling it, but it went together pretty quickly, and hassle free.

Oh, and I should add that you don't really taste the alcohol in the cake, filling, or frosting. I mean, you taste it, but I don't think you could get drunk off the cupcakes.

Tuna Steak

I love tuna steak.  It's like a magical combination of fish and red meat -- two things I love.  It has an amazing texture, and it's very easy to do well.  I threw this dish together in under 15 minutes, and it came out fantastically, if I do say so myself.

Recipe:

Tuna Steak (The one used here is about 4 ounces)
8-10 Crimini (Baby Portobella) Mushrooms
2-3 tablespoons Malt Vinegar
1 cup Red Wine
Salt and Pepper (to taste)
Olive Oil

Stir together malt vinegar, wine, and seasoning.  Slice mushrooms and add to wine mixture. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet, and add mushrooms and all of the wine mixture.  Bring to a boil, and simmer 5-7 minutes until the wine is reduced.  Remove the mushrooms and reduction to a separate bowl.  Set aside.
Return the skillet to heat and add 1 tablespoon olive oil.  Add tuna steak and cook on medium heat for 3-4 minutes.  Flip the tuna steak, turn the burner off after 1 minute, and remove steak from pan after 2 more minutes.
Serve tuna steak and mushrooms.

I had this over udon noodles that I tossed with basil infused olive oil and sea salt.  The earthiness of the mushrooms and the meatiness of the fish worked very well with the sour tang of the malt vinegar and red wine, and the noodles with basil olive oil provided some needed sweetness.

If you don't like rare meat or fish, cook the steak a little longer.  I like mine rare to medium rare, and the time I used in this recipe will get you this:

Mmmmmm...perfect.

Carrot Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting

I found this recipe on Serious Eats.  I love carrot cake, plus I had a bag of beardy looking carrots that I needed to use up, so what better way to do that than with cake?  I modified their recipe a bit, mostly by cutting back on sugar and putting in more carrots and spices.

Recipe:

2 1/2 cups Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 tablespoon Cinnamon
3/4 cup packed Brown Sugar
3/4 cup Sugar
1 1/2 (3 sticks) Butter, softened
3 Eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla
4 cups freshly grated Carrots
1 inch piece fresh Ginger, grated (or 2 teaspoons powdered ginger)
1 cup Golden Raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°, grease a 9 x 13 inch baking pan.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, brown sugar, and white sugar.
Beat the butter into the flour mixture until well combined, add eggs one at a time and beat until fluffy.  Add vanilla.  Stir in carrots, ginger, and raisins.
Pour batter into greased baking pan.  Bake 40-50 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

8 ounces Cream Cheese
1 1/2 cups Powdered Sugar
1/4 cup Butter, softened
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Cream together butter and cream cheese, add powdered sugar and vanilla.  Beat until smooth.

This cake was surprisingly light, considering how dense the batter looked when I was putting it in the pan.  I also had some misgivings about the recipe because I was adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, which is usually the opposite of what one does, but it came out really good.

Instead of using all white flour, I used 2 cups regular flour, 1/4 cup whole wheat flour and 1/4 cup flax seed meal.  Also, since I don't have a box grater or a grater attachment for my Kitchenaid, I used the food processor to shred the carrots and fresh ginger and it worked great!

This cake was very flavorful, light, and not too sweet.

Peanut Butter Popcorn Balls

I'll be honest -- I'm not a fan of popcorn.  I don't especially dislike it, but I don't choose to eat it often.  Usually, at the movies, if I have a taste for popcorn, I'll just snag a handful of someone else's (that I'm with, of course) and that satisfies my popcorn craving.  Well this afternoon I was at a movie, I had a taste for popcorn but was by myself, so I actually ordered a thing of it.  And ate less than a quarter of it before I was totally over my craving for popcorn.

Being thrifty, I brought it home thinking that I'd just eat it later, but then I realized it would be totally gross by the time I felt like eating it.  So I hit the internet, hoping to find a way to use up a giant bag of movie popcorn, and found this.

Recipe:

4 cups Popcorn
1/4 cup Honey
2 tablespoons Sugar
1/4 cup Peanut Butter
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Measure the popcorn into a large bowl.
Melt honey and sugar in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil and simmer 2-3 minutes.  Stir in the vanilla and peanut butter.  Mix until smooth.
Pour over the popcorn.  Stir to coat the popcorn.
Form into small balls while still warm, and store in an airtight container.

Now, I wore a pair of surgical gloves while forming the popcorn balls and this served two purposes.  First, it provided some protection from the hot peanut butter mixture, and second, I was able to form the balls without getting my hands all messy.

Quick, easy, and delicious!  And yes, apparently I'm also the kind of person who has surgical gloves around.

Sweet, salty, buttery, peanuty...yum!

And I had enough popcorn left to make a double batch.  Yes, 8 cups of popcorn.  Because my local theater has psychotic servings.  Seriously, a small drink is 32 oz.  Ridiculous!

Parmesan Custard

This is one of my favorite things from Nourishing Traditions.  This is a savory custard, and is especially delicious as a side dish to meat and veggies.

Recipe:

4 Egg Yolks
1 1/2 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese
Cayenne pepper or paprika

Whisk egg yolks and gradually add whipping cream.  Stir in parmesan cheese and pour custard into individual ramekins (4-6).  Sprinkle with cayenne or paprika.
Bake at 350° for 45 minutes.  Cool 5 minutes before serving.

It's so creamy and cheesy!

This one is actually made with Romano instead of Parmesan.  You really need to use a cheese that's hard and aged, so it isn't greasy when it's melted (I once tried it with cheddar and it didn't turn out well).

Cheeseburger Eggsplosion

I saw this the other day over on Serious Eats, and it was just about the best thing I'd ever seen.

I love egg-in-a-basket, and I love burgers, plus I haven't been eating meat for lent (and it hasn't swayed me to the vegetarian side, the last few days I've practically started drooling at the sight of meat).  So, this seemed like the perfect thing to break the fast with.

I'm not going to reiterate the recipe here, since it's pretty straightforward, and if you haven't been to Serious Eats, you should remedy that.  But, here's my pictures:

An ordinary cheeseburger?

Hardly!  There's an egg fried into the center of the patty, and how fantastic is that?  It's pretty fantastic.