Coconut Snowball Cupcakes

Have I mentioned my love of coconut? It has always been my favorite dessert flavor – in cake, pie, ice cream, chocolate, I’ll take it. Lately I’ve been enjoying it for breakfast in the form of oh-so-delectable coconut butter dolloped on my morning bowl of oatmeal. I realize, however, that some of you are reading this and gagging. In fact, some people probably didn’t even bother to read this post after they saw the title. Yes, unfortunately, coconut is a love-it or hate-it ingredient. Because it is so detested by so many, I’m always happy to find a fellow coconut lover like my sister-in-law. When I find those people, I’m free to go crazy with the coconut with no fear that they’ll turn their noses up at what I make. These cupcakes were a birthday treat for one such friend, Caroline. Is it wrong of me to admit that I began to appreciate our friendship even more when I discovered her feelings about coconut?

Those Baked guys really know what they’re doing around a kitchen. After falling in love with the Baked brownie I found these cupcakes. The recipe manages to cram more coconut flavor than you ever thought possible into one little cupcake. Coconut is folded into the cake batter (I might even be tempted to throw a little coconut extract into it next time for an extra boost). The cupcakes are filled with a coconut pastry cream. The remaining pastry cream is folded into the frosting and the cupcakes are sprinkled with some extra coconut for good measure. A little fussy? Yes. But worth it for the true coconut lover.

Daring Bakers: Ice Cream Petit Fours

This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was a pretty unusual one. The Daring Bakers partnered with another group of bloggers who participate in monthly baking events through Sugar High Fridays. I’d never heard of Sugar High Fridays, but the concept is somewhat similar to the Daring Bakers. Each month the members participate in a baking challenge, but rather than being given a specific recipe to cook from, they are given a theme or ingredient. They can then choose any recipe that works with the theme/ingredient. This month Sugar High Fridays was using browned butter as its theme so the Daring Bakers did as well. We were asked to make a browned butter pound cake, which we could then combine with an ice cream recipe of our choice to make either Baked Alaska or Ice Cream Petit Fours.

I chose to make the petit fours for a few reasons. First of all, I liked the fact that they would be individual servings rather than one big dessert. If I don’t have anything special to cook for in a given month, I end up trying to pawn off my creations on others. It’s much easier to do so when the dessert is already in small portions. Meringue is not my favorite dessert element, but chocolate glaze? Yes, please. And finally, aren’t petit fours just cute? I don’t have much of a decorating touch (unlike my friend Kim, who is amazing with a pastry bag!) but I figured I could handle a small canvas like petit fours.

I’d never heard of ice cream petit fours but they ended up being composed quite similarly to the traditional version. We had to make a batch of ice cream, a browned butter pound cake, and a chocolate glaze. The pound cake is baked in a 9×9 square pan and then sliced horizontally into two layers. Ice cream is sandwiched between the layers and then the cake is cut into smaller squares. Finally, each square is dipped in a rich chocolate glaze.  I made all the elements and the final product for this challenge in about 24 hours. Lots of freezing/waiting time was involved, but there wasn’t a ton of hands-on work.

We were given a recipe for vanilla ice cream but I chose to use one of my favorite coffee ice cream recipe from David Lebovitz. I’ve adapted the recipe to make a Mocha Almond Fudge flavor. By swirling a thin stream of a melted dark chocolate bar (preferably with chopped almonds or hazelnuts already in it) into the ice cream at the last minute of churning, you get a nice distribution of nutty chocolate in each bite of ice cream. I love this technique because it means you don’t bite into a hard chunk of chocolate or nut, but you get the flavor from each of those elements. I thought this ice cream flavor would pair well with the nuttiness of the browned butter in the pound cake.

The sliver of pound cake I tried when slicing the layers was delicious- very moist and full of the rich flavor of the browned butter. Though I loved the look and taste of the petit fours, I did think that in the final product the flavor of the browned butter became lost in the richness of the chocolate and ice cream. Some of that may have been due to the fact that I chose such an aggressive flavor of ice cream. If you want to see the creative products the other Daring Bakers put out, check out the blogroll. Thanks to Elissa for hosting such a unique challenge!

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.

Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes

The cupcake craze sure doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon and I can see why. They’re infinitely adaptable, single-serving, and so festive. I have two pet peeves regarding cupcakes: dryness and lack of flavor. Unfortunately, these faults are much too common in both store-bought and homemade cupcakes. This recipe combats both these problems in several ways. The combination of bittersweet chocolate and cocoa powder double the chocolate flavor of the cupcake itself while the vinegar keeps the cake tender. The chocolate flavor is further enhanced by a dollop of ganache filling in the center of the cakes, which also keeps them moist as they bake. The original recipe, from Cook’s Illustrated, offers a variety of frosting options, including vanilla, peanut butter, and malt. For chocolate lovers, though, there’s nothing better than double chocolate. I love the title of this recipe because these cupcakes truly are the ultimate version of such a ubiquitous treat.

Chocolate Raspberry Layer Cake

Last month we hosted a wedding shower for some dear friends. Barbecued brisket was the main event, eatingwise, along with sides of blue cheese coleslaw, a corn, tomato, and feta salad, fruit salad, and a cheese platter. I know from experience that one of the bride’s favorite flavors is raspberry; her favorite cake is a divine raspberry torte from Guglhupf, a local German restaurant & bakery. I’ve had that cake once before on her birthday and knew I couldn’t compete, so I went in a different direction. This chocolate raspberry cake was featured in the June 2010 issue of Bon Appetit. It has gotten excellent, and well-deserved, reviews on epicurious.com, so I felt comfortable making it as the dessert for the party.

This cake is pretty darn perfect. The layers are moist and thick, with a moderate chocolate flavor that works well with the intensity of the dark chocolate ganache. The final part of the recipe – regarding frosting the cake – seems complicated but I found the ganache easy to work with. I did wish for a little more raspberry flavor; I think cake layers could stand a little more jam than the 6 tbsp. called for in the recipe. The powdered sugar is fairly superfluous here; it melts almost immediately, at least in this summer heat, and the cake looks pretty good as is. You could easily omit it. Hope this cake makes its way onto your table!

Hot Chocolate Cake

For Thanksgiving I made the chocolate layer cake that graced the cover of the December/January issue of Fine Cooking. It was almost as beautiful in person as it was in the magazine photos. The chocolate ganache frosting is a lovely deep brown and its three thick layers give it a lofty height.

Putting this cake together in a kitchen the size of a closet was a true test of my baking abilities, although I must say that my mom’s ability to cook a Thanksgiving dinner in that kitchen is an even more unbelievable feat. Since I made all three components the day before, storing all the pieces was the most difficult part. Three cake pans and a sheet pan of marshmallows were perched precariously on every available kitchen surface.

Chocolate Cake

A few weeks ago I developed an intense craving for a piece of chocolate cake. Not a cupcake, which are too often dry, or a restaurant version, dudded up with flavors and twists. Just a plain old piece of moist, cocoa-ey cake with some chocolate icing on top, served up with a cold glass of milk. I drink milk no more than once a year, so all this made for one awfully strange craving. After a few days of ignoring it, the desire only grew stronger. So I bit the bullet and made a cake.

The problem was that I didn’t have a wealth of time, nor did I have a crowd of people around to help me eat an enormous layer cake. I love to bake, but almost always find that Jeff and I can barely put a dent in a batch of cookies/bread/brownies/muffins before it goes stale. I wanted a cake that I could bake in a single baking dish, so I wouldn’t have the challenge of eating and storing a double-decker layer cake. After spending some time perusing recipes online and in my cookbook collection, I settled on an Ina Garten recipe that received an extraordinary number of rave reviews on the Food Network website. With 1/2 cup oil and 1 cup buttermilk, it seemed to have enough of the right kinds of liquid to keep it moist. I baked it in two 8×8 baking pans so that it would be nice and thick, which would aid in keeping it moist, and topped it with a single layer of frosting. You could also half the recipe quite easily. I enjoyed being able to make two cakes with one recipe. I was able to keep one for myself and give one away – to my best teacher friend Emily, who deserved a sweet treat after bringing home her new baby, Rachel.

Daring Bakers Cheesecake

It’s Daring Bakers time! I missed March’s delicious-looking spinach lasagne, but I’m back in the swing of things for what I hope will be the rest of this year.

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

For this challenge, Jenny gave us tons of culinary creativity. She encouraged us to experiment with a variety of flavors. After sorting through the many ideas floating around in my head  (nilla wafer crust, cassis, fresh raspberry sauce…. or chocolate wafer crust, espresso flavored cheesecake, chocolate sauce… or chocolate wafer crust, nutella swirl, frangelico, chopped hazelnuts…the possibilities were endless) I settled on what, looking back, was a rather surprising choice given my own personal tastes. How could I not have remembered that I really don’t care for caramel? I blame this on the fact that I was still reeling from the completion of my boards and was trying to make this cheesecake for a work gathering scheduled for a date only a few days after the dust had settled.

A Daring Baker’s Valentine

I had to skip the January DB challenge due to intense work-related projects that are still consuming every spare moment of my free time. However, I did manage to squeeze in the February challenge because it was a fairly quick challenge that I made as the dessert in our Valentine’s meal. It was also the perfect opportunity to pull out my 10 lb. bar of Guittard my mom so wisely gifted me at Christmas.

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

I chose to do raspberry champagne sorbet to go with the cake rather than the vanilla ice cream. A few years ago we had a flourless chocolate cake with some champagne sorbet at Bella Monica, a most delicious Italian restaurant tucked into a nondescript shopping center in Raleigh. I followed David Lebovitz’s recipe from The Perfect Scoop and it turned out, well, perfectly. It complemented the cake very well and was quite festive being red and full of champagne.

Below you’ll find the recipes for the cake and the sorbet. For other variations on the ice cream/sorbet component check out the creations of the other Daring Bakers.