Shadow Cupcakes

There's more than one way to celebrate a birthday.

So long as it includes cake, of course. You can have layer cake, sheet cake, angel food cake, chiffon cake, cheesecake, coffee cake... or cupcakes... and really, even if you don't like cake, you probably like cupcakes. Who doesn't?

My mom always wants the same kind of cake for her birthday: what she calls "shadow cake," which is chocolate cake covered in vanilla buttercream and drizzled with dark chocolate ganache. She likes it made with Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake mix. Hahahaha. No.

Unfortunately, I have yet to master the art of devil's food cake from scratch that is a) dark, b) rich, c) moist, and d) fluffy (aka not dense). And since I don't use cake flour, the going is even tougher. But I make wonderful chocolate cupcakes, that are proven popular to her palate, so this year, I did that instead. And they're vegan, to boot (which nobody seems to care about, since rarely do I feed them to vegan people). Complete credit for just about everything I used goes to Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero for the masterpiece Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. That is a book worth getting for anybody that makes cupcakes, vegan or not.


SHADOW CUPCAKES

"Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
"Fluffy Vegan Buttercream Frosting" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, only I used butter instead of margarine and cream instead of soymilk, and cut the recipe in half (nobody was vegan, and we already had butter, so why not? it's less processed anyway)
"Quick Melty Ganache" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

1. I can't tell you exactly how to make these cupcakes. But I'll sort of walk you through the basic steps, if for no other reason than to show you that it's easy. You really should get the book.

Anyway, like many a baked good, you start by preheating your oven and preparing your pans. In this case, line a muffin pan with cupcake papers. A word to the wise: even the neatest, brightest-patterened papers will be lost to chocolate cupcakes. You just won't be able to see them. Foil liners work well, or plain liners. I used these nice parchment ones.

2. Then you want to curdle your milk/soymilk with some vinegar for a few minutes. After 10 minutes or so, put it in a medium bowl with some oil, sugar, and vanilla.



3. Get ready your dry ingredients. Flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. You can sift it all together, and then whisk it up. Or, what may be better (but I haven't tried) is to whisk it up first and then sift it together. This part I like, because it looks like cake mix. Heehee. It kind of is, too.



4. Take the wet ingredients and beat them up good with a whisk. It should get good and foamy.



In two batches, add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients. In the first addition, stir gently to mostly incorporate it. When you add the rest, you can whisk it nicely until it just looks like batter. Not super lumpy batter, but don't beat it to death, either. 10 seconds of whisking heartily should do it. There should be no dry pockets.



5. Put it in your liners, which should be ready, if you've done the thing properly. It works awfully well to have an ice cream scoop with a release mechanism on it, so you can portion out roughly 3 tbsp of batter per cup. But if you don't, gently pouring it or using a small ladle should work fine. If you get some on the pan, just get it with your finger and have a taste. Try and clean messes off the pan before you bake, especially ones between the pan and a liner, because it will be very tough to get the cupcake out intact if there's stray, unbound cupcake between the liner and the pan. It acts as a nice adhesive.



The top of the batter should be a little ways from the top of the liner. Try and get them relatively even.

6. Pop in the oven and bake for a reasonable amount of time. Take them out when they're done (do the toothpick test on the largest one. This is where having a good oven comes in handy. Cheap, old, and no-good ovens like to see-saw their temperatures around when you're baking, causing the cupcakes to become confused and fall either in the oven or just after you've taken them out. Fortunately, cupcakes with chocolate seem less prone to this problem, and my mother has a good oven.



It's ok if they're a little domed, but they shouldn't be all muffiny on top, lest some schmuck calls them "muffins." If someone calls your cupcakes "muffins," do not give them one.

7. Cool the cupcakes in the pan on a wire rack 10 minutes, and then on a wire rack naked but for their papers until they're room temperature.

Taking them out of the pan can be tricky if you're a novice. I start by gently turning them with my fingers. If they turn easily, they are not stuck and will be easy to remove. If they don't, then I gently pull the sides away (again, with my fingers, or a knife if you're brave) until they can turn. Keyword: gently. And then, deftly grab the sides of the top with your fingers, pull it straight out and pop it right into your palm (the less time you spend holding the top and not the rest of it, the less likely the top is to come right off). Put it straight down on the rack (liner side down). Be careful with metal liners, they're hot. And the whole thing may take some practice; I certainly got a lot of practice picking up hot, just fried donuts and dunking them in toppings when I was a baker at Mighty O Donuts. The worst thing ever is to pull off the top and leave huge, awful fingerprints in the sides. Do not do this.

8. After (and only after) the cupcakes are cool, make the buttercream. I almost always use the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes when I make buttercream, which is equal parts of shortening and non-hydrogenated margarine (I used non-hydrogenated shortening and butter, in this case, because I had some), beaten together with sifted powdered sugar added, with a little bit of soymilk (I used cream, as it gives it just a little lightness, when you beat, it that I like). You beat it a few minutes until it's fluffy but not lumpy (if you beat it too long, it gets lumpy). And then, if you have a pastry bag and a neat fat spiky tip, load it up :)



9. Pipe a swirl on each cake. I start at the center, straight out to the outside, in a circle coming around back to the center again. But you can do it however you want. Or just spread it on, which tastes just as good but doesn't look as fancy.



When you're done, they'll all look kind of the same. This part actually only takes about 30 seconds (for all the cupcakes put together).



10. Make your "shadow" part using dark chocolate and cream. Heat up the cream first, and take it off the heat when it's steaming and stir in chocolate. Keep stirring until the chocolate is melted. You may then put it in a baggie with the teeniest bit cut off the corner. You can also use another pastry bag with a small tip. It's a bit too thick to drizzle with a spoon, and if you try it might just land in large glops and destroy your nice piping work.

Depending on how fast you are making cupcakes, it shouldn't take you too long. Maybe 2 hours start to finish. They actually cool quite fast, provided their wire rack is not sitting atop the oven the whole time.

And watch out for cats. They'll eat your work. They'll eat it right out of the pan; right off the rack. My suggestion is to put it in a cabinet to cool, or atop the refrigerator if your cats are old and relatively infirm and/or incapable of jumping up there. Unless you want to watch it cool, which is an option as well, but no promises that your cats won't eat your work while you're looking at it, too.

Black Bean Brownie Cake

Beans. Oh, the versatility.

If my two-month educational foray into the jungles of Costa Rica taught me nothing else, at least I walked away with this recipe. Thank you, Robin. Thank you, Rancho Mastatal. I already miss birthdays, all of us gathered around the community table... enjoying a hunk o' chocolate goodness.

It's chocolate cake, but it's... healthy. It's mostly eggs and beans, with a little coffee and some other stuff (like chocolate). You know, breakfast food. *shifty eyes*


BLACK BEAN BROWNIE CAKE
courtesy of Rancho Mastatal

1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
6 oz bittersweet chocolate (75% cocoa content is good)
4 oz (1 stick) butter
1 tbsp finely ground coffee
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp powdered chili
2 cups cooked black beans, drained and rinsed
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2-1 cup cacao nibs

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a 9x13" cake pan. Then make a sugar syrup. I do this because in Costa Rica, the sugar we had was liquid (it was called "tapa dulce"). Basically, it was unrefined sugar that had not been evaporated. To simulate that... just mix the brown sugar, regular sugar, and water and simmer over medium-low heat for a couple of minutes. That should do it.

2. Chop up the chocolate and butter, and melt in the top of a double boiler. Add coffee, salt, and chili, mixing until smooth and melty. You can also use oil with fine results. I like butter because... it's so wholesome.



3. Make sure your beans are well-rinsed and drained, particularly if they come from a can. *gasp* I know you wouldn't do that, though. Black beans are great, but I've also used red beans with equally great results. You could probably use almost any kind of bean, really... Stick them in the food processor with the eggs and vanilla, and whir away. Within a minute or two, it should get nice and frothy and the beans should be totally obliterated. You might see skin specs. But that's it. Transfer to a large bowl.



4. Combine melted chocolate/butter with the sugar syrup, and pour a little into the bean mixture. Fold to incorporate and temper the eggs, if the chocolate and sugar is still hot. Gradually add the rest, folding the batter until mostly combined (a few light and dark streaks are fine.



5. Fold in the cacao nibs until evenly distributed. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean and it begins to recede from the sides of the pan. Cool in pan to room temperature. Enjoy as brownies with powdered sugar, or crumbled over ice cream, or however you want.





PROS: rich, moist, chocolatey, full of protein, flourless
CONS: a bit strong for some people, incredibly crumbly

And there you have it... my first update in a month. Hopefully I'll do the next one sooner rather than later.

Chocolate Raspberry Creme Cake

Just this last week, I completed a quarter-long internship at the zoo (go Nocturnal House!), where I already volunteer. Not only did the internship end, but I'll be leaving the country shortly and won't be volunteering for the next three months either (possibly longer if I am taken on as a zoo employee upon my return). So in thanks, I made a cake. That way, maybe they'll forget that I didn't accomplish that much in three months. "Oh yeah, she was a great intern! She brought us cake and everything!"

It's good cake, too. It's probably one of my new favorites. It has everything - rich chocolate ganache, sweet and smooth pastry cream, a burst of raspberry, on a spongey vessel of light chocolate cake. (Oh, but it's full of gluten. :-( Probably would be pretty simple to convert, though...) Next time I'll make sure to grab more than one piece.

CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY CREME CAKE
bits and pieces from Baking Illustrated by the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine, adapted here and there
Pastry Cream Filling
5 tbsp plus 1 tsp sugar
pinch salt
1 1/2 cups half-and-half
2 large egg yolks
2 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla

Chocolate Sponge Cake
6 tbsp plain cake flour (I used some combination of all-purpose and potato starch, not being one to keep over-processed, chemically bleached powdered grains in my cupboard)
3 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
3 tbsp Dutch cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp milk
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
5 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar

Chocolate Ganache
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup light agave nectar (corn syrup works, but I don't have this)
8 oz semisweet chocolate, all chopped up
1/2 tsp vanilla

Raspberry Filling and Garnish
1 1/4 cups raspberry preserves or jam (get some with not much sugar added, but never artificially sweetened - you want it to taste like raspberries, not Splenda)
12-16 fresh or frozen raspberries

1. Make the pastry cream: dissolve 1/4 cup of the sugar, and the salt, in the half-and-half over medium heat until simmering, stirring occasionally.

2. While your mixture is heating on the stove, whisk up the egg yolks in a separate bowl. Add the sugar and vigorously beat with your whisk until it gets creamy smooth. Add cornstarch, and keep whisking until the yolks look thick and pale.

3. Slowly drizzle the half-and-half, after it comes to a simmer, into the yolks. Make sure to whisk constantly during this process to avoid cooking and curdling the yolks. This is called tempering. Pour it all back in the saucepan and return to the heat.

4. Whisk the mixture constantly until it starts to bubble a little and it gets really thick, which shouldn't take long. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and vanilla.

5. Pour the hot pastry cream through a sieve into a medium bowl. Cover the surface directly with waxed paper to prevent a skin from forming and stick in the fridge until thoroughly chilled. This will take at least 3 hours, but it keeps fine overnight.

6. Make your cake: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Prepare 2 9-inch round cake pans by greasing the sides and covering the bottom with parchment paper.

7. Sift flours, cocoa, baking powder, and salt together into a medium bowl, mix well, and make sure there are no little lumps of cocoa sitting about in the flour. Squash them if there are. Set aside.

8. Heat milk and butter over low heat until the butter melts. Remove from heat, add the vanilla, and cover to keep warm.

9. Separate three of the eggs. Place the whites in a large metal bowl, and the yolks plus the whole eggs in another large bowl. Beat the whites until foamy and broken up, and gradually add half the sugar as you continue to beat the whites. Beat to soft peaks - you know you've reached this state when you take the beaters out of the egg whites and the peaks look moist and droop over. If you beat it too much, you will have trouble folding your batter and your cake will deflate. You will be sorry.



10. Beat your yolks and whole eggs with the rest of the sugar for about 5 minutes. They should be very thick and pale, kinda like the yolks in the pastry cream. Only thicker, and paler. Pour these in with the whites.

11. Sprinkle the flour over the egg mixtures and fold from the middle down and up about a dozen times around the bowl. Make an indentation and add the milk and butter. Keep folding, very gently and carefully, until everything is more or less evenly mixed. The goal is to get the most homogenous mixture with the least amount of mixing - the more you fold, the more air bubbles you pop and the flatter and denser your cake will be. But you don't want big pockets of egg white or flour in there, either. So just be careful.



12. Pour equal amounts of batter into each cake pan and bake for about 16-22 minutes, depending on the color of your pans (longer for light pans, and less for dark). Judge doneness based on the toothpick test (stick a toothpick in the middle, if it has no crumbs on it, it's done) or by poking the middle of the cake, which should readily spring back. It should also look like it's just starting to pull away from the sides of the pan.

13. When you remove the cakes from the oven, run a knife around the perimeter of the pan. Invert onto a plate, remove the parchment, and re-invert onto a cooling rack. Do the same with the other cake, and cool to room temperature. Don't ever try to frost or fill a warm cake.



14. Make the ganache: Heat the cream and agave over medium heat in a saucepan until simmering. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate. Cover and let sit for about 8 minutes, at which point the chocolate should have melted (if not, stir it over medium heat until it does).

15. Add vanilla and stir until smooth. Cool until slightly warmer than room temperature.

16. Make that cake: While the glaze is cooling, put one layer of the cake on a cardboard round or other decorating surface. To avoid making a mess, you can tuck strips of waxed paper underneath the cake around all sides for easy cleanup. Spread about 1 cup of the jam evenly over this layer, filling in the pits and potholes on the cake surface. No one will ever know...



17. Place dollops of the pastry cream around the cake layer over the jam and spread it until it makes an even, thick coating. You should use all of it. Carefully put the second cake layer in place, making sure it's centered and not lopsided.

18. Spread around the remaining jam on the top of the cake, all the way up to the edges. Run a spatula around the sides of the cake to clean up any leaking pastry cream or raspberry preserves. Consume this.



19. Pour on the glaze, making sure it completely covers the top and sides. It will cool much more rapidly once it's on the cake. Make pretty swirly designs with the back of a spoon. Before it cools completely, press in raspberries in some attractive pattern on top of the cake.



20. Refrigerate the cake until the glaze sets and it's ready to serve. Keep refrigerated, as the pastry cream will spoil otherwise and the cake will fall apart in warm conditions. Eat, eat! It's so good.






PROS: great balance of flavors, textures, nice and attractive
CONS: time consuming, batter can be temperamental to fold together evenly

Carrot Cake

Every time someone has a birthday, I jump at the chance to bake a cake. I love cake. I love baking cake. I think it's because I love licking the mixing bowl afterward...

...but that's another story. My dad's birthday was yesterday, and I was thrilled at the opportunity to make another cake. I made it gluten-free, just because I felt confident enough with my experience to turn it out well. I secretly bought enough ingredients for two cakes in the instance that the gluten-free version was a flop.

But oh. Oh. This was no flop! Whoever says gluten-free baking is inferior obviously hasn't eaten this.

And again, I must credit Cook's Illustrated for the recipe on which my version is based. I know that when I need to bake something for the first time, I will always check to see if they have a recipe for it first. That way, if my adaptation doesn't turn out... I know that it's my fault and not the base recipe's. Oh, what a blessing America's Test Kitchen is. But I've changed this recipe enough to be considered different from the original. Well, duh.

CARROT CAKE
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp sorghum flour
3/4 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/4 cup soy flour
2 tbsp tapioca starch
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 lb fresh carrots, peeled
1 cup golden (Sultana) raisins
1 can crushed pineapple, drained very well
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil (I used sunflower)

12 oz neufchatel or cream cheese
8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, slightly softened but still cool
1 tbsp sour cream
3/4 tsp vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup sliced almonds

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease two 9"x2" round cake pans, and line with parchment paper or waxed paper. Grease the parchment as well.

2. Whisk the dry ingredients - flours, starches, xanthan gum, baking powder and soda, spices, and salt - thoroughly in a medium bowl.



3. Using your food processor, shred the carrots (make sure you shred them, not pulverize them). If you're ambitious and/or don't have a food processor - and I used to do this - you can grate them by hand. If you do this, you can probably do most of the rest of the steps in a mixing bowl rather than a food processor.

4. Add the shredded carrots and raisins to the dry ingredients, and wipe out your food processor. Add sugars and eggs to the food processor, and process with the metal blade until frothy and well-mixed.

5. Keep the processor running, and slowly drizzle the oil through the feed tube. Process until well-emulsified and light in color.

6. Transfer wet ingredients to a large bowl and stir in the crushed (drained) pineapple. Fold in the dry ingredients, along with carrots and raisins, until all flour is mixed in. But don't mix it longer than you have to. You'll kill the leavening.



7. Pour batter into your prepared cake pans and stick on a middle oven rack. Bake for 40 minutes or until cake starts to pull away from edges of pan and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. And it's golden brown. Or poke the top of the cake with your finger. If it springs back, it's done.



8. Cool on wire racks, in the pans, to room temperature before frosting. And let me tell you - you don't want to frost this cake warm. Disaster will ensue.



9. Clean out your food processor. This is a good time to lick the bowl, if you're into that sort of thing. I know I am. But for the sake of whomever's going to be eating your cake, please wash it after you lick it. And then dump in the cream cheese, butter, sour cream, and vanilla. Process until well-mixed. If it starts sticking to the sides, then you know what to do. Get out that rubber spatula.

10. Add powdered sugar and process some more until it's nice and smooth. Scrape it all out, put it in a bowl, and stick it in the fridge to chill for oh, 20 minutes or so.

11. Take your cakes out of their pans when they're cool, and put them on the wire racks directly. Face up, of course. When you're ready to decorate, transfer one cake round to whatever it is you like to decorate on. I used a cardboard round sitting on top of an inverted cake pan - it spins easily, and is slightly elevated.

12. Take your frosting out of the fridge, and if you want to reserve some for piping later (letters, little carrots, whatever), save 2 tbsp to 1/4 cup and set aside. Plop some frosting - 1/2 cup, maybe - on the cake and spread to the edges (a large offset spatula works wonders here). Carefully set the second cake on top, and repeat the process. Use the remaining frosting to frost the sides. Try not to get crumbs in the icing, because that looks kinda tacky.

13. Press handfuls of sliced almonds into the sides - you can tilt the cake for this - until the sides are covered all the way around. Put a few in the center of the cake, on the top. It looks cute. And if you want to pipe decorations, color your reserved frosting however you want (I use natural coloring with annatto for the orange letters). And pipe away. For a makeshift pastry bag, you can use either a plastic bag with the corner cut out, or waxed paper folded in a cone. That's what I did. And sit back and admire your cake. Then eat it. Because, let's face it, carrot cake is awesome.



PROS: moist, perfectly balanced spice, great ratio of cake:frosting, delicious but not too nutritious
CONS: frosting is a little wet, and sweetness of cake is difficult to detect through sweetness of frosting (but trust me. it's minor.)

Maybe I should stop posting all my recipes and just write a durn tootin cookbook. I hear that's what all the cool kids are doing these days...