Oatmeal Cup'cakes'!

The mini-muffin pan isn't only great for cupcakes, it's great for making mini bite size cookies as well or mini little treats. These are my cranberry chocolate oatmeal cup'cakes' or should I say cup'cookies' topped with a melting chocolate wafer. It's fun to be creative with conventional tools and rethink some of their uses. I absolutely adore the mini-muffin pan and i think if i were to put together a box of 24 mini petits for sale, this would have to be one of the choices (goes great with tea & coffee). These are very decadent and of course, good for you too. Everytime I make these cookies they are gone too fast!

Sugar Rose Petals & Rose Water Cupcakes

Last night I had a hell of a time sleeping so i read the entire "Cupcakes" by Susan McMahon. Only took me 20 minutes or so to go through the 160 some-odd pages as the recipes were all quite similar from one to the next, and more of a visual guide than anything else. The only real new thing that popped out at me were sugar rose petals. The recipes in this book was quite simple and because I was surfing online at specialty cupcakes, I thought it was a very interesting flavor and wondered how it was done. Well here is the recipe for 12 sugar rose petal cupcakes, super easy:

You need:
12 rose petals (make sure they are eatable, ask the florist)
1 egg white, lightly beaten
4-6 Tbsp sugar

Instructions: To crystallize the rose petals, brush them with egg white, lightly sprinkle with sugar evenly and place them on baking parchment paper and let dry.

Note: Do not eat if you are pregnant or sensitive to raw eggs, as this recipe calls for raw eggs... Not sure if I want to eat them myself but they do look very nice... I think I do have to try just one.

As for the cupcakes, just create a standard cupcake recipe - replace the vanilla with rose water.

I'd give you the recipe in this book, but everything is in grams and ounces (This book, I realized is produced in England which means their system of measuring isn't like ours in North America). I will convert and do a post on measurements another day soon, but I wanted to add that when buying books from England, Canadians pay the same price as Americans cause the price is converted from British pounds. Cool, didn't know that. This book only cost me $12.95 + tax. Fair deal I think and looks nice in the collection.

Black Forest Memories...

If there was to be a cake that reminds me of my mother, it would have to be Black Forest Cake. I remember when i was very young, my mother would get my brother and I Black Forest cake from Safeway with the dark chocolate cake, filled with Bavarian cream, topped with chocolate shavings and candy-syrup red cherries. I guess because it's nostalgic for me, I can't have Black Forest cake any other way because I always end up saying - "Something just ain't right...". So I attempted to make this into a cupcake - with a few tweaks. I however didn't use fresh cream, which i found out was a big mistake as vanilla frosting is just way too heavy with the bavarian cream filling (even though it was whipped). Next time however to make it a bit more of my own, I think I will grind up the cherries right into the chocolate cake for more of a cherry flavor. Overall, I still think cherry+chocolate+bavarian cream=pretty awesome! This is one cupcake I vow to perfect.

Also, shoutout Ben's peeps at Sutton Real Estate head office who has this batch in their tummy!

For those that dream in chocolate...

So I made a special batch of Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes topped with milk chocolate frosting and centered with a caramel filled Hershey's kiss, exactly a year ago from today for my good friend Scott (who just ordered me my first shipment of cupcake containers - thank you!). They turned out so beautiful i took a photo of them, anticipating that i will be blogging about cupcakes one-day (j/k... but i did take a photo cause they looked so scrumptious). I can't say I LOVE CHOCOLATE like those around me (minus David, my other half, who actually hates chocolate flavored anything), and I don't know why that is, but I do love chocolate cake - a lot. For me chocolate cake must be moist and chocolaty and the icing must not be too sweet - you know, the type of icing you can eat cups of without feeling like well... you ate cups of it.

Cool facts about chocolate:

• 71% of chocolate eaters prefer milk chocolate. (i like dark myself ;)
  
• 40% of women and 15% of men crave chocolate but it is not physically addictive.
• 51% choose a chocolate from a selection box depending on its shape.
• Chocolate makers use 40% of the world's almonds and 20% of the world's peanuts.
• Hershey produces around 23 million kisses a day in a variety of flavors
• The U.S. produces more chocolate than any other country but the Swiss consume the most.
  
• In 1939, Nestle introduced Chocolate Chips.
• Chocolate's melting point is just below your body temperature, so it melts in your mouth.

Also about my first order of cupcake containers: It turns out that the prices in the states are 60 times...yes i repeat 60 times cheaper than the suppliers in Canada. I spent 2 days calling, reseraching online, with over 20 suppliers, both in Canada and the USA before I placed an order. I mean, there is a chance that I missed a key supplier here in Canada but for now, I'm sticking to what my research shows. How unfair is it to us Canadian business owners? My cupcake containers and boxes are going to be shipped to my place in Bellingham. Let's just hope they don't charge me an arm and a leg at the border... regardless though, it's not going to be 60x the price! Entrepreneurship is harder in Canada than the US... proof is bank!

Forget Chicken & Waffles, Chicken & Cupcakes is where it's at!

My ol'friend Arty - aka Buddha Sax came over with a bucket of KFC yesterday and his new girlfriend Jackie (very sweet & charming girl, good job art! ;). I was feeling still a bit under the weather (because I once again caught what Ari had) and didn't feel like baking, but he so desperately wanted me to make a batch of cupcakes for dessert and you know i can't refuse a request from someone that brings me fried chicken... plus i had a new recipe i wanted to try from the Cake Bible. I took a few short cuts such as... eggs weren't at room temp. and i replaced the milk with soymilk and i didn't let the butter soften (i microwaved...shhh...). The result was a harder top than the other cake recipes i tried but nonetheless they were gobbled up and the minty green cream cheese frosting was light and yummy! I was also out of fondant so I topped it with one of my daughters whole-wheat puff stars and centered it with some pink frosting. Turned out to be very cute! In the end we were all happy and that's what important.

I also realized that i need new mixing bowls! This one is too heavy for my little weak under worked out arms. As they say? A baker is only as good as the ingredients and tools she uses?? i dont know if that is a saying or if i made that up right now. Regardless, I'm getting new mixing bowls and soon!

Making your own Lemon Zest - Lemon poppyseed cake

So i decided to try something different today and I have always been a fan of lemon poppyseed loafs at coffee shops and local bakeries. I found a great recipe and am very excited to try and maybe incorporate the recipe into a delicious cupcake one day. The recipe calls for lemon zest and instead of buying it, i decided to make my own with organic lemons and while i am at it, decided to make orange zest as well! I of course went to google to see how it's done and it's easier than i thought. Here is the recipe:

You need:

• 6 oranges, lemons or limes

Use as many or as few as you like but remember that you can make a lot of this at one time and store it in your cabinet for later use.

Instructions:

Clean and dry your oranges removing any labels if necessary.
Using a medium-fine grater, grate your fruit until only the white pith remains over the fruit. You now have Zest!
After you have grated all of your fruit, you can add it to any dish calling for it or you can dry it and store it.
Using either a silicone baking pad in a pan or the "release" variety of aluminum foil, spead you zest over your foil or pad, closely together but not in a mound. You want a flat layer of zest.
Place into a cool oven at 200 degrees or on a "Warm" setting and cook for one hour.
Using a spatula, turn the zest over once and stir slightly to make sure that the zest dries evenly.
Check after one hour to see if the zest is dry. If not, turn off the oven and allow the zest to dry overnight or to remain in the oven for at least one more hour.
If your zest is now dry, you can pour it into a clean and air-tight jar and store in your kitchen cabinet.

Cool Tip: After baking, baste the cake with a real lemon juice sugar syrup. Equal amount of lemon juice to sugar and boil til it becomes thick, stirring frequently. Baste the cake right as it comes out of the oven on all sides. Mmm.... finally found the secret to great lemon poppy seed loaf. Fresh lemon rind and lemon sugar syrup!