Brown Sugar Pound Cake Cupcakes with a Brown Butter Glaze

I am kind a sick of all these cupcakes. That’s why I chose to make more of them. I am a girl of many contradictions. But these cupcakes are such that in my mind they don’t necessarily qualify as one, ( honestly anything in a cupcake shape is a cupcake. If it looks like a cupcake, it is.) Yet, the pound cake texture makes them less of a cupcake more of a dense brown sugary individual pound cake, glazed with a brown butter glaze. I loved the nutty roasted flavor of the brown butter; it really complemented the brown sugar pound cake, making the flavors a bit more intriguing.
You can find the recipe for these delicious cupcakes at Martha Stewart's website (the cupcake queen. She is even coming out with a cupcake book!) Click here for the recipe.

BROWN BUTTER?
Perhaps you don’t know what it is, or perhaps you think it is simply burnt butter. It is not and learning how to make it will prove very fruitful:
1. You can make this cupcakes.
2. Brown butter or beurre noisette in French makes such a nice accompaniment to many other things: gnocchi, pasta, winter squash, sautéed sole and much more.

How to properly brown butter:
First you need to realize what your outcome should be: Burnt will taste well, burnt, acrid and highly disagreeable. Browned butter will taste highly aromatic, nutty and roasted. Browning butter is simply caramelizing the solid milk fats. Harold McGee says:” Their flavor is deepened by heating the butter to about 250F until its water boils off and the molecules in the white residue, milk sugar and protein, react with each other to form brown pigments and new aromas.” I think the best way is to slowly heat it. This way you have much more control. You can see the colors start to slowly change. I would take it off the heat right before it hits that deeper nutty color, due to carryover cooking.
For instance, in this recipe, the butter needs to cool. By cooling it you can easily pour off the brown butter and not the milk solids floating at the top.
To see pictures and a step-by-step tutorial, check out Michael Rhulman’s blog.
ENJOY!!!

Root Beer Chocolate Bundt Cake by BAKED

What better way to start the New Year than indulging? To be honest, I made this before the New Year and brought it to a Benefit Concert at Death by Audio (a Brooklyn venue), and who ever donated money got a slice. It is good to give. This chocolate root beer bundt cake is supremely moist and flavorful. Root beer is used not only in the batter but also in the frosting. We used the best root beer we could buy: Virgil's. It isn't made with corn syrup, it is micro-brewed and you can truly taste notes of wintergreen, vanilla and sasparilla. I am not sure it was necessary to buy the best root beer, since it is going in the cake. Hey, never hurts to start with quality. And for all those who cannot make it to Baked, the wonderful shop in Red Hook Brooklyn, you can now try their decadent sweets. Baked is all about whimsical and retro desserts, plus they taste amazing. The root beer chocolate bundt cake is no different, delicious and sumptuous. Even my grandmother has been begging for the recipe.
The root beer flavor was more present the first day, even though they say in the cookbook it will be stronger the next. This cake is slightly decadent but a sure crowd pleaser, plus it makes everyone feel nostalgic and wonderful (well maybe a little bigger in the waistline.)
You can either buy the Baked Cookbook or just click here for the recipe.

Happy New Year!

Also, I am writing about my culinary school adventures on a great website called Chef’s Blade, a resource center for culinary professionals. I talk about my culinary experiences… the people I admire, techniques and fundamentals. If you can’t get enough of me, go check it out.

The Long Awaited Most Beloved Madeleines

I lot of you have been waited for this post. And if you haven’t, you just didn’t know you were. Too be honest, there is nothing difficult about madeleines, if anything they are pretty versatile, orange, lemon thyme, lavender honey, chocolate. You name it. What is difficult is making sure to purchase the right pan and grease the pan in a way so the madeleines don’t stick. (This way they come out looking like gorgeous shells, not mutilated cookie specimens. I mean we need to make Proust proud…)
I use the recipe off of epicurious, but I like them a tad bit more lemony, so I add just a little lemon juice, like a teaspoon. It brings out the flavor of the zest. These one’s are not too sweet, highly addictive and the perfect accompaniment with tea, or just fresh from the oven (for some reason they hardly ever make it to tea.)
As I mentioned before, the pan is important. The pan really is the reason for these cookies, they create the shape, and equally attribute for the light fluffy texture. Do not use the silicon pan; it will be hard to remove the madeleines. I used a French tin pan that I picked up from Broadway Panhandler’s. This means I had to butter and flour for each batch. But I think a non-stick pan would work quite well. Just remember: if they stick, this can be a big problem, the shell imprint will not appear and the cookie can fall apart.
Click Here for the Recipe



My Side Note of Madeleines: Oh Proust!

Proust gets a lot of credit for the success for this cookie. And to be honest, I am not sure he deserves it. Why do I say this? Because Proust divulges in many things, not just French cookies. For Proust, many seemingly insignificant objects, food items, art can “déclenche” (to spark in French) a memory. Not just madeleines. So why has the food world harped so much on these few pages? Maybe his oh-so French idealism or his page long sentences intricately weaving food, memory and perception. I would just like to say, Proust is much more than this darling edible golden clam…
But if Proust can make the Madeleine some French fantasy you want to literally eat up, I say, why not? Divulge!

Madeleine Patisserie

A little French Patisserie sits amongst the busy 23rd Street in Manhattan, awaiting pedestrians to look in at the lovely display cases filled with fruit tarts, croissants and of course a seemingly endless amount of macaroons. What? Did I just say macaroons? Despite this bakery’s name, it isn’t known for the Proustian delight, but the French macaroon. Macaroons epitomize luxury with their delicate yet ultra sweet quality. I mean, common, they were Marie Antoinette’s favorite. At Madeleine, macaroons come in many flavors: the common, chocolate, raspberry, pistachio, vanilla, and more intriguing and experimental flavors, Caramel Fleur de Sel, Port Wine and Chocolate, Lavender, Rose Water.


Here are the one’s I tried:
Pistachio Orange: I do not like the overtly green color, and lack of pistachio flavor, but the orange came through nicely.
Caramel Fleur de Sel: This one was one of my favorites. It had a nice balance between salt and caramel. A warmth and smooth quality permeated throughout this two-bite delicacy.
Port Wine and Chocolate: The port wine tasted more like grape juice, and the chocolate was much more of a milk chocolate, surprisingly lacking in chocolate flavor. Overall, in concept this one sounds interesting, but in fact, it fell flat and needs work.
Apricot and Champagne: Here you could taste more of the champagne; a light fruity wine came through. The apricot was a nice pairing and this one worked much more successfully than the port wine.
I will note, that since these macaroons are slightly refrigerated, they need time to come to room temperature, to restore their chewy delicate quality and for the flavor to release. Since being under a time constraint, I did not allow them to sufficiently come to room temperature, which I assume affected the taste and texture slightly. But these macaroons were still delicious. Although my favorite macaroons I have tried thus far in America have to be from Miette, the patisserie in San Francisco. They have the perfect texture and the grapefruit is well, incredible.

Madeleine Patisserie
128 W 23rd St
(between 7th Ave & Avenue Of The Americas)
(212) 243-2757

Baked

A Red Hook institution for baked wonders might be far away for some New Yorkers, but now that Ikea has opened, a flock of newcomers (like me) have come to taste some sugary goodness. This bakery gets a lot of press, and from the orange front and chic interior, I can see why. But it isn’t just the lovely surroundings but the baked goods.
Parking my large obtrusive U-Haul in front of the store, I climbed out to try a few of these infamous baked goods.
The red velvet cupcake with cinnamon frosting topped with a red hot was by far the best thing I had there. The red velvet was deep in flavor exuding just enough chocolate. It was ultra moist and topped with the silky smooth and wonderfully complementary cinnamon frosting (just enough cinnamon, but not too overwhelming.) Perfectly sized, I devoured in way too short of a time.
The chocolate cookie sandwich filled with vanilla cream was extra generous in size and tasty. While I do admit, I prefer the ones at Westville (NYC) with a chewier softer, more rich in chocolate cookie, this one was still quite good; yet the vanilla filling was quite firm.


Finally we tried something savory, cornbread with chorizo. While I am not a big fan of meats in my baked goods, my boyfriend (the meat lover) was eager to try it. It was nice and smoky, but I though it was too dense and moist. It lacked that crumbly light, buttery-ness that I look for in cornbread.
Overall, I would make it out here for there amazing cupcakes and slices of cake. You can make a day of it, by going past the athletic fields and picking up some tacos. Pork Chop Express has a great post about the variety of tacos and aqua frescas in Red Hook. Then swing by Baked for your sugar fix.
Baked
359 Van Brunt Street
Brooklyn, New York 11231
718.222.0345

TARTINE Galettes and A Contest to Win the COOKBOOK!

Tartine is a San Francisco establishment and rightfully so. But because of long lines and inconvenient location (at least for a Sunset girl), I opted to buy the cookbook and make some of their delicious treats. Last summer, I attempted the chocolate-layered ganache cake with caramel filling. But for a simpler fare, I recently made fruit galettes. You can make them with an assortment of fillings. I made a Gravenstein (Sebastopol) apple galette and two nectarine and strawberry galettes. The mixed stone fruit and berries made a nice pairing, plus I added some vanilla bean (from the pod) to give it a warm balanced taste. The crust is amazing. It is all about technique. Rolling out the butter makes the butter long and thin giving the crust a delicious flakiness and tenderness. I then sprinkled the crust with turbinado sugar, to give it a nice texture and color.
I would love to give you this recipe, but here’s the deal, it is about three pages long. The recipe itself is not that long but the explanation about technique and chilling (which are key) take a while. So, I am giving away a Tartine cookbook to the person who writes the most comments on my blog (incentive for you to read it and be rewarded!)
Here are the conditions for the CONTEST!
There is a 5 comment minimum to be considered. So no, if you comment once and you are the only person, you can’t win.
It will be tallied for a one-month period starting today.
I will email the winner, and get your address and I will send you a cookbook.
P.S There will not be a tie, so if you are tied, I might judge the quality of comments not only the quantity.

SO here’s to commenting and to good baking!

The Almighty Coconut Cake

After watching Alton Brown make a coconut cake truly from scratch, my parents and I set out to make it our family project. Trust me, you need a few hands. What mad inspiration took hold of us that spring evening that made us desire to recreate what we saw on TV? I am still not sure. Was it Alton’s savvy camera angles, or his handy tricks or his nostalgia for the perfect home made coconut cake symbolizing 1950’s Americana. Whatever captivated us; we were determined to become as passionate about this cake as he.
This week, we attempted to make this three page long recipe using all resources we had available: drill, mallet, cusinart, kitchen aid mixer, glass jars, spoons, knifes, scales and more kitchen appliances, plus six hands, three brains, and some tricky maneuvering. We first began purchasing two organic coconuts with no crying eyes. (If you look at the indentation marks on the bottom of the coconut, it should look like a face, but not a sad face, because that means the coconut is old, and we wouldn’t want an old coconut, at least this is what Alton Brown tells us.) We bring them home and begin.
First we drill holes, extract the coconut juice, then bake for 15 minutes until the outer exterior cracks and you can break it off. Although, this may sound easy, the outer exterior is one stubborn shell. Prying, tearing, hammering and fighting made us feel like Keith Richards after his coconut incident, a little woozy (but I guess he always feels that way.) After Family vs. The Coconut (a formidable competitor) we peeled the thin brown skin and grated the coconut chunks. We then made the extract which involved a very under priced bottle of vodka and some freshly grated coconut and a week’s time. Every night, I shook my bottle, waiting for extract to form. (Don’t sit there, the extract won’t mind.)
We then made fresh coconut cream and milk, with boiled two percent milk poured over two different quantities of grated coconut. This is then strained and saved until the baking process.
Which brings me to my next point, the baking. Measuring and following instructions is key. And my mom and I spared no expense. I mean common, we spent over week prepping, so we had to nail this. I am giving you the links to Alton’s Brown’s recipe so you can attempt all the adventures at home. After beating, mixing, accurately measuring (as if in some life or death science experiment) the golden fluffy cakes came out of the oven. We made the frosting and assembled the cake.
Each layer is sprayed with a light misting of coconut juice. All the elements of the coconut are used in the making of this cake, which makes you feel pretty good for all your hard work. This monster of a cake is smeared with a sticky sweet frosting and lots of grated coconut. The subtle, creamy coconut came through like never before. With the appearance of some giant snowball, it was light yet surprisingly had a richness due to the coconut milk and cream. After the first bite of this cloud like mass, it was well worth the effort.