Cupcake War: Vegan Edition

Aaaand I’m back to blogging, with a somewhat triumphant return! Before I get any further into my recent baking exploits, I have to apologize to those of you who have visited rite of cake over the past few (many) months and have been greeted with a stagnating apology post from a million years ago. It was never my intention to let RoC fester for so long and I’m sorry that this blog and any of its readers have been treated like abandoned children while I was caught up in real life drama that I wish never happened. Suffice to say, last semester was stressful beyond all belief both in the complete lack of sleep and plenty of issues that were very hurtful and still confusing to this day, so forgive me in not wanting to spread the personal parts any more than I have to. In short, I’m sorry and I have plenty of recipes lined up and ready to go – thank you for your support (especially Jill, who is such a sweetheart, yay!).

And on to the fun part, the part that I’ve been missing all of these months! The story behind the “Cupcake War” actually ties into my job as a Resident Adviser, in which I’m responsible for 50 freshman girls and creating programs/activities for a dormitory of 400+ girls. This is one of those activities – a sort of coke/pepsi challenge, cupcake style.


Basically I made a batch of 100 mini vegan chocolate cupcakes and 100 regular (Martha Stewart) chocolate cupcakes (both with the standard already vegan Wilton buttercream frosting) and challenged people see if a) they could tell the difference and b) which cupcake they liked best. They had to vote on which cupcake was better without knowing which was the vegan cupcake and then once they decided I would tell them which was which and tally their vote on a giant poster. This was accompanied by informational posters about the pros/cons of veganism and all that jazz to provide an educational activity (aka doing my job).

Fun stuff, right? What was interesting was that most people actually preferred the vegan cupcakes to the regular cupcakes and many people said that they liked both cupcakes evenly. It was a neat experiment and all the girls who participated loved it, so expect some more variations on the Cupcake War and enjoy the recipe below. I’ve only posted the frosting recipe and the vegan cupcake recipe, if you’re interested in some non-vegan cupcakes then go to Martha’s recipe here. Ps sorry about no process pictures, I was baking at night and completely forgot about my camera... Oh well.

Basic (Vegan) Chocolate Cupcake Recipe

Makes: 12 cupcakes, or a lot of mini ones

From: Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

INGREDIENTS

-1 cup soy milk (I suggest chocolate soy milk)
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar (I used regular vinegar with success)
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup canola oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract, chocolate extract, or more vanilla extract (I went with more vanilla)
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup cocoa powder, Dutch-processed or regular (I used dark chocolate, though I think I would have preferred regular cocoa powder so that the cupcakes were a little less dense)
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a muffin pan with paper or foil liners.
2. Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, and set aside for a few minutes to curdle.
3. Add the sugar, oil, vanilla extract, and other extract, if using, to the soy milk mixture and beat until foamy.
4. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add in two batches to wet ingredients and beat until no large lumps remain (a few tiny lumps are OK, it will look weird. I was worried, but really you don’t have to be, these are delightful).
5. Pour into liners, filling 3/4 of the way. Bake 18 to 20 minutes (closer to 10 minutes if making mini-cupcakes), until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting (but feel free to eat them warm without frosting because they’re super tasty then too). It’s not enough to convince me to become vegan (I love dairy and sushi far too much), but it’s always good to have a cupcake to appease almost any crowd.

Buttercream Icing

Source: Wilton
Ingredients:
•1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
•1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or (vegan) margarine softened
•1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
•4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (approximately 1 lb.)
•2 tablespoons (soy) milk
Makes: About 3 cups of icing.

instructions
(Medium Consistency)
In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.
For best results, keep icing bowl in refrigerator when not in use. Refrigerated in an airtight container, this icing can be stored 2 weeks. Rewhip before using.

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IronCupcake:Earth - Herb Cupcakes

Surprise! I’m now officially an IronCupcake:Earth Challenger, so in addition to the monthly installments of Daring Bakers, I get to indulge in my cupcake-love once a month too. I like to call it my “Cupcake of the Month Club.” You might not know this, but it’s also sort of a Miss International Cupcake popularity contest, complete with prizes (click read more to see how super cute they are) – isn’t this fun already? So if you happen to wander past here and say golly, that cupcake looks like a purebred winner to me, then feel free to gleefully click your way to IronCupcake:Earth and vote for me in the right hand column. Yay!

But enough about flashy prizes and winning stuff and voting. What I really want to talk about is my hybrid cupcake creation that I whipped up the other night on a dazed whim – the awkwardly named “Chocolate Orange Rosemary Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream” (CORCCB for short?). When presented with the challenge to include herbs in my cupcakes I thought about the daring bakers spinach monstrosity and cried a little on the inside I was a little wary. As much as I like spice and pizazz in my lunches and dinners, cupcakes are my little sugar fix that I could always count on as being deliciously different than whatever main course I just ate. In some ways this still is the case. In other ways… Not so much.

I initially thought lavender because I liked the idea of purple in a cupcake – very cute. But then again lavender is a bit reminiscent of pepper and of the lavender recipes I saw, they either didn’t really interest me or they used some lavender-infused sugar. I wasn’t interested in that sort of time commitment. While googling as many herb combinations as I could find, I stumbled on to a few sites that mentioned that rosemary just plain jives with citrus. Well I jive with citrus too. Like oranges, for example. Do you know what else jives with citrus? Chocolate. Oh yes.




My theme was decided. When you look at the cupcake pictures, think orange-chocolate truffles. Only with little bits of rosemary chopped in. That is the essence of my cupcake creation. The rosemary, I found, didn’t add a different flavor like I was expecting – it was more of an added “tonal quality” to the little symphony of cupcake batter I was whipping up. It didn’t compete with the orange but rather added a bit of mellow, natural texture to it and enhanced the orange in a lovely way. So far so good.

The only issue was that after I got the cupcakes baked I A) oops - dropped a pan of them on the floor and b) they were super-orangey. Almost out of control in their orange flavor. My original plan for this recipe included an orange chocolate frosting to really make the flavor combinations pop, but the orange flavor was already exploding from every pore of the cupcake so I decided to go with a simple chocolate buttercream to temper the orange flavor just a tad. It worked, but I wish I had more frosting because the orange flavor can still be a bit overpowering when you don’t get enough frosting in a bite. I would have liked to cut down on the orange zest and extract just a tad to let the chocolate and rosemary shine through more, but I really think that these cupcakes would make excellent miniature cupcakes. That way the orange flavor would be controlled by small portions and a heftier dollop of frosting.
All in all not my favorite cupcake concoction but not one that I’d scrap entirely. I think it just needs a bit more finagling to get it just right. My family is certainly eating them without a problem. Maybe you will too 

Chocolate Orange Rosemary Cupcakes w/ Chocolate Buttercream
Print Me!
**Note: My first printable recipe! More to follow, so get excited!

Chocolate Cupcakes
Modified from Cupcake Bakeshop
24 regular cupcakes / 350 degree oven

INGREDIENTS
1 cup of 61% cocao
3 sticks butter
2-1/4 cups sugar
8 eggs
1-1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
4 tsp finely chopped rosemary
2 tbsp orange zest (I suggest reducing this to 1 tbsp)
½ tsp orange extract (I suggest reducing this to ¼ tsp)

DIRECTIONS
1.chop chocolate and transfer into the bowl of a standing mixer.
2.add butter to the chocolate and place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. stir until chocolate melts and butter is combined.
3.remove from heat and stir in sugar. let mixture cool for 10 minutes.
4.beat in an electric mixer for 3 minutes.
5.add one egg at a time, mixing for 30 seconds between each
6.sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and a pinch of salt into the mixture and mix until blended.
7.scoop into cupcake cups and bake at 350 F for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

CHOCOLATE BUTTERCREAM FROSTING
MODIFIED FROM CUPCAKE BAKESHOP
enough to lightly frost 24 cupcakes

INGREDIENTS
1 stick butter
1/2 cup cocoa
4 cups confectioner’s sugar
~1/4 cup milk (The original recipe called for ¼ c., I used probably close to ½ c. to get the taste/texture I wanted – Play around on this one)
2 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS
1.Beat butter on high for about 30 seconds until soft.
2.Add cocoa and 1 cup of sugar and beat until incorporated
3.Add half of the milk, vanilla, and the remainder of sugar and beat until incorporated.
4.Continue to add milk until you get to the consistency you want.

Our ETSY PRIZE-PACK is from artists:
• INSANEJELLYFISH
• CIRCLEMONKEY
• Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Cupcakery
• CAKESPY

Our corporate prize providers include:
- HEAD CHEFS by FIESTA PRODUCTS
- HELLO CUPCAKE by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson
- JESSIE STEELE APRONS
- TASTE OF HOME books
- A t-shirt from UPWITHCUPCAKES.COM
- Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers

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Key Lime Bakewell Tart-ing? Pud-art? Tar-dding?

To tart – start I mean (ha) – I thought everyone should know that:

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

The version we were dared to make is a combination of the pudding/tart: a sweet almond-flavored shortcrust pastry, frangipane and jam (or in my case, key lime curd). That being said, this post is being written in total procrastination in-between 6 hour study sessions in the library.
No, I’m not at school right now. Though you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference… The truth is, I’ve been missing from the face of the earth (in blogging terms anyway) thanks to my friends over at the US Green Building Council. I won’t go into much detail because nobody finds this interesting but architects/designers/civil engineers, but I’m racing against the clock to take a giant professional test known as LEED which allows me to coordinate/design nationally-recognized sustainable buildings and have a fancy title like “LEED Accredited Professional” next to my name. That and being a LEED AP at the tender age of 18 has got to be some sort of high-five worthy record… Or at the very least get me some sort of legit internship next summer (if I pass). For those of you who do know LEED, I’m sorry for dumbing that down for you. In any case, I’m taking the test now as opposed to later because the USGBC (see above) is changing the format of the test to make it harder and more expensive ($450!!!) to pass after June 30th.
So I’m taking the test at 11am June 30th. This is the part where I try to not hyperventilate. I thought about skipping this month’s DB challenge but then figured that taking a baking break in between the hours of studying might just keep whatever’s left of my sanity intact. Besides, Bakewell tarts/puddings/tar-ddings are British and I love anything British so I couldn’t pass it up. And here we are.
Last month was the strudel and it was fine, not my favorite, but fine. I’ve been crossing my fingers for something cake-y or pie-y or cupcake-y… Something simplistic and satisfying that my stress makes me crave like crazy these days. I didn’t get that, and that’s ok. Traditionally these suckers have a jam layer beneath the frangipane but I just wasn’t in the mood for jam as I’m having too much fun eating huge piles of fruit raw to go through the trouble of processing them into jam. And even though I was craving chocolate chip cookie dough (recall alert! Oh no!), I went with one of my other summer staples: key limes.

I love key limes.
I’m not a huge fruit-pie person, but key lime pie (cheesecake, tart, bar, cookie, you name it) is the one thing I can’t live without. It goes hand in hand with my addiction to citrus, but key limes are on a whole other playing field. They’re tangy, refreshing, have lovely yellow-green (maybe even chartreuse) coloring, taste amazing with whipped cream and graham crackers… I want some right now. And I wanted some when I was thinking of what to put in my pud-art too. So naturally I found a key lime curd recipe (compliments of Martha, what a dear) and decided to really go all out with the key lime flavor by adding key lime buttercream frosting to the top (hats off to Southern Living on that one). That and sprinkles.




Fun fact of the day: this is the first time I’ve used a scale in baking (aka haven’t converted all the measurements into cups, etc). It was exciting.

Bakewell Tart…er…pudding (little tartlettes style)
Makes one 23cm (9” tart)
Prep time: less than 10 minutes (plus time for the individual elements)
Resting time: 15 minutes
Baking time: 30 minutes
Equipment: 23cm (9”) tart pan or pie tin (preferably with ridged edges), rolling pin, I used little muffin tins.

One quantity sweet shortcrust pastry (recipe follows)
flour
(1cup (8 US fl. oz)) jam or curd, warmed for spreadability
One quantity frangipane (recipe follows)

Assembling the tart

Place the chilled dough disc on a lightly floured surface. If it's overly cold, you will need to let it become acclimatised for about 15 minutes before you roll it out. Flour the rolling pin and roll the pastry to 5mm (1/4”) thickness, by rolling in one direction only (start from the centre and roll away from you), and turning the disc a quarter turn after each roll. When the pastry is to the desired size and thickness, transfer it to the tart pan, press in and trim the excess dough. Patch any holes, fissures or tears with trimmed bits. Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400F.
Remove shell from freezer, spread as even a layer as you can of jam onto the pastry base. Top with frangipane, spreading to cover the entire surface of the tart. Smooth the top and pop into the oven for 30 minutes. The finished tart will have a golden crust and the frangipane will be tanned, poofy and a bit spongy-looking. Remove from the oven and cool on the counter. Serve warm, with crème fraîche, whipped cream or custard sauce if you wish.
When you slice into the tart, the almond paste will be firm, but slightly squidgy and the crust should be crisp but not tough.

Sweet shortcrust pastry
Prep time: 15-20 minutes
Resting time: 30 minutes (minimum)

225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) vanilla extract (optional)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Grate butter into the flour mixture, using the large hole-side of a box grater. Using your finger tips only, and working very quickly, rub the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Set aside.
Lightly beat the egg yolks with the almond extract (if using) and quickly mix into the flour mixture. Keep mixing while dribbling in the water, only adding enough to form a cohesive and slightly sticky dough. Form the dough into a disc, wrap in cling and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes

Frangipane (now with coconut!)
Prep time: 10-15 minutes

Ingredients
(4.5oz) unsalted butter, softened
(4.5oz) icing sugar
(3) eggs
(½ tsp) almond extract
(4.5oz) ground almonds
(1oz) all purpose flour
Optional : 1/3 cup shredded coconut, unsweetened (sorry, no weighing out when I’m guessing on this)

Cream butter and sugar together for about a minute or until the mixture is primrose in colour and very fluffy. Scrape down the side of the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. The batter may appear to curdle. In the words of Douglas Adams: Don’t panic. Really. It’ll be fine. After all three are in, pour in the almond extract and mix for about another 30 seconds and scrape down the sides again. With the beaters on, spoon in the ground nuts and the flour. Mix well. The mixture will be soft, keep its slightly curdled look (mostly from the almonds) and retain its pallid yellow color.

Key Lime Curd – Martha stewart
Makes 3/4 cup (note: for the tart I doubled this and then only put in 4tbsp of butter… Do what you want)
•1/2 cup sugar
•2 large eggs
•2 tablespoons grated key-lime zest, plus 1/4 cup freshly squeezed key-line juice (6 limes)
•4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Directions
1.Combine sugar, eggs, lime zest, and juice in a medium nonreactive saucepan, and set over medium-low heat. Cook, whisking constantly, until mixture begins to thicken and holds the mark of the whisk, 10 to 12 minutes.
2.Remove pan from heat, and whisk in butter, a piece at a time, until well combined. Strain mixture through a sieve into a glass bowl. Lay plastic directly on surface to prevent a skin from forming. Chill 3 hours or overnight to set the curd.


Key Lime Buttercream Frosting
Southern Living, MARCH 2009
Prep: 10 min.
Yield: Makes about 5 ½ cups, I cut it in half for the tartlettes and I still came out with too much frosting... it is tasty by itself

Ingredients
•1 cup butter, softened
•3 teaspoons Key lime zest
•2 teaspoons vanilla extract
•1/4 teaspoon salt
•2 (16-oz.) package powdered sugar (so 32 oz total)
•6 tablespoons Key lime juice
•2 to 4 Tbsp. milk

Preparation
1. Beat first 4 ingredients at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.
2. Gradually add powdered sugar alternately with Key lime juice, 1 Tbsp. at a time, and 1 Tbsp. milk, beating at low speed until blended and smooth after each addition. Beat in up to 1 Tbsp. additional milk for desired consistency.

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