Cupcake Friday Project

For this month’s Cupcake Gauntlet, I decided to be straightforward with the secret ingredient and showcase it throughout the cupcake. No cleverness, no alchemy. No miniature pieces of cake fried up like French Toast (though that was pretty creative)

For those of you who might be new to the Gauntlet, here’s the breakdown (Much like the 2nd chapter in the Babysitter’s Club Little Sister series, which was ALWAYS the same in every book. In other words, skip this if you already know all the details):

• Taste testers suggest secret ingredient ideas the second week of the month. The ingredient needs to be seasonal, edible and not too rare or expensive.
• Suggestions and the name of the suggester get written on a slip of paper, folded and tossed into my mixing bowl. I draw one slip.
• I have the weekend to research the ingredient (if necessary) and come up with my cupcake recipe.
• On Monday I contact the taste testers and inform them of the cupcake and announce the winner (who gets a free cupcake that week).

This month, taste tester and Cipher Primer Nikko finally tossed an ingredient suggestion into the hat, and lucky for him, I selected it. His suggestion of cotton candy came from the idea of the start of summer and carnivals.

To prepare, I did some research and found that Darla of Bakingdom had come up with a wonderful Honeydukes Candyfloss cupcake (Honeydukes is a sweet shop in the Harry Potter universe, and candyfloss is cotton candy). Her process for integrating the cotton candy into the cake and frosting made the most sense to me, so this recipe is an adaption of hers. She warned against using cotton candy flavoring, since it tends to come out very artificial, so I followed her advice.

Unfortunately, I’m not super pleased with these cupcakes. I couldn’t pick up the cotton candy in the cake, and it’s faint in the frosting as well. The garnish is also troublesome—to keep it from dissolving into the frosting, you have to garnish it right before eating. But to complicate matters more, you need to keep the cotton candy all clumped together before garnishing. Why? Well, last night I measured out my cotton candy tufts and sealed them in with the cupcakes (maybe the cupcakes moisture played a part in this, though they weren’t touching), and I awoke to crystallized bits of cotton candy. So for my morning delivery to Cipher Prime, I crumbled those bits into crystallized cotton candy sprinkles, instead of possibly leaving them with a mess.

Nevertheless, it’s a lesson learned and a cupcake baked.

Xanthe Milton has a robust YouTube channel, which shows her love of all things frosting-related. Her tutorials are easy to follow, and I really love this ruffle technique! I might not want to use this regularly because it takes a bit longer than my usual swirls and dollops, but it’s definitely a show-stopper!

Check out Xanthe’s YouTube channel to learn more fantastic frosting techniques.

As promised, here is my Cupcake Smash 2013 cupcake entry recipe. It’s scaled down and should be kept to the mini-cupcake format. I honestly can’t imagine eating a standard-sized cupcake … the flavors are too over the top. And if you want to forego the horseradish, I suggest making a glaze with confectioners sugar and vodka.

Another quick tip … if you make the horseradish frosting, look in your international aisle at the grocery store for wasabi paste. Why wasabi? Because it’s known as Japanese horseradish AND since it’s rather expensive to cultivate, most wasabi is actually horseradish with some green food coloring. Fun Fact Monday, eh?

In the sweet onion caramel drizzle, you’ll see that I include red miso, and no, that is not a typo. I like that it makes this a salted caramel, but the miso also gives the caramel some umami. And since this is a pretty weird cupcake already, why not continue with the theme?

I’ve also included my Bloody Mary mix recipe (see the image below). I found it to be flavorful, spicy, and well suited to my cupcake recipe, but if you have a favorite mix already, use that.

On Saturday, April 27, I competed with 40+ other bakers in the 3rd annual Cupcake Smash, co-sponsored by Philabundance and PYT. One of the things that is so great about the event (and why I participate) is that 100% of the profits benefit Philabundance, Delaware Valley’s largest hunger relief organization. This year, Cupcake Smash had approximately 500 attendees and raised more than $14,000 to help hungry families.

Like the other years, the competition is broken into amateurs and pros, but this year saw a few excellent changes:

• Bakers were required to bake at least 300 mini cupcakes.
• Judges (1 set for pro, 1 set for amateur) would visit every table, trying each cupcake and scoring.
• Prizes would be awarded for 1st-3rd place, as well as people’s choice for each group.

I was excited to know that I was going to be able to present my work before the judges, so I stepped up my game with my table decor, creating a colorful Cupcake Friday bunting hung above, and of course, had Ray design another cupcake character and sign for me.

From the beginning of the Smash back in 2011, I have always selected an inspiration item off of the burger and sandwich side of PYT’s menu. Why? Because I feel like the adult shakes aren’t a real challenge. Turning a Butterfinger milkshake into a cupcake is a snap … and I actually already HAVE a Butterfinger cupcake recipe that is slamming. What’s important to me is to push my limits and to be as creative as possible. Hence, the Piggy Mary cupcakes.

The Piggy Mary is a Bloody Mary cake, made with my own Bloody Mary mix and a horseradish-infused vodka that I infused myself, frosted with a sweet horseradish buttercream, and topped with brown sugar candied bacon crumbles and a sweet onion caramel.

I was blown away by how well these cupcakes worked … they were moist and balanced sweet and savory very well. And while I may not have won (I tied for 7th place), it was a cupcake I was proud to put out. I even made some without the bacon for vegetarian attendees (or those who don’t care for bacon) and I received so many thank yous for my thoughtfulness. I also had a lot of people at my table utterly shocked that, yes, I made a Bloody Mary into a cupcake. I think approximately 95% of the people who were brave enough to try my cupcake were totally wowed. Many dropped their “people’s choice” votes into my vote bag, and even more came back for seconds. It was very validating.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get out from behind my table much, though Ray did bring me a selection of cupcakes to try from the amateur division. We were between 2 very talented bakers, with a ?uestlove Milkshake cupcake to my right and a wild chocolate cupcake topped with a cheddar and jalapeno frosting and tater tot to my left (trust me, it worked). Next year, I’ve REALLY got to get out from behind my table and socialize. And make a winning cupcake.

Now, you might be wondering why I made Piggy Mary a queen, and well, it’s because I’m a huge nerd for the history and literature surrounding the War of the Roses, the Tudors and the like. See, I married 2 concepts: “Bloody Mary” (actually known as Mary, Queen of the Scots, the only daughter to King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon) and a Bloody Mary cocktail (the 2 actually aren’t related). See, Queen Mary was called “Bloody Mary” because of all the Protestants killed under her (short) reign as Queen (she was a DEVOUT Catholic who thought she was saving souls). So, there you have it: the inspiration for my much more chill Queen of the Barnyard and lover of morning cocktails.

Check back for my recipe, including my Bloody Mary mix recipe and instructions on how to infuse your own vodka!

Go read this article, “Cupcake Wars” written by Allison Robicelli of Robicelli’s. Sure, she’s in the business of baking, but she makes a lot of great points about how the latest article about the cupcake crash, this time from The Wall Street Journal, isn’t looking at the full picture. It focuses on Crumbs’ share prices dropping, but forgets to mention that NOT ALL BAKERIES ARE PUBLICLY TRADED! Or that not all bakeries expand like Crumbs did.

But better yet, Robicelli takes on Grub Street’s “Nine Reasons Why the Cupcake Boom Went Bust.” And it’s hilarious and mouthy, but also makes great points.

To be honest, I don’t get the hate that cupcakes get. They’re handheld cake with frosting on top. Sure, they’re not an amazing French pastry, but that doesn’t make them across-the-board garbage. There are certainly crap cupcakes out there, but there are also a number of great ones from great and creative bakers (there are also a lot of crap desserts being served in restaurants across the country, but you don’t see me kicking up a fuss about dessert).

I guess the other thing that is, quite frankly, pissing me off is the negativity Cupcake Smash is seeing via the comments in a number of online articles. Now, I know the rule … don’t read the comments, but come on. We’re seeing people troll posts being put up that simply announce the event.

If you don’t like cupcakes, that’s fine, but don’t spew negativity at a group of 40+ bakers who are working our asses off to bake creative treats to share with likeminded people who are willing to pay a ticket fee which goes straight to Philabundance, helping the area get healthy food. Just keep it to yourself.

Or in the ever immortal words of Wil Wheaton: “Don’t be a dick.”

Happy baking!

The Gauntlet is back, and after a smash hit with last month’s Chocolate Stout Bacon Cupcake, I feel the trend of exciting ingredients and solid cupcake recipes continues to move forward.

For anyone new to the Gauntlet, here’s the breakdown:

For this month, I had yet another a holdover ingredient from February and March come through from Thorin: chile peppers. Because he was non-specific about what kind of chile peppers, I had more freedom about what I could select to work with. I’ve worked with chiles and chile products in the past, with my Sriracha Chocolate Cupcake and Spicy Mango Madness Cupcake, and I like the play of heat and sweet.

In our house, we have ancho chiles (fun fact, anchos are dried poblanos!), random dried chiles (smallish, bought in bulk), cayenne powder and habanero powder. I decided to work with the ancho and cayenne.

I really like the slow burn in these cupcakes, but they didn’t make for an easy baking night. I ended up baking them twice, perfecting the rise (my first attempt flat-topped out and the tops were crumbly). Getting the ancho chile to infuse well also wasn’t as easy of a task as I had hopped. Originally, I steeped a chopped up ancho chile in milk and took it from there, but found the flavor to be lacking. So I pureed the chile in and that was a little better, but not enough. Enter the cayenne, which then pulled together the heat and complemented the sweetness of the cake. For the second time around, I swapped in buttermilk for milk, rehydrated the chile in water, made a paste with it and added it at the end. Vast improvement.

The cupcakes photographed here were also topped with minis that I had baked, sliced in half, dipped in French toast batter, fried up, re-toasted and sliced in half. It was an overly-involved process, and I don’t feel like it delivered, so I didn’t share the process here. But I’m glad I tried it, just to see if it would work well (maybe better if the cake had staled a bit, instead of being fresh).