A Tiramisu Triumph!

I'm excited to share this recipe with you.  Of all the desserts, cupcakes, and sweet treats I've made to date, these cupcakes absolutely received the most rave reviews.  They are both pretty and pretty easy to make!  If you like tiramisu, I cannot  recommend these enough.

To begin, mix up your favorite yellow cake recipe and bake it into cupcakes.

As they are cooling, make a cup of coffee.  Any flavor you like will do just fine.

Next, using a skewer, poke holes into the cupcakes.  Be sure to poke several holes so the coffee absorbs.  You can either use a pastry brush to apply the coffee to the cupcakes or a spoon to pour it on.  I found using a spoon worked better to achieve the sponge-soaked cake effect of tiramisu.  I poured a teaspoon sized spoon of coffee onto each cupcake, one at a time, and repeated the process until the cup of coffee was gone.  

This photo shows the three steps from bottom to top:

1.  Bake cupcakes

2.  Poke holes with skewer

3.  Apply coffee with pastry bush or spoon

While the cupcakes sit soaking up the coffee, prepare the icing (which is soooo delicious!).  One of the distinctive flavors of tiramisu is mascarpone cheese, a smooth and soft buttery cream mixture with a sweet, light flavor.  In the cupcake version it's used in the icing.  You can find it in the cheese section at most grocery stores.

Mascarpone Cheese Icing

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 8 oz. package of mascarpone cheese

1/2 cup confectioners sugar

Using an electric mixer, beat heavy cream until it forms stiff peaks.  (To see the progression of stiffness as you beat the cream, click here for photos at one minute intervals).

In a separate bowl, beat together mascarpone cheese and sugar.  Once the mixture if fully creamed together, add the whipped cream in three increments, beating until completely incorporated at each interval.  The final product of icing will look like this:

To ice the cupcakes, I used a piping bag with the end snipped off.

After each cupcake is piled high with fluffy icing, dust the tops with cocoa powder.

Lastly, add some bittersweet chocolate shavings for garnish (if desired).

And there you have it! 

You can see the coffee soaked cake deliciousness after just one bite.  

Tiramisu is my Husband's favorite dessert so I'll be baking him these for Valentine's Day.  I hope you have an opportunity to make and enjoy them, too!

Chocolatey Halloween Baked Donuts

I found THE most amazing chocolate donut recipe.  I will look no further, this one is it!  I love when a recipe is just right on the first try.  Another great thing is that it yields 6 donuts, so if you have the urge to make them you will not end up with an army of donuts that need eating!!

So, here's the recipe:

Chocolate Baked Donuts

(adapted from Handle the Heat)

Note : It may seem strange to add nutmeg to a chocolate recipe, but nutmeg is the key to a recognizable doughnut flavor. It’s fine to leave it out, but your doughnuts may taste a bit more like chocolate cupcakes.

1 cup of flour

2 tablespoons Dutch cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon fine grain salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup milk (I used 2%)

1/4 cup plain yogurt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large egg

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly grease donut pan (or muffin tin).  Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda, then whisk in sugar, nutmeg and salt.  Using your fingers, add the butter working it into the dry ingredients until course crumbles are formed.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, yogurt and egg.  Add the dry ingredients and stir until they are just combined.

You do not want to over mix the donuts or they will bake up dense and heavy, rather than light and fluffy.  To place donut batter into the donut pan cavities, pour the batter into a ziploc bag, cutting off one corner.  You can then squeeze the batter into the pan with minimal mess.  Fill each cavity about 1/2 to 3/4 full.

If you overfill the pan the donuts will bake up without a hole in the middle.  Bake for 8-10 minutes until the donuts spring back lightly when touched.  Place on a rack to cool slightly before adding the glaze.

Chocolate Glaze

from Alton Brown

1/4 Cup unsalted butter

4 tablespoons whole milk, warmed (I used 2%)

1/2 tablespoon light corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 cup confectioners sugar, sifted

Combine butter, milk, corn syrup and vanilla in a medium sauce pan over medium heat until butter is melted.  Decrease heat, blend in  chocolate, whisking until it's melted.  Turn off the heat and add powdered sugar, whisking until smooth.  Place the mixture over a bowl of hot water and dip immediately into the glaze mixture.  Allow glaze to set 30 minutes before serving.

I wanted to "Halloween-up" my donuts, so added black gel food dye into the donut batter to darken it up a bit.  I also added black dye to the chocolate glaze until it was a nice, deep, black color.  I tried dipping the first two donuts in the glaze, but they broke apart and were a mess.  For the remaining 4 I place a sheet of waxed paper underneath the cooling rack and spooned on the glaze.  This worked perfectly.  When I finished, I removed the waxed paper and was left with no mess at all.

Once glazed, I sprinkled on some orange and white ice cream sprinkles I had in my pantry.  They look delicious and taste even better!  What a great way to start off Halloween day by baking these for breakfast with your ghouls and goblins.  :)

Celebrating Star Wars!

Last month George Lucas released the Star Wars Saga on Blu-ray.  This was a big day for the fans!  I'm a bit late in the game, but I had some Star Wars baking tools I wanted to experiment with in honor of my favorite Movie Trilogies!

First, I purchased a Star Wars cookie cutter set from Williams-Sonoma.  It 's an absolutely fantastic set, however I will need to spend more time figuring out how to ice them more appropriately, or if they should be iced at all.  I started with Darth Vader, as I wanted to use a chocolate cookie dough.  These cutters also are press cookies that make a crisp, indented image in the cut out.

The one pictured above is covered in flour so that I don't forget to tell you that you MUST dip the cutter in flour each time you cutout a cookie or dough will become stuck in the crevices and the shape will be unusable.  I learned this the hard way!  

So, you begin by mixing up chocolate cut-out cookie dough.  This is my favorite recipe:

Chocolate Cut-Out Cookies

adapted from recipe found on Bake at 350 (also my inspiration for these cookies!)

1 cup unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup baking cocoa

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together the dry ingredients and set them aside. Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Combine the flour mixture a little at a time. Roll the dough onto a floured/cocoa-ed surface. Cut out desired shapes with selected cookie cutters. Freeze cut-outs on cookie sheet for 5 minutes before baking to ensure baked cookies will keep their shape. Decorate with icing as desired.

Next, roll out the dough and start cutting the shapes.  With the press cutters, once you have positioned the cutter and pressed it into the dough, you should press down again to create a nice, indented image on the cookie.  Be sure to roll and cut the cookies on a FLOURED surface (again, if you don't properly flour the cookie will stick to the rolling surface and become extremely difficult to remove, likely resulting in tearing the shape).

This is what you don't want (shape stuck to counter):

This is what you do want (shape lifted up with cutter):

To remove the cookie, push the press down, place cutout on a cookie sheet.  Do not worry about the white flour on the cookie, it will bake right in:

Once they are baked, you can decorate them after they've cooled.  I mixed up some black icing to pipe into the crevices of the cookie.  It was much more difficult than I expected.  I used very thick icing and a #1 tip, but it still spread into other parts of the cookie.  I began to get the hang of it, but between you and me I was glad I ran out of cookies to pipe!  

Now, moving on from frustrating to extremely frustrating:  Cupcake Stencils.  These were also purchased at Williams-Sonoma.  Of course, the box instructions make it look so easy.  The idea is that the stencils are curved to mimic the dome of a cupcake to ensure crisp lines and perfect images.  I tried, I really did.  Many times.  I re-frosted cupcakes and started over and over again.  The stencils would stick to the frosting making the design messy when lifting the stencil up.  The sugar would build up in the middle of the design and not cover the edges.  All sorts of problems.  I'm not used to not being able to  figure out a way to get something the way I would like it to be.  In this instance the stencils won and I was defeated.  I suppose the force was not with me.  I need further baking Jedi training and Yoda's calming influence!

One bit of advice, let the frosting set for a few minutes so the stencil won't stick as much.

This cupcake had been frosted and re-frosted so many times it became a bit messy.

I also made cupcakes with the rest of the stencils, too, just for "fun".  Here they are:

I'm not 100% sure I will try these again.  We'll see!  This is one of the instances I would have preferred not to post my baking project because I'm not happy with it.  However, I promised I would share the good and the bad.  It's all in the trying anyway!  Happy Baking.  :)