Elevating the Ordinary: Mascarpone Cupcakes

February 1, 2010 | Posted by Lorraine as Baking, Cake Recipes at 10:15 am | Comments »

Here’s something I can never seem to tire of: cupcakes. You probably already have favorite chocolate cupcake and yellow cupcake recipes (if not, don’t worry- I’ll share my recipe for those soon enough!), and today I want to share with you another one that will definitely go on your list of favorites. That is, if you like moist, creamy cupcakes.

: Buttercream Cupcake from Crestock Creative Images

And you do, don’t you?

But wait, before you begin reading the recipe below, I must warn you: it includes a box of white cake mix.

Ah, so that’s why I titled this “Elevating the Ordinary”! Let me tell you, though, that there isn’t anything ordinary about these cupcakes.

The secret of these cupcakes is that they’re made with mascarpone- a creamy, delicious Italian cheese that is simply like no other. The stuff is not cheap, certainly, but that’s another reason why these cupcakes taste so good: they’re decadent. You can, of course, try substituting regular cream cheese (Philly or otherwise), which should work nicely, but if you can, please, please try these with mascarpone. They’re from a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis, but while the lovely Giada makes them in mini sizes, I like to use my standard sized cupcake pan for these.

Mascarpone Cupcakes

8 oz. mascarpone cheese
2 egg whites
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I like to use Sunflower or Safflower. The more flavorless, the better!)
1 box white cake mix
1 cup water

Preheat your oven to 350F. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners.

Combine mascarpone, egg whites and oil in a large bowl. Beat with a stand or hand mixer until combined and creamy. Add white cake mix and water all at once, and mix on LOW speed until smooth, until incorporated- but don’t overmix.

Fill cupcake pan 2/3rds full, and bake around 15-17 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Frost with American Buttercream or Italian Meringue Buttercream and top with your favorite sprinkles- or, as in the mouthwatering photo above, with little curls of white and dark chocolate.

Serious(ly good) Cake

July 26, 2009 | Posted by Lorraine as Baking, Cake Recipes at 2:42 pm | Comments »

This, ladies and gentlemen, is serious cake.

serious-cake

It isn’t much to look at- especially when the photo was taken with an ultrabad cellphone camera- but the point is that it’s weak-at-the-knees delicious. Rich and gooey and chocolatey and sweet and nutty and… will leave you swooning. It’s chocolate, of course, and like the best of chocolate cakes, isn’t ashamed to shout it to the world: hey! there’s chocolate in here. A LOT of chocolate. And sugar. And butter. As you’ll see:

Texas-style Chocolate Pecan Sheet Cake

Combine in a mixing bowl:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

In a saucepan, melt:
2 sticks butter (around 230 grams)
Add 4 heaping tablespoons cocoa powder. Stir together.
Add 1 cup boiling water, allow mixture to boil for 30 seconds, then turn off heat. Pour over flour mixture, and stir lightly to cool.

In measuring cup, pour 1/2 cup buttermilk.
Add:
2 beaten eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
Stir buttermilk mixture into butter/chocolate mixture. Pour into sheet cake pan and bake at 350-degrees for 20 minutes.

While cake is baking, make icing:
Chop 1/2 cup pecans finely.
Melt 1 3/4 sticks butter in a saucepan.
Add 4 heaping tablespoons cocoa, stir to combine, then turn off heat.
Add:
6 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 lb minus 1/2 cup powdered sugar
Stir together.
Add pecans, stir together, and pour over warm cake.

The frosting, that hot chocolate and pecan oozing deliciousness, will set after a few minutes. Slice into squares, and enjoy.

Recipe source: The Pioneer Woman’s Best Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Mousse Cake

March 31, 2009 | Posted by Lorraine as Cake Recipes, Celebrity Cooks, Chocolate at 12:34 pm | Comments »

Chocolate Mousse Cake

Before anything else: this cake is not a pretty one. It is at its most basic a recipe for chocolate mousse that you stick in a tin and bake in an oven. But oh my, if you like chocolate, this tastes amazing. It’s light and melts in your mouth, yet is impossibly rich. And because you bake it in a water bath (essentially steaming it), it’s incredibly moist.

The recipe is from Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess, and for a while it’s the only recipe I made from the book- over and over again. The truth is, I think this one recipe will turn you into a Goddess, domestic or otherwise, in anyone’s eyes. Make it for the chocoholic in your life- if that’s you, so much the better.

Nigella’s Chocolate Mousse Cake

300g best dark chocolate (bittersweet is best here)
50g best milk chocolate
175g unsalted butter
8 large eggs, separated
100g light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt

25cm springform tin
tin foil

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C and put the kettle on to boil. Line the inside of the springform with foil, making sure you press the foil well into the sides and bottom of the tin to make a smooth surface.

Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler or microwave, let it cool.

In another bowl beat the egg yolks and sugars until pale and really thick, like mayonnaise.

Whisk the egg whites in a large bowl until soft peaks form then fold gently into the chocolate mixture. Pour the cake batter into the foil-lined springform which you have placed in a large roasting tin.

Add the hot water from the kettle to come about half way up the sides of the tin and put into the oven.

Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour. The inside of the cake will be damp and mousse-like but the top should look cooked and dry.

Let it cool completely on a cooling rack before releasing from the tin. Now peel the foil gently away from the sides.

I like to sift some powdered sugar over it when we have company- but it really doesn’t need it.

Cookbook Review: Back of the Box Gourmet

February 9, 2009 | Posted by Lorraine as Cake Recipes, Cookbooks, Cozy Comfort Food Recipes at 1:00 pm | Comments »

Nostalgia never goes out of style- especially in the kitchen. Who of us doesn’t crave the food we were brought up with- whether we got it from our moms, our grandmothers, or our family cooks?

And that’s the “why” behind the cookbook Back of the Box Gourmet, an absolute gem of a book I was lucky enough to pick up at a used books sale recently. “Back of the box” refers, of course, to the recipes that “have appeared on the backs of boxes, bottles, and packages”- yes, the very same recipes our moms and grandmothers and family cooks reached for when wondering what to make for dinner. From original Toll House Cookies, to Fluffer-Nutter Sandwiches, to Lipton Onion Burgers- these are American “classics” that don’t pretend to be fancy, and frankly don’t need to be.

On a particularly lazy afternoon last week, I tried out one of the recipes in the book: the Original Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake, which was first created by the wife of a Hellmann’s Mayonnaise sales distributor in 1937. Not quite as exotic as it sounds, the mayonnaise here replaces any eggs, oil and salt one would usually use in a chocolate cake recipe. The lemon juice in mayonnaise also adds tenderness to the cake- much as buttermilk (or the old buttermilk-replacement standby of milk and lemon juice!) would. The resulting cake? Deliciously moist, and extremely pleasing- especially because of the added dates and walnuts. I share the recipe with you here:

Original Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup boiling water

1 cup coarsely chopped dates

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

1 cup sugar

1 cup real mayonnaise (please use Hellmann’s or Best Foods)

6 tablespoons grated unsweetened chocolate (I used regular baking chocolate, but you could use a bittersweet bar and remove part of the sugar)

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups unsifted cake flour

Grease and flour a 9×9x2-inch baking pan. In a small bowl, stir baking soda and boiling water together until dissolved. Stir in dates and nuts. In a large bowl with mixer on low speed, beat sugar and mayonnaise together until well mixed. Add grated chocolate and vanilla; beat until blended. Add date mixture; beat. Gradually beat in flour until smooth. Turn into prepared pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 to 50 minutes. Cool in pan.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this cookbook, though, is author Michael McLaughlin’s “Gilding the Lily” notes at the end of each recipe. In them, he suggests additions or changes to the recipes. For the HERSHEY’S Hot Fudge Sauce, for example, he suggests stirring in 2 or 3 tablespoons of Grand Marnier, dark rum, or Kahlua, into the finished sauce. Yum.

Back of the Box Gourmet is available at Amazon.

Orange icing by James Beard

June 17, 2008 | Posted by Lorena as Cake Recipes, Recipe at 5:24 pm | (4) Comments »

Try this cake filling recipe by cooking guru James Beard.

Ingredients

3/4 cups Orange juice — strained
2 tbs Lemon juice
3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 tb Orange rind — finely grated

What’s next
Mix the orange juice, lemon juice, sugar and orange rind together and drizzle the mixture over the three still warm cake layers. Be careful not to let it all soak into one spot. Then pile the layers on top of each other. The juice mixture will give the cake a lovely, fresh, fruity flavor and it is not rich like a chocolate or other candy flavored icing. Leave the cake to cool.

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