Like a tasty flower.

Luckily, there’s a new cupcake competition starting this month, and it’s called Mystery Box. I happened to come across a tweet announcing it while I was coincidentally thinking about searching for cupcake inspiration. The timing couldn’t be better, and the first month’s theme? Totally my thing.

Floating in the clouds?

The theme for July 2010 is tea, something I enjoy immensely. I’m drinking tea right now, as a matter of fact. The hardest part was deciding on a tea to use – since you can only enter once per month, I knew I’d have to come up with something really good. I think I did just that.

Everything is better with toasted coconut!

I chose to flavor the cupcakes themselves with Thai tea, which is a fun choice because not only does Thai tea have an addictive, mysterious flavor (ingredients vary but there’s always some anise or other licorice-y spice in the mix, though it doesn’t taste like licorice), it also contains red and yellow dyes which make the tea bright orange when steeped. I hoped that both the color and flavor would carry over into the cupcakes once they were baked. As you can see, the color definitely shows. I’ve never seen cupcakes this color before!

Mmmm sweet tangy spicy pineapple jamminess.

I steeped the tea into the milk for my standard white cupcake recipe, using a lot to keep both the color and flavor strong. Happily, it worked perfectly and I was rewarded with bright orange, feathery-light cakes with a distinct Thai tea flavor.

In keeping with the Thai theme, I filled the cupcakes with pineapple jam. Since it was so sweet, I added a little tang by way of a smidge of tamarind paste, and a kick of spice via a pinch of cayenne pepper. I made a white chocolate coconut ganache to frost them with, though I wasn’t quite patient enough with it and it ended up as more of a glaze. It’s very sweet, though, so I think the glaze-y amount is perfect. To emphasize the coconut flavor and add texture, I also sprinkled them with toasted shredded coconut.

I wish you could taste this through the screen.

Thai Tea Cupcakes

First, Make the Frosting:

1. 150 g good quality white chocolate
2. 75 g coconut milk

Melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Heat the coconut milk until it steams, either in the microwave or in a saucepan. Pour the coconut milk into the white chocolate and gently whisk until fully emulsified. Chill until thick and almost set up, stirring a couple of times to ensure even thickening.

Then, Make the Cakes:

1. 1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp milk
2. 1 1/2 Tbsp loose Thai tea (I bought mine at Kalustyan’s and it’s incredible)
3. 1/4 cup unsalted butter
4. 1/2 cup sugar
5. 1 cup cake flour
6. 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
7. 1/4 tsp salt
8. 2 egg whites

Pour the milk into a small saucepan and heat until boiling little bubbles begin to form around the edge of the pan. Remove from heat and stir in the tea. Cover and let steep for 5-7 minutes. Strain thoroughly into a measuring cup, measuring out 1/2 cup. Cool thoroughly.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the milk and dry mixture alternately in thirds, mixing slowly and scraping down the bowl between additions. Once everything is blended, add the egg whites and mix on a medium-high speed for no more than 2 minutes, until the batter becomes somewhat fluffy. Spoon into lined muffin tins and bake 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean and before the cupcakes start to brown at all. Allow to cool fully before filling or frosting.

Now Get That Filling Ready:

1. 3 Tbsp pineapple jam (you can make your own or use store bought, just find a good quality jam that only contains fruit, sugar, water, pectin, etc….no HFCS or anything)
2. Pinch of cayenne pepper
3. 1/8 tsp tamarind paste (optional but awesome)

Use a spatula to fold the pepper and tamarind thoroughly into the jam.

Let’s Toast Some Coconut:

1. 1/4 cup unsweetened dessicated coconut (that’s the really tiny stuff)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Spread the coconut out on a small baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Stir thoroughly to evenly distribute any browned areas, and continue toasting for another 3 minutes or so, until most of the coconut is a light golden brown. Set aside to cool.

Time to Put Them Together:

If you’re not used to working with extra soft cupcakes you might want to chill or even freeze them first to make the cake less crumbly. Use a small round cutter to punch out the middle of each cupcake, reserving the “lid” to each one and trimming them to 1/4″ thick. Place a blob of filling in each cupcake and replace the lid.

Prepare the frosting in a piping bag. Pipe some onto each cupcake in any style you wish, or let it become more fluid and “flood” the tops (you’ll have some serious cleanup to do on the paper if you go this route but it’s awfully pretty). Top each cupcake with a generous amount of toasted coconut.

Keeps well refrigerated up to a week or well-wrapped and frozen for a month or more. Allow to come to room temperature before devouring. Makes 10 full sized cupcakes.

For all the info on Mystery Box, head on over to Sweetest Kitchen.

The winner of July’s Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge will receive prizes from:

• Bake It Pretty; $5 electronic gift card
• Beanilla; Tahitian vanilla fleur de sel & 3 organic Indonesian vanilla beans
• Rishi Tea; the new Tsuki tea pot and 2 tins of tea
• Soapylove Glycerin Soap Design; a Soapy Pop
• Sweet Cuppin Cakes; a prize pack worth $25

Thank you to all our prize sponsors!

You give me really awesome cupcake wrappers, I WILL make you cupcakes in said wrappers!

As it turns out, there’s actually a lot more to a real red velvet cake than the hint of cocoa and often garish color. For one, buttermilk. That was all well and good…if I didn’t have to make it dairy-free (so I could share with my best friend). I usually use either coconut milk or condensed soy milk (which I condense myself). Luckily, after a little searching I found out that soy milk could, in fact, be spoiled with a small amount of acid just like regular milk can when you need a buttermilk substitute. One hurdle down!

Another issue I ran into was the leavening – mochi cakes generally only call for baking powder for leavening (which falls into a dense, chewy awesomeness moments after coming out of the oven) while red velvet calls for baking soda and vinegar to be added, foaming, at the last second. I went with the red velvet method and it worked out great.

Lookit that frosting! So smooth!

In keeping with my dairy-free theme, I decided that fake cream cheese and margarine was too creepy a combination to use for a frosting (despite mochi cakes not really needing frosting in general, I don’t think you can have proper red velvet without some kind of white frosting), so I went with a white chocolate-coconut milk ganache. I know white chocolate isn’t dairy-free but a small amount is tolerable, and the ganache is so rich and luxurious that you don’t need a lot. Just one little creamy, slightly coconutty swirl is enough.

Not neon red, but a more pleasant, edible shade.

Another difference between red velvet cake and mochi cake is that the fat in red velvet is generally all vegetable oil, as opposed to the melted butter used in mochi cakes. I used all vegetable oil the first time I tried to make these (yes, it took me two tries) and they came out just fine. Except, being the first try, they weren’t quite right yet. A bit too much cocoa, not enough red.

Artsy shot!

Not unexpectedly, I had been posting to Twitter the whole time about my experiment, and got a fantastic suggestion from a like-minded Twitterer. Why not add red bean paste to the mix?

OF COURSE!

So, on my second try, I substituted red bean paste for half the oil, decreased the amount of cocoa powder and used only enough dye to turn the batter a pinkish-orange color. The cakes baked up wonderfully and taste not completely unlike red velvet, from the hint of cocoa and the tang of the acidic “buttermilk”, but also a little classically Japanese with the red bean and mochi flavors also popping up a bit. And, of course, there’s that frosting…

Parrots love cupcakes too.

Red Velvet Mochi Cupcakes

First, Make the Ganache (because it takes a while to set up):

1. 200g white chocolate, chopped
2. 100g coconut milk

Melt the white chocolate over a simmering double boiler. Set aside. Heat the coconut milk until steaming (you can do this in a small saucepan or just in the microwave) and pour it into the chocolate. Using a small spatula, stir gently from the middle of the bowl until the ganache is fully emulsified, scraping along the sides once in a while but not incorporating any extra air. Set aside to set up – you can chill it if you’d like but give it a stir once or twice to make sure it doesn’t set up too hard. It can be softened at room temperature if it does.

Then, Make the Cakes (red velvet recipe adapted from Pithy & Cleaver):

1. 12 oz. plain soy milk
2. 2 tsp white vinegar
3. 2 oz. vegetable oil
4. 2 oz. sweet red bean paste
5. 1 cup (200g) sugar
6. 2 eggs
7. 2 Tbsp cocoa powder
8. 5 1/3 oz. Mochiko
9. 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
10. 1/8-1/4 tsp red gel food coloring
11. 1/2 tsp baking soda
12. 1/2 tsp white vinegar

Place the soy milk in a small saucepan and simmer until it reduces to 6 oz. Remove from saucepan and allow to cool.

Preheat the oven to 350F and line a muffin tin with paper liners (or prepare a cake pan if that’s how you roll).

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the oil, red bean paste, sugar and eggs. Add the cocoa and Mochiko, mix thoroughly. Add the 2 tsp. vinegar to the condensed soy milk and pour it into the mixture, whisk to combine. Whisk in the color gradually until you get a reddish-orange color. Measure the baking soda into a small bowl, pour in the 1/2 tsp. of vinegar and allow to begin frothing, then dump into the batter and quickly mix. Pour immediately into prepared baking vessel. Bake 20-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into a cake comes out clean. Cool on a baking rack.

Once the cakes are fully cooled, fit a piping bag with a star tip and fill it with the ganache. Pipe a swirl onto each cupcake.

Makes 12 cupcakes.

I know there are a lot of weight measurements in this recipe, and frankly I’m not interested in converting every little thing I make. I wouldn’t make this without a scale personally. My advice to those who wish to convert the weights to volume? Don’t. Just buy a scale. They’re not expensive and after one or two recipes you’ll wonder how you ever baked without one.

Apologies for the harsh lighting.

The day before I arrived was my best friend’s birthday, so of course I brought cupcakes! Mochi cakes (again) to be precise.

The weather isn't exactly cooperating in Maine at the moment.

These are a little more special than the first batch of mochi cakes I made – as you can see, these are chocolatey. Very chocolatey. Three kinds of chocolatey, in fact: dark cocoa powder in the batter, chocolate chips inside and on top, and cacao nibs in place of sprinkles for an extra crunch of bitter chocolate goodness.

I hear these were good.

There’s a secret ingredient (coconut milk!) plus a little surprise in the middle. Unfortunately there’s no picture of the middle, since I didn’t eat any – the recipe makes twelve, I was able to fit ten into a container for transport and I gave the other two to Z. But I hear they were delicious.

The glare!

Triple Chocolate Mochi Cupcakes

1. 4 oz. butter (I used Earth Balance to make these dairy-free), melted & cooled
2. 1 cup sugar
3. 2 eggs
4. 1/2 cup dark or Dutch process cocoa powder
5. 5 1/3 oz. Mochiko (sweet rice flour)
6. 1 generous tsp baking powder
7. 6 oz. coconut milk (I was a little short and added an oz. or so of soymilk)
8. 1 tsp vanilla (may have skipped this…)
9. 12 large raspberries or blueberries, washed and gently dried, or 12 small-medium strawberries, washed, dried & hulled…or a random mixture so it’s a REAL berry surprise!
10. About 48 large bittersweet chocolate chips
11. 1-2 Tbsp cacao nibs

Preheat the oven to 350. In a medium-large mixing bowl, whisk together the butter, sugar and eggs. Add the cocoa powder, Mochiko and baking powder, stirring just to incorporate. Pour in the coconut milk and vanilla and stir until the lumps are pretty much all gone. Pour into a lined muffin tin, filling the liners halfway. Gently press a berry into the middle of each and then surround the berry with three chocolate chips, standing them up in the batter. Spoon the rest of the batter on top to cover everything, then top with a chocolate chip in the middle and sprinkle cacao nibs around the rest of the exposed batter. Bake 20-30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean (remember that the chocolate chips will get melty), cool 5 minutes in the pan and then remove to a rack to cool a bit more.

You can eat these warmish if you want them to be gooey in the middle, but I hear they are fine on their own. Mochi cakes don’t need any frosting, though I wouldn’t be upset if you ate one warm with some ice cream. Their unfrostedness also makes them great for transporting on seven hour bus rides, whereas the main drawback to a normal cupcake is their untransportationalness. Enjoy the new words I just made up.

It's not a madeleine without a nice little lump on the back.

Initially I planned an infusion of lemongrass to go with the coconut, and thought I’d try replacing half of the flour in the recipe with some rice flour I’ve had sitting around for a while, for an exotic, slightly Asian twist.

Aieee so cuuuute!

However, I found out a few days ago that one of my favorite food blogs, Coconut & Lime, is having its fifth blogiversary this month.

Change of plan!

Happy fifth blogiversary!

(If you can’t tell, they’re supposed to be in the shape of a 5.)

Hey, stuff!

To celebrate this momentous and totally admirable occasion (seriously, she’s been making up her own completely original recipes for FIVE YEARS), Rachel is holding a contest in which participants can make one of her recipes, or make up their own recipe containing coconut and lime.

Well, that there looks like coconut.

It was an easy sub to replace the lemongrass with a zested and juiced lime.

And lime!

These smelled AMAZING while baking – very refreshing and tropical. They taste wonderful, as all madeleines do, either fresh out of the oven (when they’re still crispy around the edges) or at room temperature with a corresponding tea. These go well with coconut and ginger teas, but would also work well with grassier, more citrusy green teas.

These smell really good.

I chose to only replace half of the melted butter with coconut oil and half of the flour with rice flour, so as not to mes with the alchemy of baking so much. They don’t suffer at all from the substitutions, and the coconut flavor is definitely there. All coconut oil might actually be overwhelming.

Coconut-Lime Madeleines

So much fun to make!

1. 1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2. 1/4 cup coconut oil
3. 1/2 cup AP flour
4. 1/2 cup rice flour
5. 1/2 tsp baking powder
6. 1/8 tsp fine salt
7. 3 eggs
8. 2/3 cup sugar
9. Zest & juice of 1 lime

Melt the butter gently in a small saucepan or in a microwave-safe bowl. When it is almost completely melted, remove from heat and stir in the coconut oil, continuing to stir gently until completely melted. Set aside to cool, stirring occasionally to prevent separation.

Meanwhile, whisk together the flours, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs and sugar on medium-high for about 5 minutes, until fluffy and nearly triple in volume. Quickly beat in the lime.

Sift a small amount of the flour mixture into the eggs. Gently fold it in, then repeat in small batches with the rest of the flour. Once it is fully incorporated, plop about 1 Tbsp of it into the melted fats. Whisk it in to lighten, then incorporate the butter mixture by thirds into the batter, folding it completely and gently. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375. If using a nonstick pan, lightly butter the scallops; otherwise, thoroughly butter and flour them. If using a regular-sized pan, scoop by neat Tbsp into the middle of each indentation; if using a mini pan, scoop by scant tsp. Bake for around 15 minutes for regular and 10 minutes for miniature madeleines, until lightly golden brown around the edges (they will also be springy when poked). Immediately after removing from the oven, rap the pan sharply against the counter and turn the madeleines out onto a cooling rack. Sometimes you have to use your finger to poke them out.

I’m really digging this coconut oil. It has a lot of neat baking applications, as it clearly can not only replace other oils, but melted butter as well.

Coconut oil!

Recently I came across Tropical Traditions on Twitter, and saw that they wanted bloggers to try their coconut oil. I thought that sounded like a great way to get creative, so I decided to check it out.

It's solid??

Coconut oil has a lot of potential – for example, it’s great for frying because it has a high smoke point.

Melts easily and smells sooo good!

So that’s what I did.

Panko is neat!

Yes, this is not only a savory dish, it is also a meat dish.

Parsely purely for decoration.

I tried some. It was ok. Meat is too chewy for me. Maybe I’ll try frying tofu in the coconut oil? I’m definitely frying plantains in it. Z really liked it, though, so I made it two days in a row. And that is why there are pictures – it was too dark to get a good shot of the original meal, which, along with the lightly buttered and peppered rice, included a simple fruit salad of chopped cantaloupe, mango, lime juice and torn mint leaves. Tasty!

Coconut Fried Chicken

Chicken!

1. 1/4 cup coconut oil
2. 2 skinless boneless chicken breasts, cut into slightly-larger-than-bite-sized pieces
3. 1 egg, lightly beaten
4. 1-2 cups panko
5. Pinch cayenne pepper
6. Generous pinch powdered ginger

Place the panko in a large bowl and toss it with the cayenne and ginger. Heat the coconut oil in a medium frying pan over high heat. Once it is melted, dredge the chicken pieces in the egg and coat with the panko mixture, then place in the hot oil. Fry for a few minutes, until the frying side is browned and crispy, then flip onto the other side. Continue to cook until all sides of the chicken are uniformly browned and crispy and the chicken is cooked all the way through. Place on paper towels and blot any excess oil. Serve over rice, with tropical fruit on the side. Serves two.

I’ll return to our regularly scheduled cavity-inducing recipes next time, I promise! I just needed to post this since Z loved it so much and it shows off the versatility of the coconut oil. I have at least two more awesome coconut oil ideas so get your coconut hats on!