I know I don’t talk about myself all that much here. I’m more interested in telling you about food. But as this is food related, I figured I should mention it here.

I left my job.

I know. I really liked my job. And I still really like the restaurant. But sometimes, you have to move on to something else. So I decided to go in search of that something else. And I considered all sorts of things in my search…switching over to bakery work, learning a totally new cuisine, even raw desserts. Then I got lucky.

I’m not going to say too much now since it’s not open yet. Let’s just say I’m getting my very own pastry station. Dessert concepts have been submitted and approved. I can get in there and start testing in a matter of days. There’s a lot of work ahead of me, but it’s incredible that I’ve come this far, this fast.

Watch this space for more details (including, you know, name and address and opening date).

That’s enough of that for now. Let’s move on to the cupcakes I made for this month’s Mystery Box Challenge.

Is it really spring?

This month’s theme, luckily for me, was to make a pretty pretty birthday cupcake for someone special. My mom has a March birthday and what could be more special than that?

It blooms!

When I think of my mom, I think of plants and flowers and growing up in a house with a yard full of wild strawberries. So I made Spring Lawn Cupcakes with Strawberry Marshmallow Blossoms, Fresh Mint Custard and Chocolate Ganache Frosting.

Roots? Roots!

Since I’m generally all about flavors over really fancy presentation, I had to think hard to come up with something clever to make these as pretty as possible, so I filled the cupcakes with the pretty green custard to give the cross-section an illusion of roots growing from the soil.

Wishing for real flowers...

A few notes, if you make these. The recipe as I’ve written it only make 8 cupcakes, but you can’t very well just make a few small flowers’ worth of marshmallow, so you’ll have a lot of strawberry marshmallows left over. However, I’m not really minding…

Spring Lawn Cupcakes

First, Make the Cupcakes (adapted from Martha Stewart):

1. 3 Tbsp cocoa powder
2. 3 Tbsp hot water
3. 1 cup AP flour
4. 1/4 tsp baking soda
5. 1/4 tsp baking powder
6. 1/2 tsp salt
7. 3 oz. butter
8. 1/2 cup +1 Tbsp sugar
9. 1 egg
10. 1 tsp vanilla
11. 1/4 cup sour cream

Preheat the oven to 350F. Whisk together the cocoa powder and hot water, set aside. Sift or whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, set aside. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and sugar, then transfer to the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk on medium-high speed until cool (4-5 minutes). Beat in the eggs one at a time, thoroughly scraping down the bowl in between additions, then beat in the vanilla. Thoroughly incorporate the cocoa mixture, then alternately add the dry mixture and the sour cream in three additions each. Mix the batter until homogenous but don’t overwork it. Scoop into lined muffin tins, bake 10 minutes, rotate the pans and bake for another 10 minutes. Test the cakes with a toothpick to make sure they’re not wet on the inside before removing from the oven and cooling in the pans for 15 minutes. Remove to racks to finish cooling, then chill overnight, loosely wrapped in plastic.

Fresh Mint Custard:

1. 1 cup milk
2. About 30 medium-large fresh mint leaves, washed, dried and roughly torn
3. 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp sugar
4. 2 egg yolks
5. 2 Tbsp cornstarch
6. Green gel food coloring

Place the milk and mint in a small saucepan and bring to a low boil, then remove from heat and cover. Steep at least an hour, until the milk tastes “leafy” but not too minty. Once you’re happy with the flavor, return it to the heat. While you wait for it to get hot again, whisk together the sugar, yolks and cornstarch (beat them really hard and don’t let them get too gloppy) and continue whisking until the milk steams. Pour the milk into the yolk mixture through a strainer, whisking constantly. Whisk in the food coloring a little at a time, until it’s a light yellowish spring green color. Once it’s all mixed together return it to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, whisking constantly. Once it becomes thick, taste it, but continue whisking. If it tastes at all starchy, keep cooking it, repeating the process until it no longer tastes like starch. Force through a chinois or strainer into a bowl, then press plastic wrap onto the surface of the custard and cut a few thin slits in it to let steam escape. Let cool in the refrigerator overnight.

Strawberry Marshmallows:

1. 1/4 oz. powdered gelatin (1 packet Knox)
2. 6 Tbsp cold water
3. 1 cup sugar
4. 1/3 cup corn syrup
5. Pinch salt
6. 1-2 Tbsp strawberry juice
7. Red gel food coloring
8. Powdered sugar

Pour 1/4 cup of the cold water into the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle with the gelatin. Bloom for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the remaining 2Tbsp water with the sugar and corn syrup in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and pour into the bloomed gelatin, then beat on the highest speed with the whip attachment for about 8 minutes, until the marshmallow is airy and fluffy. While it’s whipping, prepare a rectangular pan (a loaf pan would be fine, or a small sheet pan) with a generous amount of nonstick spray, then a piece of parchment paper and another layer of spray. Also apply the spray to a rubber spatula. Once the marshmallow is fluffy, beat in the strawberry juice and just enough food coloring to make it light pink. Once fully incorporated, quickly scrape the marshmallow into the prepared pan, spreading it flat if necessary. Top with another piece of greased parchment and let set for at least 3 hours.

Once set, cut out flowers with a small oiled cutter. If the pan you used for the marshmallows is small and your marshmallows are very thick, just cut thin slices and stamp out the flowers from there. Toss cut marshmallows in powdered sugar and store in an airtight container.

Ganache Frosting:

1. 6 oz. heavy cream
2. 6 oz. dark/bittersweet chocolate, chopped small

Heat the cream to a low boil and pour over the chocolate. Let it sit for a couple of minutes, then mix with a rubber spatula, stirring in small circles as you go around the bowl. If there are still chunks of chocolate after you’ve fully incorporated the mixture, heat over simmering water, stirring frequently until smooth. Chill, stirring occasionally, until it is thick and spreadable.

Assembly:

1. Chilled cupcakes
2. Fresh mint custard
3. Ganache frosting
4. Strawberry marshmallow flowers
5. Small fresh mint leaves, washed and dried

Using a small circle cutter, remove the center of each cupcake. Reserve the “stumps.” Beat the custard with a spatula or a handheld or stand mixer until it is smooth and pipeable and load into a pastry bag fitted with a very small round tip. Fill the cupcakes with the custard, reserving the leftover custard in the piping bag for a later stage of decoration.

Put the ganache into a piping bag fitted with a very large round tip and pipe blobs of frosting onto the cupcakes, fully covering the “root” of the cupcake. Crumble up the reserved bits of removed cake and press the crumbs into the frosting. Pipe a small circle of custard onto the top of the cupcake and arrange two or three mint leaves on it, then press in a marshmallow flower.

Makes 8

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

• Angela’s Images; a selection of handmade crafts
• Bake It Pretty; a $5 online gift card
• Beanilla; a $7 online gift card
• Miss Kitty Creations; a handmade cupcake charm of your choice
• Simply Caked; 600 brown greaseproof cupcake liners
• Sweet Cuppin Cakes; a $5 online gift card
• Tundra Books; a selection of 3 very sweet children’s books

Thank you to all our prize sponsors!

Spooooky!

Though I do fully intend to get my spiced-pumpkin-and-chocolate fix (in the form of cookies, I think), I decided to go a little more savory and used sage and brown butter. Both excellent friends of the pumpkin. Both among my most favoritest of flavors. It is a trifecta of awesome.

The sprinkles just make them.

I was originally thinking of utilizing fresh sage and frying it, which I’ve utilized in both savory and sweet concoctions before. But I was planning on buying a plant at the Greenmarket, which was closing down for the day as I rushed through, and the potted herbs were nearly all packed up. No matter – I was hurrying on the way to Kalustyan’s (for teas and cocoa nibs and fun things to grind in my brand new spice grinder!) and ended up buying some beautiful dried sage there…which I promptly ground in the spice grinder once I got home. Hooray!

Oh pumpkin!

Dried sage really was the way to go, since it stands up to heat and makes for a stronger flavor in the finished cakes.

Since the cakes themselves would be plenty sagey, I figured I’d focus on making the frosting as brown-buttery as possible. I think I succeeded. The frosting is a French (or pate a bombe) buttercream, made with all solidified brown butter, and half brown and half white sugar, inspiring me to name it “Double Brown Buttercream.”

Oh brown butter speckles!

The thing about brown butter, though, as awesome as it is, is that it’s very unstable, having had its fatty solids all browned up. It liquefies really quickly at room temperature. That’s why I chose to use a yolk-based buttercream – to hopefully return a little fatty stability. It still needs to be kept relatively cool, but firms up fast once refrigerated. It is also unapologetically buttery, and not even pleasant to eat on its own. However, in small amounts on impossibly moist and flavorful cupcakes that just scream of fall, topped off with crunchy sprinkles (which are not optional for both aesthetic and textural reasons)…it is absolutely perfect.

March into my mouth!

One thing to note is that I made my cupcakes in one-bite size, which is probably the best way to consume these particular morsels. Because I didn’t want to deal with nearly a hundred cupcakes, I halved the recipe, which I do not recommend doing with an egg-foam based buttercream, because it is nearly impossible to make that in tiny amounts. I had to try twice but luckily noticed that it wasn’t going to work before I added the precious butter. So do this however you like, though I think it would be hard to get through all that butteryness on a full-sized cupcake. You can always just freeze the frosting and cake batter or baked cakes, though.

Pumpkin-Sage Cupcakes with Double Brown Buttercream

First, Make Those Cakes!

1. 1 1/4 cup butter
2. 1 cup brown sugar
3. 1 1/4 cup white sugar
4. 1 1/2 Tbsp ground dried sage (freshly ground, if possible)
5. 2 eggs
6. 1 tsp vanilla
7. 15 oz. pumpkin puree (1 can)
8. 3 cups AP flour
9. 2 tsp baking soda
10. 1 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350F. Cream the butter and sugars with the sage until light and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl between additions and incorporating thoroughly. Add the vanilla and the pumpkin and beat until incorporated. If it looks a little grainy don’t worry; the dry ingredients will bring it back together. Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk to combine and aerate (sift if you have clumps of anything). Add the dry mixture to the rest of the batter and incorporate on a low speed, stopping to scrape down the bowl a couple of times. Don’t overmix. Scoop into lined muffin tins and bake 20-25 minutes for full-sized cupcakes, 10-15 for minis. Cool completely before frosting.

Now Make That Frosting!

1. 4 eggs yolks, room temperature
2. 1 pinch salt
3. 2 Tbsp + 2 tsp water
4. 1/3 cup brown sugar
5. 1/3 cup white sugar
6. 1 1/3 cup brown butter (start with at least 1 1/2 cups of butter before browning, as you’ll lose some volume in cooking it), solidified and softened

Place the yolks in the bowl of a stand mixer and start beating them on a low speed with the whisk attachment. Add the salt and turn up the speed to high. Whip until pale, thick and noticeably increased in volume. Place the sugars and water in a saucepan and cook over high heat until it reaches the soft ball stage (248F). Pour the sugar down the side of the mixing bowl into the eggs and continue whipping until only slightly warm. Switch to the paddle attachment and turn it on to a medium-low speed. Add the brown butter gradually in small chunks. If the buttercream begins to get soupy or break in some way, stop adding the butter and turn up the mixer until it comes back together, then turn down the mixer and resume adding the butter until it is all incorporated. It will probably be fairly soft, so refrigerate it to firm it up a bit before piping.

And Now to Put It All Together!

1. Cupcakes, cooled completely
2. Buttercream, in a piping bag fitted with a large round tip
3. Large green confetti sprinkles (also known as quins)
4. Orange sanding sugar

Pipe blobs that look like slightly flattened spheres onto each cupcake, directly in the center. Don’t cover the whole surface of the cupcake – about half the diameter is all you need. Once they’re all frosted, apply the green sprinkles to the dead center of each frosting blob, using tweezers if necessary (I wish I’d had some but my almost freakishly tiny fingers did the trick just fine). Carefully sprinkle the frosting on each cupcake with the orange sugar, being careful to not spill too many on the cake itself (they’ll stick). Keep refrigerated and serve slightly cool (or else the frosting will be too melty and buttery).

Makes about 90-96 mini cupcakes or 24-30 regular cupcakes.

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

• Angela’s Images; a selection of handmade crafts
• Bake It Pretty; a $5 electronic gift card
• Beanilla; 2-fold Madagascar vanilla extract & 3 Tongan vanilla beans
• Hello Hanna; a pack of Sweet Stands cupcake stands
• Lisa Orgler; an 8.5″x11″ original art print of your choice
• Miss Kitty Creations; a handmade cupcake charm of your choice
• Sweet Cuppin Cakes; a prize pack worth $25
• Tundra Books; a selection 3 very sweet children’s books

Thank you to all our prize sponsors!

I just love the way they nestle in there.

You get a slightly unusual but very delicious combination of Italian flavors in a traditional French cookie-cake-thing!

Basil courtesy Luigi, my amazingly alive and thriving basil plant.

I wanted to use up some leftover ricotta and wondered if it might be substituted for some of the melted butter in a madeleine recipe, since I’d had such great success with coconut oil. I decided to just go for it, and be really risky and daring by replacing the OTHER half of the melted butter with olive oil.

I tried to make a basil glaze. You can see the flecks of basil on the madeleines. I'm not including the glaze recipe because it was more like a soaking syrup, is completely unnecessary and I'm short on time.

I also remembered I had some chestnut flour in the fridge that was crying out to be used (after my idea of chestnut flour macarons fell through I think it was sad) so I went for a total Italian flavor profile, adding a little honey to enhance the sweetness of the chestnut flavor. Also, I love honey. And I knew, after double-checking in my favorite book (which is turning a year old this week – yay! Happy birthday Flavor Bible!) that everything would certainly taste deeeeelicious together, despite its untraditional mish-mash of European styles.

And once you're done soaking in the tea, get in my tummy!

I used orange blossom honey since I had some on hand, but you could use wildflower, chestnut or clover honey and it would all be fantastic. The madeleines are sweet and slightly sticky from the honey, though they lose a little of that stickiness if you let them chill out in the fridge in an airtight container. The chestnut flour comes through nicely with an earthy, almost wholesome tone, and the ricotta isn’t really noticeable but does lend a nice fluffiness to the finished product.

Oh madeleines, always so pretty.

Italian Madeleines

1. 3 eggs
2. 2/3 cup sugar
3. 1/2 cup AP flour
4. 1/2 cup chestnut flour
5. 1/2 tsp baking powder
6. 1/8 tsp salt
7. 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
8. 1/4 cup ricotta cheese
9. 1 Tbsp honey

Beat the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer on medium-high for about 5 minutes, until they are pale in color and tripled in volume. Meanwhile, whisk together the flours, baking powder and salt. Sift a small amount of the dry mixture over the egg mixture and fold in completely, then repeat gradually with the rest of the dry. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, ricotta and honey.  Fold the oil and ricotta mixture into the rest of the batter by thirds. Cover with plastic and chill for at least half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 375. If your pan is not nonstick, butter and flour it thoroughly (you will have to wash, dry and reapply the butter and flour between batches if you have more batter than your pan(s) can hold in a single batch – for a mini pan with 10 indentations you will need to bake about 4 batches). Spoon batter into each indentation, filling them about 3/4 full. Bake for about 10 minutes for miniature madeleines, 15 minutes for regular-sized. They will be browned around the edges when done. To remove from pan, rap the pan sharply against the counter and turn out onto a cooling rack.

I brought some of these in to the chefs who teach my pastry class. They agreed that the glaze idea was unnecessary and told me that there were too many things going on in the madeleines. They said that you shouldn’t use more than three flavors in a single product AT MOST. Boo to that I say! You can’t even taste the ricotta! Perhaps they were just offended that I made madeleines less boring? Don’t let them stop you. I think these are AWESOME.

Z had to ask if I had used any food coloring in this...the answer is no.

Yogurt is fine for me because it contains happy little enzymes that break down the lactose for us. How nice of them!

It really is a lovely color.

Blueberry season is SO ON right now and what goes better with a big, healthy bowl of yogurt than some lovely, antioxidant-laden little berries o’ blue? Not an awful lot, I can tell you that. Blueberries, yogurt, honey, a little lemon…and chamomile! I always feel bad because I don’t think I use chamomile enough and it really is a wonderful flavor. Don’t worry, little chamomile, you’ll get your time to shine on this site soon enough. For now, please accept this delicious supporting role!

Not bad for you at all...if you can forget about the sugar (alcohol is a health food right?)

Sometimes with great combinations of flavors, one ingredient will set another off in an unusual way or the flavors will create something wholly new together. That’s not the case here – this is one of those combinations where you taste each flavor pretty much distinctly one after the other, but in a great way that feels like a little adventure every time you take a bite. First you get the tangy surprise of “hey, this is yogurt, not ice cream!” and then you get blueberry, glorious blueberry! With a hint of honey. And then, once you swallow, your mouth goes “ahhhh…chamomile.” And then you smile.

Remember Kids: Use really good yogurt for your frozen yogurt. Don’t do what I did and buy a big container of fat free, pectin-ized stuff just because you’re broke (and trying to drop a couple ice cream-induced poundages). Greek/strained yogurt is great, homemade is better.

The blueberry flavor is as intense as the color.

Blueberry Chamomile Frozen Yogurt

1. 1 pint blueberries, rinsed & drained
2. 2 Tbsp water
3. 1/4 cup honey (I used blueberry honey but lavender, clover or wildflower would all work wonderfully)
4. 1 tsp or so lemon juice
5. 1 bag chamomile tea (or 1 Tbsp loose dried chamomile flowers in a tea ball/stick)
6. 4 cups plain yogurt
7. 3/4 cup sugar
8. 2-3 Tbsp vodka

Combine the blueberries, water, honey and lemon juice in a medium saucepan over medium heat. With a potato masher, smash most of the berries so that they are broken down slightly but not completely obliterated – you do still want a few whole ones in there. Add the tea and simmer until the blueberries have cooked down some and are in a thick syrup of their own juices and the honey. Remove the teabag (give it a squeeze before you take it out) and chill the blueberry mixture (either with an ice bath or just transferring it to another container in the fridge). Once the blueberries are cold, place them in a large mixing bowl along with the yogurt, sugar and vodka. Stir until fully combined, then churn in your ice cream maker or follow my handy-dandy instructions for making ice cream and other such frozen treats without a machine. Freeze until hardened and scoopable.

I ate some plain for breakfast and it was great on a hot morning. It would be delicious sprinkled with a honey or cinnamon granola.

At first I didn't believe this was mint.

I know what mint looks like – all pointy and spiky – so I didn’t trust when Z told me these shiny round leaves were mint. But he tore one in half and it WAS minty. When we got back to the house I found out it was wintergreen – well ok!

Make sure you cut a slit!

Since wintergreen is a lot gentler than your traditional peppermint or spearmint leaves, I used a bunch of them. The result is a very minty, refreshing ice cream that goes GREAT with the chocolate coating.

Then you can go like this...

I was elated when the first two ice cream pops I served came out from their paper cup wrappings almost perfect. So the next day I took one outside to photograph in the sunshine. And the chocolate was shattered. I was concerned that I had tossed them around the freezer too much during my ongoing flurry of other simultaneous ice cream activities, so I just hoped that the rest weren’t like that and waited until the next day (because you can only eat so much ice cream in a day).

This photo was taken with the last bit of sunlight. But at least the pop didn't shatter!

There were only a few minutes of daylight left by the time Z was in the mood for an ice cream pop, so I told him he could have it outside on the porch because I needed to photograph it. Luckily it was still warm so out we went to snap a few pictures.

Minty!

A few things to note about this recipe:

Yeah, I don’t have the space or equipment to temper chocolate, so I “ghetto-tempered” it in the microwave. If you can’t temper chocolate in your kitchen, at least melt half of it then stir in the other half until smooth, either on the stovetop or in the microwave like I did. If you melt it all at once it will get ugly gray spots on it in the freezer. Your pops will still taste fine but they will be uuuugly, and the chocolate won’t have such a nice snap to it when you bite it.

Another thing to consider would be a second layer of chocolate coating on the cups – if I make these again I would like to have a thicker shell. You could also cover the exposed ice cream with more chocolate. If you use smaller cups and fill them all the way it would eliminate the jagged edges that mine got.

I also didn’t add alcohol to the ice cream like I normally do and I would suggest that anyone else trying this method also refrain from adding it. Reason being? Well, I add alcohol to make ice cream softer, but in this case you want it to stay hard and on the stick! However, if you just want to make the ice cream recipe and not the pop part, feel free to add a couple Tbsp of vodka, mint schnapps, Vandermint, creme de cacao…etc.

It's mah shadow!

Chocolate-Covered Minty Ice Cream Pops

1. 2 cups cream
2. 2 cups milk
3. 1 1/2 cups sugar
4. 20-25 wintergreen leaves, washed & dried
5. 5-6 oz. chopped dark chocolate
6. 6 egg yolks
7. Pinch of fine salt
8. Green & blue food coloring (optional)

Combine the cream, milk and sugar in a medium saucepan. Tear each mint leaf in half and add them to the pan. Bring just to a boil, then remove from heat and cover to steep for 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, place half the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 30 seconds, then stir. Repeat until the chocolate is completely melted, then add the rest and stir until totally smooth. Using a clean paintbrush or another food-safe brush, paint the insides of small waxed paper cups (I used 9 oz. cups and got 7 pops filling them 3/4 full; use smaller ones if you want more/smaller pops) with a solid-but-not-too-thick layer of chocolate. Place in freezer.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the yolks with the salt. Strain the leaves out of the cream mixture. Temper the yolks by drizzling in a little of the warm cream mixture, whisking constantly. Add the rest of the cream mixture in a thin stream, whisking the whole time so your yolks don’t curdle. Once fully incorporated, return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium-low until the custard is thick (can coat the back of a spoon) but not boiling. Strain into a medium mixing bowl and (carefully!) whisk in the food coloring if you want your ice cream to be minty green. You will probably have to add a little blue to counteract the natural yellowishness of the custard. Chill over an ice bath and/or in the fridge until cold. Churn in an ice cream maker or follow my instructions to make ice cream with no mechanical help. Once thick and mostly frozen, pour into prepared chocolate-lined cups and put a popsicle stick in the middle of each. Return to the freezer for a few hours to fully harden (overnight is probably best).

To serve, cut a slit in the rim of the paper cup and slowly rip it off in a long spiral, carefully popping the bottom of the cup off the top of the pop.

One more note: if you make this using a different kind of mint (say, peppermint or spearmint) you should reduce the amount of leaves steeped in the cream by at least half and maybe quarters. Wintergreen is very mild but other mints most certainly are not.