Pumpkin Brown-Butter Cupcakes

This was the recipe I pulled out of an empty Fluff jar, in order to make a decision on what cupcakes/sweets I wanted to make. Over 100 recipes to make, and still adding to the jar! When I told my taste-testers, they were excited to hear about pumpkin. They said it made them feel more healthy eating my goodies. Haha. 

This will also be my first blog post where I will attempt to do step-by-step instructions of the recipe I just made. Now including pictures! Super fancy, right!?

I got this recipe out of Martha Stewart's "Cupcakes" book. 

Ingredients for cupcakes:

• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature. Plus more for tins
• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour. Plus more for tins
• 2 tsps. baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1 cup canned pumpkin puree (but not pie filling)
• 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 325° F. Brush muffin tins with butter; dust with flour, tapping out excess. 

2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat, swirling occassionally, until butter turns golden brown. Skim foam from top, and remove from heat. Pour into a bowl to stop the cooking, leaving any burned sediment behind; let cool.

3. Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ntumeg, and cloves. In another bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, both sugars, eggs, and brown-butter mixture. 

4. Add flour mixture, and whisk until just combined.

5. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake about half an hour, until a cake tester inserted (or a toothpick) comes out clean. Let cool on racks completely before icing.

Brown-butter Icing ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 2 tsps. vanilla extract
• 2 tblsps. milk

1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat, swirling pan occassionally, until nut-brown in colour, about 10 minutes. It will give off this lovely nutty scent that butter doesn't smell like at first. Remove from heat, and pour butter into a bowl, leaving burned sediment behind.

2. Add confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons of milk to brown butter. Stir until smooth. If necessary, add more milk (up to 2 more tablespoons), a little at a time until icing is spreadable. Use immediately. If not, it will begin to stiffen as it cools and you'll have to stir it fervently to get it back to a spreadable consistency.

3. Dip top of each cupcake in icing, then turn over quickly and let icing set.

Taadaah! All done and ready to eat! They're perfect for a chilly day, especially in autumn, with the spicy-sweet pumpkin taste topped with a nutty icing. I'm just two seasons too late (or early)! Delicious and moist all the same. This was simple and fun to make!

Cinnamon rolls

I decided to stray from my usual cupcake making extravaganza to make homemade cinnamon rolls for this week. I was in the mood for cinnamon and the combination of yummy sweet rolls, cinnamon and glaze was enough to make me drool.

I don’t have a lot of experience making bread and dough, but this recipe turned out to be surprisingly simple to make. I used my bread hook for my stand mixer for the first time, and it was done in no time! The dough came out at just the right consistency. It was insanely easy!

The recipe was delicious, though a little undercooked on the bottom so I stuck the pans back in the oven for a few more moments to get them cooked a little bit better.  (I changed the time on the recipe below to adjust to that issue.)

I’m completely excited about cinnamon rolls and plan to experiment with some different flavours next time I make them. Maybe brown-butter glaze (knowing my love of brown-butter!) or something fruity. Definitely stay in tune!

Cinnamon rolls Recipe:

Ingredients

·         1 cup milk

·         1/2 cup butter

·         1 cup water

·         1 tablespoon active dry yeast

·         1 cup white sugar

·         1 teaspoon salt

·         2 eggs

·         6 cups all-purpose flour

Cinnamon Filling:

·         2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

·         2 cups dark brown sugar

·         1/2 cup butter, softened

Glaze:

·          1 ½ cups confectionary sugar

·          3 tablespoons milk

Directions

1.     Warm the milk in a small saucepan until it bubbles, then remove from heat. Mix in the butter; stir until melted. Add water and let cool until lukewarm.

2.     In a large bowl, combine the milk mixture, yeast, white sugar, salt, eggs and 2 cups flour; stir well to combine. Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes.

3.     Divide dough into two pieces. Roll each piece into a 12x9 inch rectangle. In a bowl, stir together the cinnamon and brown sugar. Spread each piece with half of the butter, half of the brown sugar and cinnamon mixture. Roll up dough, using a little water to seal the seam.

4.     Cut each roll into 12 slices using a very sharp knife or dental floss. Place rolls onto two 9x13 inch greased baking pans. Cover and let rise until almost doubled, about 1 hour. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

5.     Bake in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

6.     Stir up confectionary sugar and milk until smooth. Pour over cinnamon buns and allow to cool.

The Search for the Paddle Mixer… Oh and Red Velvet Cupcakes too.

My next venture into the art of baking cupcakes was red velvet. While, ‘traditionally’ red velvet is considered a Valentine’s Day cupcake, I got distracted from making red velvet on that day with something else. But, I knew I wanted to make it regardless, and the guys I usually foist my cupcakes on, were asking for more! I deviated from the ‘traditional’ again, and instead of cream cheese frosting, I decided to make swiss meringue buttercream frosting. Mmm, I love buttercream frosting!

Again, I took the recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cupcake book. I found that her cake recipes are generally delicious.

The red velvet recipe went according to plan. I was a little disappointed because they weren’t as red as I’d like them to be, but more of a weird maroon/brown/burgundy colour. Not too big of a deal, really. I did use red food-colouring. You know the kind, in the little drop bottle, that comes in a box with the primary colours. Nothing fancy. The recipe called for gel food colouring, which might be a bit more concentrated.

The problem came when I started to make the buttercream frosting. According to the recipe, and Martha Stewart, the use of a stand mixer came into play. I figured it wasn’t too big of a deal, and continued to use my great-grandmother’s old Sunbeam hand mixer that I’ve used for everything. It’s gotten me through thick and thin, I wasn’t going to give up on it yet! And it was so useful! I continued with the recipe with my hand mixer and all seemed to go well until…

“Switch to the paddle attachment, and continue beating on low speed until all air bubbles are eliminated…”

Wait what? Paddle attachment? What is that? The pictures didn’t give me much to go on. I got my spatula out, just in case, but I kept beating with my handmixer regardless. And I mixed and I mixed and I worried and poked at it with my spatula. But never did my frosting come close to looking like the picture. It looked like cottage cheese. It had curdled. Crap. I checked my recipe again. It said if the frosting curdled I could just mix it again on medium-high. Helpful! So, I amped the speed on my handmixer and kept at it. Nothing. It kind of began to juice a little, which was terribly gross.

I began to wonder where I went wrong. Everything else seemed to go according to plan: until the paddle attachment part. Maybe it was the handmixer? Noooo!  I put the frosting mess into the fridge, in hopes that it’d solidify as it cooled. After a few hours, I pulled it back out and tackled it again. It still kept its lumpy, juicy form. It was pretending to be cottage cheese frosting.

I began to panic. I began to doubt my hand mixer. I began to look into the funds in my bank account (aka: very low). 

See, I had wanted a stand mixer for a while, but they’re awfully expensive. I had searched and found a pretty standard KitchenAid stand mixer for 200 dollars. I was going to suggest it for Christmas where relatives could pool in and get it or something. But, my mom offered to pay for half of it now, since she enjoyed watching me discover my baking ‘talent’ since I started. She knew I was really getting into baking. So we began to look for a place that sold a stand mixer  in our price range, with most importantly a paddle mixer. We first called our small Sears branch, since Sears sells Kitchen Aid. Our Sears only sell large appliances though. Next, we headed to Kmart, since Kmart is under Sears, and might have the mixer I had in mind. Not there. Not even a cheaper one with a paddle mixer.  So I went to Walmart. And there it was, sitting all on its lonesome on a shelf. The Kitchen Aid stand mixer. The only one. I asked a salesperson if they sold the display, and they told me no. They were nice enough to check if they had any in stock, but eventually we realized there wasn’t one there. My next guess was Lowe’s. I called them to ask them if they had stand mixers (they did), and if they carried Kitchen Aid (they did!). After gushing on the phone to this poor man, I raced over there and finally found a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Hurrah! I dragged the thing home and set to work on a new batch of swiss meringue buttercream (using the last of my butter, did you know this recipe uses over a pound of butter!?). It began to curdle worryingly, but I hit the high option and it began to smooth out. Finally! Success!!

All in all, not one of my favourite cakes I’ve tried yet. The cake, while completely moist and lovely, wasn’t very high on my taste list. And the buttercream was just odd and slimy-tasting. I’ve been looking around for alternate buttercream  frosting recipe. My stand mixer came with a slew of recipes, one of which is a buttercream recipe, with different ingredients.  The guys, my taste-testers, voted up on the cupcakes and down on the frosting. They definitely agreed on the taste and texture of the buttercream recipe. They didn’t like the lack of flavour and asked if I didn’t make it again, or made one with more flavour.

You can see the way the frosting glistens. It's oily, and makes that terrible slimy texture.

My mom suggested that it was the egg whites that gave it its slimy taste, and from a little bit of research, I realized that swiss meringue buttercream uses egg whites while traditional buttercream does not. (I eventually tried a traditional chocolate buttercream recipe for some whoopie pies I made. I got the recipe from  "Whoopie Pies: Dozens of Mix 'em, Match 'em, Eat 'em Up Recipes". It was decadently chocolatey but too overwhelming for my chocolate whoopie cake I was using it with. It gave even ME a chocolate overload and made my teeth ache. But it wasn’t slimy! And it didn’t curdle.) So still on the search for a buttercream recipe! I might attempt Swiss Meringue Buttercream again, but maybe amp up the taste with some flavouring in it, like vanilla or something.

The recipes can be found in Martha Stewart’s “Cupcakes” book, and on her site here:

Red Velvet Cupcake
Swiss Meringue Buttercream