Cupcakes! Cupcakes!

The world seems to be going crazy over cupcakes.  There are cookbooks devoted  to cupcakes, bakeries for cupcakes, blogs about cupcakes. The word, cupcake, is even used as a term of endearment.
 
I don't get it!  I just don't!  It's just a cake in a little piece of paper baked in a muffin tin.  Well, there's the old saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  So this week I'm joining the 'cupcakers'.  Only for one week, so don't get too excited.

I decided to post on cupcakes for my little friend, Carson.  She drops by sometimes to give me a hand in the lab.  And cupcakes are her favorite thing to bake.  So Carson, this is for you!

I decided to make chocolate cream-filled cupcakes.  I thought chocolate would be a good place to start for someone not into cupcakes.  This recipe contains a few steps, but it is easy to make.  So, grab your little cupcake and head to the kitchen.

Chocolate Cream-filled Cupcakes

Makes 24.

Ingredients:

1 package (18.25 ounce) devil's food cake mix
1 jar (7 ounce) marshmallow creme
1 stick butter
6 ounces dark chocolate
¾ cup whipping cream

Directions:

1.  Prepare cake mix according to package directions.  Fill 24 muffin wrappers.

2.  Bake according to package directions.

3.  In a medium bowl, combine softened butter and marshmallow creme.  Mix thoroughly to combine.  Refrigerate for 15 to 30 minutes.

4.  Break chocolate into small pieces.  Combine chocolate and whipping cream.  Melt chocolate over low heat.  Stir thoroughly to combine.

5.  Attach a round pastry tip to a pastry bag.  Place cream filling in bag.  Squeeze to remove air pockets.  Push pastry tip into top of cupcake and fill center of cake. (I count to 20 to get enough filling into cupcake.)  Remove excess filling from top. 

6.  Dip top of cupcakes into chocolate.  Refrigerate for about 15 minutes.  Dip cupcakes again.

Zucchini Giving You Trouble?

This time of year is when zucchini start to give you all kinds of trouble. The only way to rid of yourself of them is to leave them on your neighbor’s porch in the dead of night. Zucchini is quite prolific, thus the need for neighbors.

Zucchini (Cucurbita pepo) is a member of the gourd family and in some countries is known as courgette. They can be yellow, green or light green. Although a few zucchini are round, they are generally long with a ridged shaped similar to a cucumber.

Nutritionally, zucchini are low in calories and is a good source of vitamins A, C and fiber. Zucchini has a mild flavor, making it suitable for a variety of dishes. It can be found in dishes from appetizer to dessert. The simplest method to prepare zucchini is to steam them or sauté in a small amount of butter or oil.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Ingredients:
1⅓ cups sugar
½ cup butter, room temperature
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup milk
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2½ cups all purpose flour
6 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
2 cups grated zucchini
Powdered sugar

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 9 x 13-inch baking dish.
2. Mix sugar, butter and oil in a large bowl.
3. Combine milk and lemon juice in a small bowl. Add to sugar mixture. Add eggs and vanilla and blend well. Sift together flour and cocoa. Add baking soda, cinnamon, baking powder and salt to dry ingredients.
4. Stir into sugar mixture. Mix in zucchini. Pour into prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Cool to room temperature. Sprinkle top with powdered sugar before serving.

Need a few more zucchini recipes, try these from Cooking Light - http://bit.ly/bH34uc

A Few Tips for Ridding Yourself of Zucchini…
1. Pick zucchini while they are really small, about 3 to 4 inches. Smaller zucchini are more tender than larger ones. Try them stir-fried, toss them into a soup, cut into sticks, bread and serve as an appetizer with marinara sauce.

2. Hide them. Yes, that’s correct. They are relatively bland and take on the flavor of other ingredients. Put zucchini in chocolate cakes, cookies, meat loaf.

3. Grate and freeze it. You may be grumbling about them now, but in the dead of winter, you’ll appreciate those prolific plants. Try putting zucchini into spaghetti sauce. Your kids may find it, but at least you can enjoy watching them try to pick it out.

4. Make a zucchini donation. Some food pantries and organizations that assist low income populations will be happy to take your excess zucchini.

5. Finally, host a zucchini party. Hand out a few of those excess zucchini to your non gardening friends and ask them to make a dish for the party.

The Perfect Chocolate Cake

I’ve really been getting into this Julia/Julie thing. I refuse to cook my way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking or any other cookbook. So, I have been on a mission to decide what I could do. I decided on making the perfect chocolate cake.

You see, most chocolate cakes seem a little dry. So I want to make a perfect chocolate cake. To get started, I picked a recipe entitled “The Perfect Chocolate Cake”. This is a chocolate cake with whipped cream filling and a chocolate frosting. I baked it and it turned out to be ‘perfect’. The cake was moist with a wonderful chocolate flavor. To be sure I was on track; I served it to some friends of mine. To my utter surprise, my friend Roger licked the plate. And I thought I can’t improve on plate licking. As it turns out the recipe was first published by Southern Living magazine in September 1977. It has been more of their more requested cake recipes. I guess that proves that a true classic never goes out of style.

I didn’t manage to get a picture of Roger. But it would have been quite a picture. You will have to be content with a picture of the cake and a recipe. I hope you bake the cake and enjoy it as much as my friends. Who knows, it could become your plate licking cake too.

If you have a ‘perfect’ chocolate cake recipe, please let us know.

Perfect Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

Cake
1 cup cocoa
2 cups boiling water
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
2½ cups sugar
4 eggs
2¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons vanilla flavoring
Whipped Cream Filling (recipes follows)
Perfect Chocolate Frosting (recipes follows)

Directions:

1. Combine cocoa and boiling water, stirring until smooth. Set aside.

2. Cream butter; gradually add sugar, beating well at medium speed of an electric mixer. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

3. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; add to creamed mixture alternately with cocoa mixture, beating at low speed of electric mixer, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Stir in vanilla. Do not overbeat.

4. Line three 9-inch greased cake pans with wax paper; grease and flour wax paper. Pour batter into cake pans. Bake at 350°F for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes; remove from pans, peel off wax paper, and cool layers completely on wire racks.

5. Spread Whipped Cream Filling between layers; spread Perfect Chocolate Frosting on top and sides of cake. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Whipped Cream Filling
1 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
¼ cup sifted powdered sugar

Beat whipping cream and vanilla until foamy; gradually add powdered sugar, beating until soft peaks form. Chill.

Perfect Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients:
1 package (6 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate morsels
½ cup half and half
¾ cup butter
2 ½ cups sifted powdered sugar

 Directions:
1. Combine first 3 ingredients in a heavy saucepan; cook over medium heat, stirring until chocolate melts. Remove from heat; add powdered sugar, mixing well.

2. Set saucepan in ice, and beat at low speed of an electric mixer until frosting holds its shape and loses its gloss. Add a few more drops of half and half if needed to make spreading consistency.

Warm Delights

Warm Delights is a cake product from Betty Crocker. It is the type of product my students rave about. Being that I am the consummate student, I decided to try this product and see what all the fuss was about.

So I headed off to my local grocery store and purchased one package of molten caramel flavor Warm Delights mini. I was amazed that the bagger was so enthused about my purchasing this product. With a great deal of enthusiasm, she told me this was a totally great product. When asked what was so good about this product, her response was “It is quick and easy”. I thought, gee, she said nothing about the quality of the product, nothing about the flavor, texture, just quick and easy.

I brought my package of Warm Delights back for a taste test. Luckily, I work with a group of people that are always willing to subject themselves to taste tests. My sous chef, 10-year old Carson actually made the cake. It was simple. Remove the mountain of packaging material. Dump the cake mix into the bowl and add 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon of water and stir. Next squeeze the caramel packaging 10 times, now that’s precision for you. Squeeze it over the cake and microwave for 30 seconds. Wait 2 minutes and ‘enjoy’.

We passed the cake around for our customary taste test. Carson, the 10 year old, stated “It’s okay”. My chocoholic coworker stated that “It is without structure”. Now how scientific is that. It was generally agreed that it was okay, but not great. Even though I wasn’t overly excited about the product, it did exceed my expectations and I am amazed at the amount of science required to develop this product. The development team was a group of brilliant scientists. It’s too bad they weren’t brilliant cooks.