Cupcake Test 7, White Chocolate with White Chocolate Buttercream

I couldn't handle the seeming failure of last weeks cupcake test, even though they were gone in no time flat.  So this week, I redid my White Chocolate cupcakes with White Chocolate Buttercream Icing.  There's no link, as this was off the top of my head.  The cupcakes were simple - a French Vanilla box mix, with some of the white "chocolate" ground in my food processor mixed in -about 6 ounces.  (This is the block of stuff that I request from Mom each Christmas!)  Then, because I couldn't leave well enough alone, I dolloped a bit of jam in pre-baking.  I wanted to do lemon, but got talked out of that, and I still think it could really work.  Instead I did a half dozen each of cherry, blueberry, and peach and left a half dozen "plain".

Notes the first:  The cupcakes were sticky in the trays and didn't want to let loose when it was time to remove them. They also didn't rise very much.  The jam and any larger chunks of chocolate simply sank to the bottom of the cupcake.  The white chocolate chunklettes actually got a little brown in the bottom of the cups.  If I were to do these, yet again, I would skip adding the chocolate and jam to the cake batter, and instead do a soft white chocolate ganache to pipe in as a filling.  Maybe something like this?

Then came the frosting.  I looked online and there a bazillion ways to make a buttercream frosting.  Some use eggs, some don't.  The ratio of chocolate to butter to sugar varies from recipe to recipe.  After looking and figuring, and knowing what I personally like, this is what I came up with:

White Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

8 oz of white chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli), melted in top of a double boiler

1 cup of salted butter, softened

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

4 1/2 cups of confectioners sugar, more or less

Heavy whipping cream, as needed.

Melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler.  Once the chips are smooth and creamy, take them off the heat and let them cool for a bit.  You don't want it to harden, but if it is too hot it will melt your butter.  While you are cooling the chocolate, go ahead and cream the butter in/with your mixer.  You want it to be light and fluffy.  Then, pour the still warm chocolate into the butter and immediately start the mixer on high.  My butter melted just a bit, but once it was whipped up, everything solidified.  Add in the vanilla, and then start adding the confectioners sugar, one cup at a time.  You may use more or less of the confectioners sugar, depending on how stiff you want the frosting to be.  If it gets too stiff, you could whip in some heavy cream, one teaspoon at a time, to loosen it back up again.

Notes the second:  I prefer the double boiler to the microwave as you can see what's happening the whole time and there is less chance of burning the chocolate.  Also, it's easy to "make" a double boiler if you have a metal bowl larger than one of your pots - just don't let the bottoms touch, or let the bottom of the bowl touch the boiling water.  Most recipes use unsalted butter, but I prefer the bit of salt found in salted butter.  It's kind of like adding salt to caramel.  This frosting piped out of the bag just like a dream. Although I tried to make chocolate curls, all I got was shards.  That would need more practice.

Tasting Notes:  Me - I was able to try the cherry and blueberry, and as I said above, I'd skip the jam and chocolate and just do a ganache filling instead.  The chocolate was not noticeable in the cupcake. The frosting was fabulous. Although still recognizable as a buttercream, it had enough chocolate in it to taste like you would expect a white chocolate buttercream to taste.

Mark - This was wrapper licking good.  The white chocolate buttercream made him moan and he has declared it by far his favorite.  But he is a huge fan of white chocolate.

Work - These disappeared even faster than the last batch.  Even though the delivery dates were Monday and Friday. 

An Update:  StO and I looked for the ingredients in the Chai Cupcakes linked to earlier and we could not find any Instant Chai.  BtB, can you send me the recipe you had when I visited?  I still think they sound really tasty.

We're off book folks....

They had the German cherry pitter, and it works quite well actually.  The hopper kinda stacks up, so you can gently roll the cherries through, but I have to imagine that it works so much better than picking up a cherry, pitting a cherry, pulling the cherry off the pitter and picking up the next cherry.  We were able to process 36#'s of fruit with relative ease.

I know, crazy huh?  I thought that one box of cherries would not quite be enough, so I bought two.  And actually, I'm glad. If this is not the last week the cherries will be available, then it's darn close. 

We spent two afternoons making up jam.  Saturday was Plain Cherry Jane and "Bing" Cherry Jam with spices and Amaretto.  Sunday, we went off book (Ball Blue Book) and started going crazy.  We made Blue-Cherry-Berry, Cherry Marmalade, Cherry-Strawberry, Cherry Vanilla, and Cherry Conserve(Compote?).  All quite yummy, although I think the Cherry-Strawberry and Cherry Vanilla are my favorites.  The Cherry-Strawberry is full of that jammy fruit flavor you read about in your wine tasting notes.  We liked it so much, I actually put aside cherries in the freezer so we can make some more when I get strawberries.  The Cherry Vanilla tastes kinda like the way good pipe tobacco smoke smells.  I think it's going to be great over vanilla ice cream, or maybe as a glaze on some really good meat - duck perhaps?

2010 Jam Plans include:  Strawberry (1 1/2 flats of fruit), Plum (1 box of fruit), and Meyer Lemon Marmalade (whatever is left on the trees!).

I need to preserve (groan!) the recipes for future episodes of "Little Cabin in the Woods", so measurements and notes as follows.

Cherry-Strawberry makes 6.5 half pints

• 2 1/2 c chopped, pitted cherries
• 2 c chopped strawberries
• 1/4 c lemon juice
• 3 1/2 c sugar
• 1 pkg powdered pectin (next time use the low-sugar version)

Cherry Marmalade makes 7 half pints

• 4 c chopped, pitted cherries
• 1 med orange, chopped and seeded (peel included)
• 2 T lemon juice
• Sugar (tbd)
• 1 pkg powdered pectin

Blue-Cherry-Berry makes 8 half pints

• 2 c blueberries
• 2 c chopped pitted cherries  (change to 1 c blueberry, 3 c cherry)
• 1/4 c lemon juice
• 6 1/4 c sugar
• 2 pkgs liquid pectin

Cherry Vanilla makes 7 half-pints

• 4 c chopped, pitted cherries
• 1/4 c Amaretto (altho you don't taste it, I think it supports the vanilla bean)
• 2 T lemon juice
• 1 vanilla bean, scraped but whole pod cooked in
• 4 c sugar
• 1 pkg powdered pectin (change to low sugar pectin next time)

Cherry Pecan Conserve (Compote?) makes 10 half pints

• 4 c chopped, pitted cherries
• 1 c chopped strawberries
• 1 med orange, chopped and seeded (peel included)
• 1 pkg powdered pectin
• 1/4 c lemon juice
• 4 c sugar
• bring the above to a boil then add:
• 1 c chopped pecans
• 1 c raisins
• 1 pkg liquid pectin

Whew! Glad that's done (mostly)

I love doing what I do for a living - it's not exciting, it's not rocket science, and it's not going to make me the most popular person at a party - but it can be intense sometimes, and it's logical, and it's something that I know how to do well - at least most of the time. And this past couple of weeks have been some of the more intense of the year. But now, it's over, it's done. And I get to coast for a couple of weeks until the next burst of activity.

Which means, I should be able to work on some of the things I want to work on, instead of the things I need to work on. I still have an outstanding Christmas IOU to my honey for some house socks and I'm down to where he actually needs to try it on so I know how much further to go. And then I have an IOU that's more than 10 years past due. Can I? Will I? I'd like to. We'll just have to see.

This weekend was mostly spent working, but I did manage to do something new to me: I made Salted Caramels. I was fascinated at how it seemed that the sugar mixture went from this cloudy white grainy fluid, to a clear smooth bubbly syrup, and then in a blink of an eye went from pale golden to a true caramel color. Be sure to use the larger pot when you are boiling the sugar as the introduction of the cream/butter mixture to the hot syrup causes foaming that could be quite hurtful. If you think you want to "salt" the tops, do it shortly after you pour the caramel into the pan or it won't integrate into the top. I brought most of them in to work today - they don't need to be in easy reach of my hands at home - and the tin is very nearly empty.

And last week, in the middle of all the hullabaloo, my honey and I went to Sur La Table and took a class on basic knife skills. The instructor, Nikki, was a hoot and a half, knowledgeable and willing to share her enthusiasm with us. We learned the easy way to dice an onion, how to segment a citrus fruit, and how to make a garlic paste, as well as some of the usual julie-ann (like the green bean!) matchstick and dice cuts. We also splurged (another Christmas IOU) on a set of awesome knives - Wuesthof - Classics. We're both infatuated with them and keep trying to figure out a way to get more veggies into dinner - just so we can use the knives. I broke down some stew beef into user friendly bite size pieces and it was a dream. And those caramels - don't even think about using one of your p-o-c knives to cut them down to bite size pieces.  One more thing off my wish list....

Day 005: Lemon Bars?

Smitten Kitchen, one of the lovely food blogs I read regularly, has a recipe for Lemon Bars on her site that I think I must try! I love the sweet-tart taste of lemons, limes and grapefruit when used in desserts and sorbets. Add a layer of shortbread and I'm in heaven! I'm not a big fan of meringue, so pies are not so much a favorite. Fortunately, I have all the ingredients in hand, including 50 or so very small, but very ripe, lemons on the tree. Now all I need is the time to make them - probably on Friday.

Tonight I have a dinner date with the ladies of B. It'll be good to have the chance to sit and talk with these women and be out and about.

Day Seventeen (or Lemonade )

When Life hands you lemons, make lemonade ~ well that's the proverb anyway. I'd rather make something more refreshing and adult in nature. We have about half a dozen citrus trees on the deck - hanging out until they are big enough to survive the attentions of the multitude of deer that roam the property. Each one of these trees doesn't realize that it is less than 5 feet tall, and root bound in a pot. They produce the sweetest smelling blooms in the spring time and drive the bees and birds mad with the sweet nectar. As a result, we end up with over a hundred fruit set on each tree. I can't bear to see the branches overloaded, so I end up culling them down to about a third of the final set. That's still a lot of lemons and limes (only a few oranges). The limes go into Mark's Magic Margaritas, and the lemons go into:

Lorili's Luscious Lemonade

1 part Citrus Vodka

1 part Peach Schnapps

1 1/2 parts fresh squeezed lemon juice

Super Fine Sugar to taste (usually for me, that's about 1 T)

Treat as if it's a margarita - ice in the cocktail shaker, a nice cold glass frosty from the freezer. Pour the liquids over the ice in the shaker, add the sugar. Shake until well blended, taste, adjust as needed (sugar, peach, lemon), shake again, then pour into a lemon/sugar rimmed glass. Garnish with a fresh peach slice if you have it.

I've tried this with prepared lemonade, and lemon juice from a bottle, it doesn't work. Don't do it if you don't have the fresh lemons to juice.