In defense of the cupcake.

Today I saw an article on yahoo.com announcing that cupcakes were one of seven food fads that are going out of style.  Are cupcakes really losing their cool?  Reading that immediately prompted me to write an entry here to make the point that cupcakes could not possibly be going by the wayside.  While people are always looking for the latest and greatest, does that--should that--apply to food, especially dessert, as well?  Food is one of those things that we would find completely disappointing if it were to change or go away.  When I go to a restaurant, and I am treated to an amazing dish, I go back precisely to have the same experience again.  And so with the cupcake.  With that, I have my top five reasons for why cupcakes should not be cast aside:

1.  Cupcakes have built-in portion control.  At a time when dietary intake is a primary concern, cupcakes make it easier to restrict yourself to one serving.
2.  Cupcakes are green.  Since they can be hand-held, no extra plastic forks or paper plates are required.
3.  Cupcakes help the economy.  At easily $3+ dollars a pop, the local mom and pop bakeries can stay afloat.
4.  Cupcakes make even an average baker look spectacular.  Cupcakes can look cute and charming and delectable with less effort than many other desserts, even cake.
5.  Cupcakes remind you of your childhood.  And how can anyone resist returning to that innocence and those days of being carefree?  (Actually, cupcakes remind me of NYC, where I had my first cupcake fad experience--and I *love* NYC).

Okay, I'm being a little silly.  I do still love cupcakes, though, for the reasons above--especially the last two.  It is a funny thing to me that food, like fashion, can be faddish.  I wonder why we, as people, can't be completely satisfied by the same things that once satisfied us before.  I suppose that's a deeper question for another time...  Maybe you can tell me whether you still love cupcakes for what they are--cute, delicious baked goods--or if you're beginning to abandon them as a past trendy craze (don't worry, I won't take it personally). 

Banana Cupcakes
Adapted from Martha Stewart.
Makes about a dozen cupcakes.

1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1/2 cup butter, melted
1-1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 3)
2 large eggs
1/2 t. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F degrees and line cupcake pan.

In a bowl, whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt together.  Mix butter, bananas, eggs and vanilla into flour mixture.  Divide batter into cupcake wells.  Bake until a toothpick comes out clean, approximately 25-30 minutes.  Remove cupcakes from pan and cool on a rack.

Cream Cheese Whipped Cream Frosting

8 oz. reduced fat cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 t. vanilla
1/2 t. almond extract
2 cups heavy cream

Using an electric mixer, cream together the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and almond extract.  Using the whisk attachment, whip in the heavy cream, until stiff peaks form. 

Starstruck.

This past week has been a little bit crazy. There's always work, and I've been trying to train for a 10K which I hope to run the end of next month (operative word being "trying"), and I was getting ready for an Oscar party a good friend was hosting--which turned out so nice and fun! I usually get sucked into the glamor of the Oscars, and the Academy Awards is the one award show I watch every year. One year in high school, I got to work at the Academy Awards bringing people up to the press box in the elevator. I was so thrilled, and I remember seeing Marisa Tomei that year, who had won for best supporting actress for her role in My Cousin Vinnie. She was surrounded by photographers and reporters, looking elated, and I fell in love with her dress (I think it was a Chanel?) and thought she was adorable (she looked great this year too). I've been an Academy Awards devotee ever since.


For the Oscar party, my friend laid out a red carpet with gold balloons in her house, and we invited some ("some" grew to be about 25) good friends, a number of whom have young children now--and for once, this was an event I didn't bake for at all. My friend who hosted the party made a chocolate cake with a frosting reminiscent of thick chocolate milkshake--thinking about it now makes my mouth water. It was all a little chaotic with kids and food everywhere, so I don't think I even really watched much of the Oscars at all. But it was worth missing to catch up with friends, at least as best I could amid the noise--though I was able to catch the last award (and, in my mind, the most important award) for best picture, which went to Slumdog Millionaire (hooray!).

So all that to say...I didn't bake anything new this past week at all. In thinking about what recipe I could possibly share with you for this post, I decided on red velvet cupcakes--which, in the world of cupcakes, deserves its place on the red carpet as far as I'm concerned. (Unfortunately, they don't look as red in the pictures as they did in real life.)

Red Velvet Cupcakes
(I don't remember where I got this recipe from)
Makes about 18 cupcakes

2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, Dutch-processed
1 t. salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 t. vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
2 T. red liquid food color
1-1/2 t. baking soda
1 T. apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 350F degrees, and line cupcake pans with paper liners.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt with a wire whisk. In another bowl, cream butter and sugar together until fluffy and light in color. Mix in eggs, one at a time, and vanilla, scraping down the bowl in between eggs. Combine the food color with the buttermilk, then add the buttermilk mixture and flour mixture, alternating between each mixture in 3 turns. Mix in the baking soda and vinegar until combined. Pour the batter into the cupcake wells. Bake on the middle rack for approximately 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the frosting, you can use a cream cheese frosting (but without the orange zest; and which I read somewhere is not the traditional frosting even though I've only ever had red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting), and garnish with chopped pecans on top.

A little zing.

I'm still on my vegetable kick this week. I know I put you through that whole thing on Swiss chard last week, but this time will be different--we're back to cupcakes! It's always been interesting to me how someone could have come up with the idea of putting a vegetable into a cake. I read somewhere that it was a ploy to get kids to eat more vegetables. Whatever the case, it works, and our topic du jour involves the zucchini!

To be honest, the zucchini is not really a personal favorite. The best thing about the zucchini is the crisp outside, but when cooked, it's mostly mushy and can be a little blah in flavor (in my opinion). Usually, when served as a side dish, steamed or sauteed, it seems to require a lot of salt and pepper to compensate for the blandness. I tried reading up on the zucchini to try to appreciate it a little more, and I learned from Wikipedia that the zucchini is the "swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower". Hm...think about that the next time you have some. All said, my relationship with zucchini is a little ambivalent. (So far, I'm not doing a good job of promoting the zucchini, am I.)

Zucchini cupcakes (and zucchini bread) are a whole other story, however. I was originally looking for something kind of different and unique to make for a friend's birthday, and I came across this zucchini cupcake recipe from Epicurious.com, which included honey, crystallized ginger and orange zest. Perfect. The flavor combination looked intriguing, and it didn't involve a lot of guilt (anything with zucchini must not be that guilty). Also, one of my favorite things about this recipe is grating the zucchini. Yeah, I know, a little weird. Zucchinis are firm, but not hard (like carrots! I generally avoid grating carrots by hand if I can) making the grating process nearly effortless and sort of therapeutic (repetitive, mindless motions get me into a zone).

The original recipe calls for coarsely grated zucchini, and when I made it the first time, the cupcakes seemed a little hearty but turned out really moist, with a nice subtle ginger and citrus zing. I made this recipe again last week, grating the zucchini more finely and baked it up as a loaf (I didn't care so much about presentation this time around--I planned on eating most of it). It turned out a little drier (just a little)--could it be a product of how finely I grated the zucchini? Or maybe because it was a loaf instead of individual cupcakes? Nonetheless, I offered to give some of the zucchini loaf to another friend to try, but it didn't quite make it to her. (I'll make this again for her another time.)

Zucchini Ginger Cupcakes
(adapted from Epicurious.com)
Makes about a dozen cupcakes or one 9" loaf

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 t. ground ginger
1 t. ground cinnamon
1 t. finely grated fresh orange zest
1/3 cup coarsely chopped crystallized ginger (or chop more finely, as preferred)
1 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder

3/4 cup vegetable or mild olive oil
3/4 cup mild honey (I've also used brown sugar instead)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 t. vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini (about 2 medium zucchinis)

Preheat the oven to 350F degrees and line the cupcake pan or grease the loaf pan.

In a bowl, use a wire whisk to combine the dry ingredients (not including the brown sugar, if using). In a separate bowl, whisk the oil, honey or brown sugar, eggs, vanilla and zucchini until just combined. Mix in the flour mixture on low or by hand.

Pour the batter into the cupcake pan or the loaf pan and place on it the middle or upper third rack in the oven. The cupcakes take about 20-25 minutes to bake, or 45-50 minutes if using a loaf pan. Allow to cool in the pan for about 5 to 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and cool on a cooling rack.

If you're making cupcakes, you can use the following cream cheese frosting recipe, which adds a little more verve!

Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz cream cheese, softened
2 T. unsalted butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla
1/2 t. ground ginger
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. finely grated fresh orange zest

Cream the cream cheese and butter together in a mixer on medium until fluffy. Add the remaining ingredients and continue mixing. If the frosting is too thick, you can also add a teaspoon of milk at a time to soften it.

Warm and fuzzy.

Autumn is my favorite season of the year. I like Springtime, too. But there is something about the fall, when the air is crisp and the leaves change colors. I made a trip to the Boston/New England area a couple of years back in October, that was simply breathtaking (I felt like I had stepped into Little Women). Where I live now is nothing like it, but in contrast to where I grew up (the cosmopolitan, concrete-laden Los Angeles), watching the trees--real leafy trees, not palm trees--around my neighborhood turn red, orange and yellow is still beautiful to me. Autumn also means the holidays are nearing! Maybe they are too commercial (after all, one of the most anticipated events right after Thanksgiving is Black Friday), but there's something to be said about time set aside to spend with the people you love (even if some of them may drive you crazy at times, as family often does) if for no other reason than to share a meal and to try to remember that we still have much to be thankful for (because it is so amazingly easy to forget).

When I think about food for the holidays, I think about foods that make me feel warm and cheerful. That usually includes things like pumpkin pie (love the pumpkin pie), sweet potatoes, gingerbread, chocolate anything and my mom’s cooking (she is an incredible cook). While not a conventional Thanksgiving dessert—no pumpkin involved—carrot cupcakes have risen to that level for me. I’m referring specifically to the carrot cake recipe from Sherry Yard's The Secrets of Baking (another birthday gift!), which uses brown butter to give it a complex nutty flavor. I first attempted this recipe about two months ago, and cannot stop making them (I just made a batch using carrots and coconut the other day after work to put in the freezer so I could have them whenever I want). The brown butter gives the carrot cake a sort of vitality that holds its own even if additional traditional "fillers" (e.g. walnuts, raisins) aren't on hand. Carrot cupcakes may not be a traditional Thanksgiving dessert, but it's always an American favorite according to Sherry Yard, and I think they could still be a nice way to finish off a turkey dinner. I've adapted the original recipe here for cupcakes and to make the recipe a little less complicated. (Side note on Sherry Yard's book: my favorite pastry cookbook I’ve come across so far; she goes into the chemistry of baking to help you understand techniques and their purposes, and it's organized in such a way for you to mix and match recipes to spur your creativity—very educational).

First, on browning butter: melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly, until it turns light brown (kind of obvious, I know). During the process, the butter will foam and bubble, and the fat solids will start to turn colors so you'll have darkened bits of butter in the pan. Be careful, though, it quickly goes from brown to black (this happened to me the first time I tried it--I stepped away for less than a minute and the next thing I knew, all the bits were black. Black butter is more bitter and may have different uses, but we're not going for that here). For the carrot cupcake recipe below, let the brown butter cool to about room temperature--don't refrigerate it so it'll remain in a liquid state.


Carrot Cupcakes
(adapted from "Carrot Cake" in The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard)
Makes approximately 18 cupcakes

1/2 cup all purpose flour (sifted)*
1/2 cup whole wheat flour (sifted)*
1/2 cup almond flour
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1 t. ground cinnamon
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup regular granulated white sugar
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 T. vanilla extract
1/2 pound (or 2 sticks) unsalted butter*, browned (still liquid and including bits that may be stuck to the pan)
2 cups grated carrots
Optional additional ingredients: walnuts, coconut, raisins (or anything else you’d like; about 1 cup of each, if using)

- Preheat the oven to 350F degrees, and line the cupcake pan.
- Sift the all purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, almond flour, baking powder and baking soda into a mixing bowl. Use a whisk to combine.
- In another bowl, whisk the eggs. Add the brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla, and whisk together by hand.
- On low speed, using the paddle attachment if you have a stand mixer, add the egg and sugar mixture to the flour mixture. Once incorporated, mix on medium for about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- Returning the speed to low, gently pour in the brown butter. Once the butter has been incorporated, scrape down the sides of the bowl, then turn the mixer to high for about 2 to 3 minutes (mixing on high will help incorporate more air into the batter).
- Gently fold in the carrots and any additional ingredients by hand, using a wire whisk or with a spatula.
- Pour the batter into the cupcake pan, filling each well almost full but not up to the rim, about 3/4 of the way.
- Bake the cupcakes for about 20 to 25 minutes, and use a toothpick to check for readiness. Cupcakes are ready when the toothpick comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes in the pan for a couple of minutes, then transfer them to a rack to cool completely.

*Recipe notes:
- The original recipe called for 1 cup of all-purpose flour, but I try to make some of my baked goods a little healthier so I use 1/2 cup of wheat flour--which also adds to the nutty flavor, in my opinion.
- You can substitute applesauce for butter to reduce the fat content, but at most, use 1/2 cup of applesauce and 1 1/2 cups of butter (to total the 2 cups called for). Also, if using applesauce, incorporate the applesauce before adding the brown butter; and I recommend refrigerating the batter for about an hour before baking--the cupcakes bake up more rounded and won't spread as much.

You can use an icing or cream cheese frosting to top the carrot cupcakes off. After trying both, I prefer the cream cheese frosting for both taste and presentation.

Cream Cheese Frosting

When it comes to making frosting, I almost never do the same thing twice because I add ingredients as I make it to get to the consistency I like, which is usually on the softer side. As you can see from the picture, I made the frosting too soft this time. This is an approximation of what I do for cream cheese frostings:

5 T. butter at room temperature
2 8 oz. packages of cream cheese
2 t. vanilla
1 T. grated orange zest (optional)
2 to 3 cups powdered sugar (depending on desired consistency)
(If the frosting is too thick, sometimes I’ll add orange juice, one teaspoon at a time, as necessary)

Cream the butter on medium speed, scrape down the bowl, then add the rest of the ingredients and whip on medium until fluffy. This should be enough to frost more than 18 cupcakes generously.