Tuesday 19 February 2013
(not quite) black forest cupcakes
For my Valentine's Day baking project I was hoping to do something a little edgier than the usual trite heart-shaped confections. Looked to the supermarket for some inspiration and was delighted to find cherries at the offer rack. [Truth be told, I spend more time at the supermarket than any other retail outlet. Which is a bit sad for a woman who is not yet married with children.] I love my stone fruits and cherries are tied for first place favourite with peaches. Cherries in their natural form, that is. I cannot stand maraschino cherries. Or indeed, any type of "cherry"-flavoured foods, which I automatically associate with cough syrup.
But I digress.
The original intention was to do a Black Forest cupcake inspired by the excellent BFG (Black Forest Gateaux) we had at the Fat Duck which I still dream about from time to time. Sadly, I didn't manage to find kirsch so I substituted it with rum, which apparently is commonly used in the Austrian version. Brandy might have been a better alternative but I was rather reluctant to use the Cognac at home.
I also switched the whipped cream for a cherry-rum-infused cream cheese frosting as the cherries I used were rather sweet and I wanted something tart to complement the richness of the chocolate cake.
So yes. There you have it! My Valentine's Day project which my valentine was rather pleased with.
(Not quite) Black Forest Cupcakes (makes ~24 cupcakes)
A. Cherry Filling
Ingredients
12 cherries, pitted and halved
1 cup rum (or just enough to soak the halved cherries in)
Directions
- Place the cherries in a bowl and pour in the rum, making sure that the cherries are immersed.
- Leave to soak for at least 3h.
B. Chocolate Cupcake
Ingredients
1¾ cup plain flour
1½ cup caster sugar
¾ cup cocoa powder
1½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup strong black coffee (steaming hot)
Directions
- Place flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking power and salt into a mixing bowl.
- Add in eggs, buttermilk, oil, vanilla extract and coffee.
- Mix well using paddle attachment.
- Preheat oven to 175°C.
- Fill cupcake liners with batter until ¾ full.
- Bake for ~18min or until skewer inserted in centre comes out clean.
- Leave to cool on wire rack
- When cool, use a sharp knife to core out centres of all the cupcakes. Do not discard the 'lid'.
- Stuff in a rum-soaked cherry half and ¼ tsp of cherry-rum (from A.) into each cupcake and replace cored out cupcake lid
C. Cherry-Rum-Infused Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
240g cream cheese, softened at room temperature
120g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
~1 cup confectioner's sugar (This is arbitrary. You can adjust the amount according to your preference for frosting sweetness.)
2 tbsp of cherry-rum (from A.)
Directions
- Mix cream cheese and butter together until well-combined.
- Add in sugar ¼ cup at a time until desired sweetness level is achieved
- Add in cherry rum and continue mixing until fully incorporated.
- Frost as desired!
Monday 18 February 2013
pineapple jam
We are about a week into the Lunar New Year and as tradition dictates, I am down with the flu. There's something about the frenzied activities that just kills your body. Or it could the daily gathering of lots of people in confined spaces that facilitates the spread of germs. Or it could be the "heatiness" from all the LNY goodies, as the older generation would say.
LNY is a time for feasting. Snacks are practically shoved in our faces whenever we enter someone's home (which is rather often, if you've got a big family like mine) with the end result being a lot of grumbling from people about burgeoning waistlines. I generally don't have a problem with weight gain during LNY. Not because I am secretly dieting like most people believe, but because I am just not very fond of LNY snacks. The only exception being Mrs Lim's pineapple tarts. (Mrs Lim is the mother of my binge buddy. How appropriate.)
Having been fortunate enough to get my hands on the recipe a few years back, I've been religiously making my own tarts every LNY. My family and future in-laws love the tarts so much, I have to make 4 large batches to keep everyone happy.
I prefer making the closed kind of pineapple tarts because it has a more favourable pastry to jam ratio for me. But then again, this can vary according to how thin you roll our your pastry and how big a dollop of jam you use. There was one year we tried these closed tarts at my grandparents' which had such an appalling amount of filling we couldn't bring ourselves to finish the thing. "Pineapple bomb", my cousin called it. I suppose it wouldn't have tasted that bad if the pineapple wasn't candied to the extent that it was.
For the past few years, I've been using the store-bought pineapple paste to make my tarts. They work well enough but I've always wanted to try my hand at making my own jam so my tarts would be 100% home-made. So that's what I did this year! And now I can't go back to using store-bought pineapple paste. As my elf puts it: "You don't know what you're missing until you've tried pineapple tarts made with home-made pineapple jam." They make you realise that store-bought pastes just don't taste of pineapple.
Pineapple Jam
(adapted from Table for 2... or more)
Ingredients
2 large pineapples* (mine were about 1.2kg each, 600g after peeling)
[opt: 20ml water (if your pineapples are juicy you can leave this out)]
1¼ cup sugar
1 small cinnamon stick
*note: the sour, fibrous variety of pineapples is preferred.
Directions
Cut out the core of the pineapple, chop it up and and place it in a blender.
Blend until you get a fine puree.
Chop up the rest of the peeled pineapple and place the chunks (and any juice) into a blender.
If your pineapples are not very juicy, add 20ml of water.
Blend to a fine consistency while still maintaining a bit of chunkiness.
Place in a wok or heavy-based pan together with the cinnamon stick, and reduce over medium heat until at least 80% of its fluid content has evaporated.
Add in the sugar. (This will cause the mixture to turn watery again.)
Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens to a paste.
Increase to high heat and cook until desired colour is achieved.
Remove from wok/pan and leave to cool, which will cause the jam to thicken further.
If the mixture is still too wet, you can either return it to the wok/pan to continue cooking, or strain the syrup out.
**Sorry I can't disclose the recipe for the pineapple tart pastry without permission from Mrs Lim.
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