My Autumn Return: Orchids, weddings, cupcakes, and more

Dear friends, It has been a LONG time.  More than two months, in fact.  The Kitchen in the Yard has been on a rather extended vacation while I finished my degree and started new work this fall. 

So, yes!  That means I am a doctor now!  A research doctor - not the medical kind, mind you.

All the foodie-ness of this blog has been a saving grace for the past 10 1/2 months since I started posting, and perhaps especially during major crunch times with my dissertation since about April (e.g., when I was really tired, there were times I would tell myself: "As soon as you complete X part of this article, you can edit some photos and write a post!).  I did, in fact, finish the entire dissertation in that time and submitted the final version in early October.  Then all manner of life kicked in and it was time to start new work (more research training), buy a car (I haven't owned a car for almost 8 years!), and get used to many new routines.  

But now it's time for us to catch up.

In my memories of these very recent past few months, working on the dissertation definitely dominates.  However, other things happened, too.  Here are some of the highlights of the past few months since my last post.

Babysitting my friend Megan's orchids while she was between apartments early this past summer.  Having these around was so great, it tempted me to get some of my own.  But let's face it; my track record with plants is absolutely terrible, and that's why I no longer have any in my home - they have all gone to a better place.  Good thing Megan found a suitable home for herself and these, and took them back before too long.

Picking tomatoes in my aunt's garden in Lancaster, PA in August.  Gorgeous, aren't they?  These are all different types of tomatoes!

Stopping by random farm stands in Lancaster County, where lovely blooms, fresh vegetables, and home-baked treats were being sold by a rather eccentric city lady newly relocated to the country.  I love characters like these, and the tarts she'd baked were delicious!

Baking the wedding cupcakes for my dear friends Anna and Willie, who got married in August.

Berries & Buttercream, Chocolate &Ginger

Remember these cupcakes?

The ones you see in this photo are actually a twist on the ones from a posting of chocolate cupcakes from a few weeks ago, even though those three in the top row look just the same on the outside.  The chocolate cupcakes are from the same Martha Stewart recipe as in the other posts.  And yes, there are also blackberries on these, just like before.

However, there are two new things here.  One, I diced up some candied ginger and sprinkled it around the blackberry.  I think this combination worked really well for these reasons:

Berries + ginger = delicious
Berries + chocolate = delicious
Berries + buttercream = delicious!

This is something I started thinking about a while ago ... when do you ever get to eat fresh berries with buttercream?  Basically never, right?  It seems like berries tend to get paired with lighter cakes, whipped cream, or else put in tarts and pies.   Which, of course, are also delicious.  But the combination of the buttercream and berries really worked ... I think it's that concept of having something light and fresh cut through the rich, dense feel and flavor of the cake and buttercream.  And the ginger just brought out new flavors, too.  I really, really like the combination of flavors here.

Okay, the second new thing, which you can't see, is that these chocolate cupcakes are filled with whipped chocolate ganache - the same stuff swirled on top of the previous posting's cupcakes as a frosting.  Think: Hostess Cupcake ... only more super duper.  And while I'm not going to take the time to write about this right now, all those nasty yet amazing Hostess cupcakes I ate in junior high and then didn't touch again until a few months ago - on a strange and weird whim of sorts, but I'll get to that another time - really have proved inspirational recently, what with all of these posts on cupcakes and frosting and filling and blah blah blah. 

Anyway ... filling the cupcakes adds another step of preparation, and therefore time, but it's not difficult.  I just fitted a pastry bag with a tip that had the largest opening I could find, then I stuck the tip into the top of the cupcake and squeezed the ganache into the cupcake.  The cake is light enough that it expands to fit the ganache; no need to cut out a part of the cupcake to make room.  The top will look a little messy, but you cover it with the frosting so no one is any the wiser ... except all of you reading this since I just spilled the beans.  Smile.  Just the way you serve them up. 

Lemon Buttercake/Vanilla Buttercream & Chocolate/Whipped Ganache

More on cupcakes!  There are basically two types of cupcakes here:

Chocolate cupcake with whipped chocolate ganache

These are the same chocolate cupcakes I posted about earlier, using a recipe from Martha Stewart's site.  The whipped chocolate ganache makes these really, really rich for the real chocolate lovers out there ...

I used a ganache recipe from Savory Sweet Life, which has great instructions and photos so you can make sure you're doing it right as you make it.  I cooled the ganache in my refrigerator when I went to work on the buttercream frosting and finished baking the cupcakes, and then I whipped it up with a hand mixer.  Then I put the whipped ganache into a disposable pastry bag fitted with a tip, just as I did with the buttercream, and layered the cupcakes with it.

After you whip the ganache, it's important to get it on the cupcakes fairly quickly.  It begins to harden after 15 minutes or so, and just becomes difficult to handle (I learned this through experience with these cupcakes, and needed to warm up the whipped ganache and then whip it briefly again to even out the texture ... not ideal).  

In my next post, I'm going to write a bit about filling the cupcakes.  For these chocolate ones I filled some of them with the same whipped chocolate ganache that they're frosted with here, so they were super-duper chocolate-y.  But the ganache itself is quite rich and I think it's plenty just to use it as a frosting, depending on your taste, of course.  Anyhow, I'll get back to this in the next post, though, because filling these things can make them pretty awesome. 

Lemon butter cake with vanilla buttercream frosting 

For the yellow cupcakes, I used a recipe for butter cake that I actually wasn't a huge fan of in the end, so I'm not going to post it here.  If I were to do these again, I would find a yellow cake recipe (not butter cake) and use that instead ... in a pinch, I might even just use a yellow cake mix ... but, sshhhhhhh.

What I would still do, which I did for the cupcakes pictured here and in the photo in the last post, is add a Tbsp of fresh lemon juice and a Tbsp of minced lemon zest to the batter.  This is an amount that gives the cake a subtle lemon-y taste without being overpowering.

I didn't fill these cupcakes like I did the chocolate ones you'll see/read about in my next post, partly because of time and party because I couldn't quite decide what to fill them with.  Some options: Add lemon zest to the buttercream and fill it with that, lemon mousse, vanilla pudding.  Another option that just occurred to me is to make some type of berry mousse or whipped cream ... with just a subtle berry flavor so that it's complementary with the lemon in the cake.  The research and development team will keep working on this one :).

I used the same vanilla buttercream recipe I used for the chocolate-blackberry cupcakes ... and as you can see in the photo, I also used blackberries in the center (I also placed raspberries in the center of some of them).  Then I used a lemon zester to create the threads of lemon you see on top.  Just remember to put the berry and the lemon zest on top of the cupcake pretty quickly after frosting it; you need to press those into the frosting slightly and you want to be sure that the frosting is still soft enough that that's easy to do. 

One more posting on cupcakes to come ...

(Photo: Dan Nystedt)

Cupcakes in Black and White

Stay tuned for a posting to come about these cupcakes: whipped chocolate ganache, vanilla buttercream, lemon butter cake, raspberries, blackberries, lemon zest ... coming up soon!

~Madeleine

(Photo: Dan Nystedt)

Chocolate/Blackberry Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

I've been getting crazy about cupcakes recently.  I know they've become something of a fad in the last few years, but to be honest, I haven't really understood how there are entire stores devoted to selling these compact sweets.  What's the big deal? 

However, my friend Christina's recent birthday seems to have tipped off a new baking obsession - even rivaling my fixation on pie! - focused on these very cakes.  I made my first batch for her birthday in March, and the photos you see here are the second batch I made the following week.

I used Martha Stewart's recipe for chocolate cupcakes, which produces a very moist, rich cake without too much trouble.   

I didn't realize that craft stores carry loads of baking supplies, but they do.  And that's where I found these cupcake papers and the cake decorating tools I used for the frosting.  (Thanks, Mom!)

The vanilla buttercream icing is adapted from a recipe I found on the Food Network site.  The one adaptation I made is that I used unsalted butter, and mixed 1/4 tsp. salt to the sugar before I blended it with the butter.  It produced an icing that was delicious as well as easy to use for decorating.

After the cupcakes were cooled, I put the icing in a disposable pastry bag fitted with a tip and used that to apply the icing.  Then I put a fresh blackberry in the center in each cake, and voila.

I've made a few different types of cupcakes since then, which I'll be posting soon.

One last note: you can't really see it in this close-up photo, but the mauve color in the background is actually a pew at my church!  Incidentally, I brought these cupcakes in celebration of one of the pastors being ordained recently, and we loaded these onto a plate found in the church kitchen and photographed them on the church pew. 

(Photo: Dan Nystedt)