maltshop memories

It has been OVER A YEAR since I've posted anything and boy, I feel really badly about this. What can I say? I finally finished my master's degree in early childhood education and early childhood special education. YAY!!! I graduated this past May and still had two state exams to take (out of 4 for NYS teacher certification) and finally took my last one in July, and found out in August that I passed it. PHEW! Now I'm just waiting for the OK from NYS to tell me that I'm certified (believe me, I have applied to places). So, since I have no teaching job for the fall, I am essentially back to where I was before I was in school. Working at a bookstore and not doing much else. So now I have time for blogging, baking (and eating) cupcakes, playing guitar & learning banjo, playing shows (at bars AND toy stores), etc etc etc. So hello everyone once again, and here is my latest cupcake adventure:

Chocolate Malted Cupcakes!!

I was flipping through Martha Stewart's cupcake book looking for a new recipe to try. My boyfriend Mike loves anything malted (whoppers, milkshakes, beer) so I thought I'd give the chocolate malted cupcakes a whirl and see how he liked them. He works at a supermarket so I met him as he got off his shift & he got me to the ingredients right quick! Without Mike I would've been wandering around the store squinting at aisle signs like an idiot for half an hour.

Here I am looking like Julia Child. I was still in my work clothes--fortunately I got this cute red apple apron from Target a few months ago. Martha says to mix the dry stuff first, so here I am whisking flour, cocoa, sugar (granulated and light brown), baking soda and salt. I had Mike measure out the malted milk powder and liquid milk since he likes malt so much.



And whisking, too! We're already making such a mess. Then I combined the dry bowl with the milk bowl and started adding the 3 eggs.


Then came a surprising ingredient, but one I'm sure really made these cupcakes.


Sour cream!


I couldn't believe how moist and rich these cupcakes were. Yum yum yum! Let's continue...

Martha also suggests using an ice cream scoop to measure out just enough batter for each cupcake. Great tip! Thanks, Martha! Except of course it was for a previous recipe I'd done (the classic yellow on her website, which I'll discuss later) that was only for 12 cupcakes... This recipe makes "about 28." So we made 24 plus three large cupcakes (in my large 6-cupcake tin).

So that's about a scoop and a half each. Into the oven you go! Then it was time for the frosting. This is one of my favorite things about cupcakes. For what is a cupcake without its frosting? A sad little cakey muffin. (Still very tasty, though. Like these. For once I wasn't eating a cupcake solely as an excuse to eat frosting).

Martha Stewart's frostings usually call for a ton of soft unsalted butter and confectioner's sugar. I guess that's what most frostings call for, period. I don't have a lot of frosting-making experience outside of my Martha book. I tried vegan frosting once but I wasn't very happy with the outcome. Remind me to try that again.

Mike sifted 4 cups of confectioner's sugar, one cup at a time. He actually enjoyed this. I mean, I don't hate it, but it was very nice to have helping hands :) I just realized that I always bake alone, and having some help not only makes everything go quicker, it's also so much more fun!


Butter, sugar, vanilla. Yum, yum, yum! Meanwhile, we took the cupcakes out of the oven and I had Mike put them on the wire racks to cool.

Frosting's ready, cupcakes are ready...

We did some dishes and cleaned up while the cupcakes cooled enough to get frosted.

Here I am with my trusty offset spatula. Where would I be without it? Mike got me a pastry bag a few months ago that I tried using once. I used it to make little mitten and house decorations on cupcakes for my friends' housewarming party (get it? houses and mittens?), which I will post later, but I haven't yet used it for the whole top of a cupcake, which I really want to do. Anyway...

Here they all are, 24 regular-sized cupcakes, all frosted with that lovely delicious Fluffy Vanilla Frosting (also from Martha's book). Martha puts sprinkles on them for decorations. While Mike & I were at the supermarket, I had an idea.

I thought it'd be cute to put chocolate shavings on top. We'd just watched our first full episode of Cupcake Wars (maybe he'd seen it before, I don't remember, but I certainly hadn't seen a full episode, which doesn't make much sense, considering how much I love cupcakes and how often people who know me tell me to watch it), and I was feeling pretty inspired. That (and my sudden freeing up of time) is what really made me want to get back to this blog.

So, I know, chocolate shavings aren't Cupcake Wars contender-worthy, but it was my little gourmet-ish touch. So Mike took me to the aisle where they have chocolate bars. He had been wanting to try the Cadbury chocolate bar, so we got that. (He doesn't eat candy or dessert really EVER, but he does now, because he's dating me). While exiting the aisle, I stopped, whacked his arm and said, "You know what would really be great?? Whoppers!!" He agreed (since that's pretty much his favorite candy) and we bought a box.




(This was the first plate. I realized after this that I should put the shavings on before the Whoppers.)


(Pre-Whoppers)

Then on the drive home I whacked his arm again and said, "You know what else would be great? Straws!! To make them look like little milkshakes!" So he helped me cut the straws to little sizes and bent them (of course we keep bendy straws at my house) and we stuck them into each cupcake with chocolate shavings and a malt ball on top. And I thought, Martha Stewart didn't think of that. ;)



By now we hadn't tasted them yet. My brother David had walked in asking if he & his husband Hiro could try one and I said, "No, we have to finish decorating them!" Well after Mike & I finished one plate, we tried them. Then we told David.

We made so many, I took them into work the next day. I really do think these were the best cupcakes I've ever made. So moist, so tasty, the frosting was great, the silver liners made them look fancy (thanks to Katherine for that suggestion--she's on a cupcake wrapper kick & noticed, as was my complaint too, that cute decorated cupcake wrappers always come out oily and blotted so you can't even see the cute decoration anymore! So she said your only sure bet is metallic wrappers. If anyone has tips for how not to grease up your paper wrappers and still have them come off without destroying the cupcake, please let me know!), plus they were so much fun to make. Just delightful!

Once again I used my Cupcake Courier from Bed, Bath & Beyond that my parents got me a few years ago. I can't live without it... and transport cupcakes. And what did we do with those 3 large cupcakes I mentioned?

Well, Mike bought some sprinkles when they were a new product at the supermarket and surprised me with them. They were Barn Pals and Zoo Accents. So cute!!


Barn Pals has chicks, cows, pigs and bunnies. Zoo Accents (I love that name) has gorillas, elephants, lions and dolphins.

We used the rest of the frosting to make 3 different colors and use the sprinkles. Mike wanted to use the cows (black & white) & decided that black would be an appetizing color. "No one ever uses black, so I thought it would look really cool," he says.  What I love most about his cupcake is the square of chocolate he put on the top.


I was laughing at him for doing black, though. It got all melty and I really couldn't stop laughing.

Especially compared to the other cupcakes we made:

My pink cupcake with pink & white piggies, and our (I frosted it and he chose the sprinkles) blue cupcake with blue & green dolphins.

He said he didn't use the offset spatula so that explains his.


But all together they don't look so bad!

You gotta love big cupcakes!!

futurama returns, and so do my cupcakes!

So, yeah. I haven't made cupcakes in a while. But I've been busy being social! With the return of Futurama, I decided to make themed cupcakes again. Of course Futurama came back the day I left to visit my brother in Japan. Then I was jet-lagged for the next week. After that I don't really have an excuse except I finally got an event to bring these cupcakes to! Allen & Joe, 2 of my coworkers, had their last day working with us today. And Joe & I have discussed Futurama many times at work. So I made these last night.

I used a box cake mix. Whenever I decorate, I don't do "from scratch." Too much time!! So here's how I brought Futurama to culinary life.

By the way, if you're not familiar with these characters, you can catch the show on Comedy Central at 10pm on Thursday nights! Or right now you can do a google image search or something to see pictures of them!

My first attempt was Bender. This didn't go too well.

Hahahaha. Yikes. I got pretty depressed after this one. Then I tried again:


Aaaaaah! This one makes me so happy!!! Here's what happened: (there's a little Monk reference for those of you who used to watch Monk) Bender totally needed a better mouth. I bought a few different colored bags of melting chocolates (white, purple, orange) thinking I'd use them for the eyes and hair (Leela & Fry). But I was sure I was awful at that whole "just melt the chocolates in a ziploc bag and snip the corner to trace any shape at all, easy as 1, 2, 3!" I think it's because the first time I tried it, I followed the directions and microwaved it for what turned out to be way too long so the chocolate melted right through the bag without my knowledge and I got very hot melted chocolate all over my hands. That might have something to do with it.

Well I have gumption if anything, so I tried, tried again. Really all it took was microwaving it for less time. So I made a bunch of oval shapes for Bender's mouth and got that shape up there. Then I took a toothpick and scratched little lines in it for his "teeth." As for the antenna:

Are you familiar with Pocky? The amazing Japanese snack that consists of a thin biscuit dipped in chocolate? For some reason I think the crowd that's into Futurama knows Pocky very well. Anyway, it turns out Pocky is a cupcake-decorator's best friend. Look what can be done!

I dipped part of the Pocky in white icing and rolled it around in silver sprinkles. Then I snapped off half of it and stuck the rest into Bender's head. It worked!!


Then I did Dr. Zoidberg, which was the most satisfyingly simple character to make. Pink icing and pink Good & Plenty's. (Would that be the good part or the plenty part? I think they're both good... But I like how the white ones leave white on my tongue..)


Woop woop woop!

Then I did Nibbler, which is my favorite as far as these cupcakes are concerned.

Vanilla & chocolate frosting, black icing, 2 Necco wafers (I forgot to mention I've been using those as the eyes for everyone. And I thought Necco was a useless candy!), a Pocky, cut pieces of a white melting chocolate (as the fangs) and a white M&M! I got the M&M to stick with--ready??--melting chocolate AS GLUE! Yeah I know it's been done before, but I haven't done it before, and it was really exciting that it worked. See?

I love it!!

Of course I had to make Hypnotoad. Of course!!

I was pretty excited over making this one, and getting the icing to pull into a lip just right.. and using sprinkles as the brown spots--I liked keeping the cupcake element in the design!

So here's what I had so far:

Oh except I'd added Bender's mouth, too. Then it was time for the really tricky ones. Fry & Leela!

Here's my ziploc (oh, I'm sorry, it's actually Hefty!) pastry bag.. and my sketch of Leela's hair, with two of the FIVE Leela hairs I made (I put a lot of chocolate in there, I didn't want to waste it. Plus I thought I'd probably done some of them terribly wrong and I wanted options). I then put the wax sheet on a magazine in the fridge. The next morning my dad asked me if I knew why the Williams-Sonoma catalog was in the fridge. He was afraid my mom had gone crazy.

So here she is, I know, it doesn't do her justice, but I think the continued use of Good & Plenty was quite effective!! If she were blue she'd totally look like Smurfette. Except a cyclops. Cyclops Smurfette.

Here's Fry's hair, followed by the Fry cupcake:

Again, the frosting lip looks great here (sorry!! I don't mean to brag!! I'm just really happy!) which was kind of an accident. Serendipity, we call it. But I had to add the black icing just to make it not look like a fleshy mess:

Thank you, Matt Groening, for making their eyes so perfectly round. M&Ms for the eyes here, and the nose is, once again, a Good & Plenty, rolled in the face icing (ew.. "face icing").

I wanted to make the devil. I really wanted to. And I was all into it and excited until I realized I DIDN'T have Runts or that other candy shaped like tiny bananas that I used on the Monsters, Inc. cake pops that time... So I improvized and used Spree candies, but I had to bite into them to make the horn shape. Therefore I couldn't bring them into work in case someone ate the devil and I had to live with the fact that they ate my half-eaten candies. But I made it anyway, for myself, and here he is:

You can see my bite-marks on his horns. Nice.

Then I HAD to make Morbo, mostly because I have the vinyl figurine of him from those awesome mini figures by Kid Robot. I really want Slurms McGee but alas. I have not found him.

There he is, veins and all. I used purple sprinkles for his mouth because it was pretty late by the time I got around to Morbo and I didn't have purple icing. I went in the "vein" (haha) of Hypnotoad in my "cupcake elements" decoration technique. Morbo himself helped:

Hahahha. Ok. That's the last one! The gang's all here!

Actually, here are ALL of them:


And how I packaged them to bring to work:

I added 6 cupcakes with normal chocolate frosting on them so people wouldn't feel bad eating them (yes, that happens, and it's a really nice compliment!! but I'm also really happy when people eat them!) and so there'd be more than just 12!! Everyone loved them. I was walking on air today. Thanks, friends!! And goodbye & good luck, Joe & Allen!! :)

a cup-ple of kisses

It began like this, how it usually begins:


My butter conundrum solved by my butter technique (the ziploc full of hot water sits on top of cut-up butter to soften it).. only this time there's also cream cheese.

Then there was the duty of stripping down the kisses:
Oh my! It's like they went for a mass-skinny dip! Where are all the little naked kisses?

Mmmm.. (I ate a few..) These didn't go into the mix--they went into the cups before the filling.

To be honest, I made these last month for Mother's Day, and I'd meant to post it here, but I was buried with school work.. so I don't remember what all the ingredients were, and I'm not sure where I put the Hershey's cookbook. So the next few will just be pictures. It looks delicious.

This:
became this:
And the butter and cream cheese were mixed with something else into this:
which became little balls of dough for the cups or tiny pie crusts. This part was especially fun because the dough was cool and squishy:

Just a few, which became:
a bunch, which I had to flatten into the mini-muffin tins:
Did I mention I love touching food?

Then I had to fill each cup with a kiss and some pecans (I think next time I'll omit the pecans--it was too crunchy for my taste):

Remember the chocolate-looking mixture from before? That gets poured into the cups:

I'm bad at cleanliness, sometimes. So my cupcake tins usually look like Jackson Pollocks before they go into the oven.

Voila!! They look really pretty.. and they tasted so good (if I do say so myself). My mom liked them too. Hope your Mother's Day was fun (a month ago)!!

tubcake?

They're called cupcakes because they're like cups of cake, right? (I happen to think "cupcake" is one of the cutest words!) Well my friend Jeff bought me a colossal cupcake pan from Williams-Sonoma, and I decided to use it for my co-worker's birthday!


Gorgeous!! And here's the side view:

Like soft-serve ice cream (or frozen yogurt)!

What's really cute and unnecessary is that the entire pan is shaped like one giant cupcake:

Ok so I used a mix. But it was fun-fetti!

When it came out of the oven, I had to cut off the rounded tops of both pieces so they'd stay together! It reminded me of the original version of Cinderella when the stepsister cut off her heel to fit into the shoe... Don't think about that as you read the rest...

The directions actually asked me to put the whole thing in the fridge after I put icing in the middle to secure them as one:

Mmmm!!

Then I iced it, also with funfetti:

And just to show you how big it really is, I compared it with my hand:

Here's how it looked after we all ate half of it:

It was fun AND tasty! Can't beat that!