Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting

Sunday afternoon is Keryun's birthday party / lunch and as our gift, I am bringing cupcakes. Ever since I started this baking bonanza...the birthday gift has been changed from a material item to a baked good of your choice...primarily you get to pick the flavor and I'll bring the dessert for your par-tay. Keryun said she like chocolate and vanilla...so after a failed attempt at making marbled cake I attempted round 2 with just a chocolate buttermilk cake recipe.

The dark red sugar flowers actually accented the cakes perfectly since you can see a bit of the dark brown chocolately goodness. The final touch was a brown satin ribbon around the cupcake holder/case contraption.

Recipe (this is a half batch...you can double to make 24 cupcakes)

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 eggs at room temperature
3 ounces melted chocolate (I used semi-sweet)
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder *
1/2 cup buttermilk **
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the butter and both sugars together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until fluffy. Melt chocolate and add with cocoa powder to the mixture and mix well.

Combine flour and baking soda in a bowl. Combine vanilla and buttermilk in separate bowl. Add the flour and milk in alternating chunks to the egg mixture. Mix well after each addition.

Fill cupcake cups about 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the cake tester comes out clean.

* This is my addition, the recipe from the book doesn't call for the powder but I think it makes a more densely chocolate cake

**If you do not have buttermilk, mix 1 cup regular milk with 1 Tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice and let sit for about 5 minutes

ENJOY!

Hometime Japanese

Molly was over yesterday and we made a trip over to the Ninja Market (actually Nijiya Market but I'm trying to be funny) in Japantown and we picked up a random smattering of things for a little feast.

Left plate has cooked items
- Grilled Saba
- Croquettes
- Teriyaki chicken drumettes

Right plate has uncooled items
- Salmon sashimi
- Red Snapper sashimi
- Spicy scallop mix
- seaweed salad
- marinated burdock

All we needed to do after is add some rice and nori and it was a make your own tasty morsel dinner :)

Quickbreads...cranberry + orange and blueberry + lemon

This weekend I thought I'd lookup something different to bake from my assorted cookbooks. I thought about venturing down the path of baking my way through a few different cookbooks, then I thought better of it and just picked something that sounded interested. Quickbreads were the pick of the day. Quickbreads = no yeast...it's a lot like making cake or brownie batter really.

But below you can see the Cranberry Orange to the left and Blueberry Lemon to the right. The left is the original recipe...but with the base ingredients you just need to switch up the juice and berries to get different varieties. It was tasty...would be great as a breakfast treat toasted with a little butter, whipped cream or even cream cheese!


I couldn't even wait to dig into the first loaf! I was cutting out pieces while it was still in the pan. All in all I ended up making three loaves this weekend... One was almost completely devoured by me and the hubbs...the other two I made to share with Forrest's coworkers and the fam.

Recipe

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup orange juice
1 large egg at room temperature
1 tablespoon grated orange zest
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup whole cranberries coarsely chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour one loaf pan and line the bottome with a piece of parchment paper.

In one bowl, mix together all dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together remaining ingredients except the cranberries. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well. Fold in cranberries until well incorporated.

Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake for one hour or until cake tester comes out clean.

For variety you can use different berries and juice combinations. To add richness of flavor, I added about a teaspoon of orange extract to the wet ingredients as well.

ENJOY!

Honey Almond Cupcakes

This Sunday we went to a BBQ for a SF Korean mom's group. With the birth of Donut, I have become more interested in exposing her to Korean people and things...as it will be difficult for her to learn Korean and experience the culture compared to my upbringing since I'm not as Korean as my mother is. So with that said, I found this group through Korina (a friend of Laura's), joined their online group and attended their first function.

Standard yellow cake recipe but substitute almond flavoring for vanilla. For the frosting use about 2 Tablespoons honey that has been warmed in the microwave for 15 seconds instead of vanilla.

Cherry Pie

This past week brought upon us two desserts....one to take advantage of all the lovely cherries in season and the other to bring back some cupcake baking for a bbq we were attending.

First, the cherry pie... I need to go a little thicker with the lattice work next time and also I need to find a way to make the pie less runny. The use of fresh fruit made the pie filling a bit like soup with cherries in it. The recipe didn't call for any cornstarch, only flour so I was at a loss for what to do. Next time I may try cooking the fruit with cornstarch ahead of time and then pouring into the pie shell for the final finishing... Regardless of the consistency of the filling, the taste was fabulous!

Recipe

Pastry for 2 crust pie

1 1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/8 tsp salt

3 drops almond extract

4 cups pitted tart cherries

2 tblspoon butter

Combine flour, sugar and salt.
Add almond extract to cherries and toss with sugar-flour mixture to mix thoroughly. Turn into pastry lined pie pan. Adjust lattice top and flute edges. bake in 425 degree oven for about 40 minutes.