Runeberg Redux

Happy Runeberg Day!

I've moved, and taken up a new job, and now I'm back in a place with at least one Finnish colleague. A conversation we had made me reminisce about the days in graduate school when I would make Runebergintorttuja -- aka: Runeberg cakes -- for my Finnish professors on Runeberg Day, aka: February 5th, the national day in Finland celebrating the poet Runeberg (more about Runeberg here).

So I decided to brush off my rusty baking skillz and dig the cupcake molds out of their box (in my still-box-filled new apartment), and revisit my old Runeberg recipe. This time around, I made the cakes in cupcake molds, rather than their usual, tall 3-inch cylinders, so that they would be easier to transport to campus. I also took a bit of artistic license with the icing: traditional Runeberg cakes have only a simple ring of icing around the raspberry jam topping. There are other licenses as well, just because I could. ☺️ The cakes are now soaked in a syrup of calvados (apple brandy) rather than straight up rum, and the jam is now a combination of raspberry and grapefruit marmalade. You know, cause I can't help but make things schmancier. :P

Now I just have to suffer through having these cupcakes sit in my office all day until teatime! With the ginger and icing and almond and raspberry wafting out, they smell too good! Woe.


Continue for recipe...

Announcing sated magazine! and Earl Grey Dark Chocolate Cupcakes and a giveaway!

Grab a cupcake, have it ready, because today is a celebration of a BIG announcement. Okay, are you ready? Because here we go......!

May I proudly announce a project that has been nearly a year in the making....

drum roll please.......

sated magazine!

I am so, so excited to announce, jointly with the wonderful Anita Chu of Dessert First, a new gastronomy publication, sated magazine.

This is the project that I have been hinting at and alluding to all over the place for the past few months on the blog and via twitter/instagram. It's what has taken up all of my life and energy between dissertation-work spurts. There is so much to tell you all about sated that I don't even know where to start, even though I've been dying to reveal the secret for months and months now!

What is sated?
Sated is a quarterly print publication that is dedicated to exploring and appreciating a single food subject at a time in great depth, through a combination of recipes, art, photography, stories, and articles. For me, it is the ultimate culmination of our love, fascination, geeky-ness, and complete obsession with food: where it comes from, its beauty, its stories, the people and places involved.

Where did sated come from?
Many, many months ago now, Anita and I were discussing--over dessert, naturally!--our inspirations and aspirations and frustrations, and in a combination of all these things, we discovered that we had shared dreams and visions about what we want and hope to do in the food world. That's when the concept for sated was born: it was to be our collective dreams about food poured into magazine form. Since then, we've worked so many hours bringing together this first issue (and planning the next ones!), though it wasn't until very, very recently when I could finally believe that this was all happening, that sated was actually going to launch for all to see. :D!

The first, inaugural issue of sated is coming in May and is dedicated to all things dark chocolate. We'll be releasing teasers and revealing more details of the issue in the coming weeks leading up to its launch, but suffice it to say that we've got it all--dark chocolate recipes of your dreams, a behind-the-scenes look into chocolate-making, articles and how-tos about chocolate, and lots and lots and lots of chocolate imagery. Though largely produced by Anita and myself, we have also had a great starting team of contributors working with us, including but not limited to the talented Kamran of the sophisticated gourmet and the ever-fascinating Dan Jurafsky of language of food. Anyways, I can't reveal too much now, but to stay up-to-date on all of the news leading up to the big launch in May, you can follow the sated magazine blog, the official satedmag twitter feed, and sign up for our mailing list!

Also, to celebrate the big reveal of sated, Anita and I are giving away to two copies of the premier issue of the magazine to readers of our blogs, since without all y'alls continued and enthusiastic support, none of this could ever be happening! There are many chances for you to enter the giveaway:

1. Leave a comment on this post for one entry.
2. Leave a comment on Anita's post for one entry.
3. Follow sated on Twitter and tweet about it (mention @satedmag) for one entry (you do not need to post a comment here; we'll track it through Twitter).
4. Like sated on Facebook and leave a comment on the page for one entry (you do not need to post a separate comment here).
5. Sign up to be on sated's mailing list for one entry (you do not need to post a separate comment here).

That's five chances to win! This giveaway will run on our blogs until 11:59 PM PST on May 18, at which point we'll choose two lucky winners at random to receive a copy of the very first issue of sated magazine! :D! (<- can you tell that I am very, very excited?)

[click on photo for a larger image]

To celebrate, here is my latest dark chocolate obsession: earl grey + dark chocolate. Something about the strong fragrance of the bergamot-scented black tea makes it a robust pairing against the deep, dark roast of dark chocolate. In these earl grey dark chocolate cupcakes, I infused a combination of cream and condensed milk (for some extra sweetness) with earl grey and used it for a whipped ganache frosting that's a bit firm but melts into your mouth as you eat it, just as chocolate should. Topped with a dash of seasalt to enhance the flavors within, these cupcakes are a richly indulgent shot of chocolate. You know, to tie you over until sated is released!

Read on for recipe....

Olallieberry Extra Dark Mocha Cupcakes with Candied Cacao Nibs

Olallieberries are back!  And I am so excited, because I have a few more pounds of them sitting in my freezer right now, undergoing the deep freeze so that I can still enjoy berry goodness in the dreary days of winter.  If you can score massive quantities of excellent organic berries right now at your local farmers' markets, I would highly recommend getting a few flats and freezing them for later use--they hold up excellently in their frozen states and are a great treat come barren and grey January!

Anyways, with organic olallieberries burning a metaphorical hole in my freezer's pocket, I've been itching to make *something* with them for quite some time now but hadn't yet had the right occasion or recipe to do so... until this little cupcake popped into my head: olallieberry extra dark mocha cupcakes with candied cacao nibs.

The idea all started with a strong urge to make olallieberry Italian meringue buttercream.  The raspberry-lime buttercream that I made for my birthday cake was such a resounding success that I thought the sweetness of the olallieberry would balance really well with the creaminess of buttercream, too.  For the accompanying cupcake, I went for something more broody and sophisticated: black cocoa cake, laced with the roasted bitterness of espresso that is just barely perceptible in the flavor but makes the cake really, truly, and robustly deep and dark--a perfect accompaniment to the fresh berry puree in the frosting.  Instead of the customary sprinkles to top off the cupcake, I made candied cacao nibs and crushed them.  The candied cacao nibs provided a great crunch and nuttiness to the overall cupcake, and they're far tastier than sprinkles!

I made these for a doctor and some of the medical staff that I see often as a thank you, and I really hope they enjoyed them.  Having grown up around doctors and nurses and hospitals (my mom's a surgical nurse), I've always associated medical personnel with coffee because I was constantly seeing them guzzle so much of the stuff!  A huge part of making desserts for me is tailoring the perfect flavors and ingredients to the perfect people to enjoy them, so I hope that the combination of coffee, chocolate, and olallieberry here really hit the spot this time around--those people who take care of me every few months definitely deserve it.  (Oh boy, now my mom's office is going to be jealous that they didn't get any...! o.O)

Speaking of which, make sure you take the time to appreciate the dedicated doctors, nurses, and med staff that you have, too!  Bake them cupcakes.  ;-P


Read on for recipe...

Chocolate + Lemon Mascarpone Cupcakes, or When People Give You Lemons...

This post is brought to you by one Anne E., a person whom I have actually never met.  But, she did supply me with this modest huge bag of gorgeous lemons, with which I proceeded to whip up a batch of chocolate cupcakes with lemon mascarpone frosting.  Hence, when people-you've-never-met give you lemons, make...

...cupcakes.  Okay, okay.  So random people don't just come up on the street and hand me bags of lemons (but that could be kind of awesome--or disturbing, I haven't quite decided which).  Rather, Anne is someone in my roommate's department at school, and that's my lemon connection.  The deal being, of course, that I supply yummy lemon desserts back.  But I can do that!

Anyways, Anne's lemons came at the *perfect* time, because there I was, sitting in class, fantasizing about lemon mascarpone frosting over chocolate cupcakes.  (Yeah, I do that a lot.)  Call it premonition or a sixth sense or what you will, but the minute I got out of class, there was an email waiting for me in my inbox from my roommate, announcing the arrival of lemons.  Sometimes, life just really works out that way, no?

Now, I'm not quite sure why I was dreaming of lemon mascarpone chocolate cupcakes.  The mind truly works in the weirdest ways.  Maybe it's because we've had these awesomely fluffy clouds floating around lately, between all of those rainstorms:

Fluffy, fluffy white clouds.  I say this because these cupcakes are like eating clouds.  I'm serious.  (I've had reports that these are better than eating clouds.)  The chocolate cupcake itself is incredibly moist and soft, and then the lemon mascarpone frosting on top, which is basically just mascarpone cheese and cream whipped to a frenzy, is lighter-than-air.  Together, you sort of feel like you're sinking your teeth into a fleeting moment of puffy, fluffy, airy deliciousness.

The subtle crispness of the lemon zest that comes through at the very end is just the perfect light complement to the extreme fluffy cloud-ness of these cupcakes.  For toppers, I used lemon and dark chocolate wafers to give a robust "preview" of the flavors to come in the cupcake.  And, of course, I had to whip up a few little ones, too, because what's better than bite-size chocolate and lemon mascarpone clouds?

Well, Anne, thank you so much for the lemons, and I hope you thoroughly enjoyed your cupcakes!


P.S. You, too, are invited to supply this baker with fruit, for which, in return, you, too, shall receive sweet deliciousness.  :-)

Read on for the recipe...

Like Me: Conversation Heart Cupcakes

Oh man, I am so behind on posting Valentine's Day desserts--there's a huge backlog on my blog queue!--because my every spare minute has been going into catering a department Valentine's party yesterday (more on that in a few days).  But now that it's over, I can finally catch up with the times!

One of my favorite, favorite candies on Valentine's Day is conversation hearts.  I know, they're probably tacky like the rest of Valentine's Day, but there's something so classic and succinct about them that's irresistible to me.  In fact, I'm munching on a box right now.  :-P

I wanted to translate conversation hearts into a true dessert for Valentine's Day, and after some serious consideration and questionable prototypes last year, I finally figured out these Conversation Heart Cupcakes this year, which I'm really happy with!  With the forms in place, I also set out to update those messages on the hearts for the 21st century:

Ah, yes.  Welcome to the digital age!  Hehe, thinking up new messages for these conversation hearts were so much fun.  How about some Twitter-inspired ones?

(Though not pictured, I also had ones that said "RT me" and "DM me.")  Or, some Facebook-inspired hearts?

I had to also, of course, pay homage to one of my favorite tech sites, Gizmodo, with a <3modo cupcake.  And, the "I Digg U" one is credited to Richard, who proudly came up with the whole tech-inspired idea in the first place.

Of course, I also couldn't quite resist making a sideways dig at Apple, because, quite honestly, they really need to coin a better term for their video-output connectors than "dongle."  Hehe.

Yeah, dongle just took on a whole new meaning. :-P

The conversation hearts are actually super easy and simple to make.  They are made out of flavored couverture chocolate, and the hardest part is really the writing on the top.  :-)  Underneath, I made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting just because I love the bright red-ness for Valentine's Day.  And, I made more pina colada cupcakes, too, because they are just so darn good.

I took these cupcakes to the event that I was catering, and everyone was so incredibly thrilled, but I think what they loved even more were the linguistics-inspired conversation hearts, which were the perfect meld of geeky, suggestive, naughty, and sweet:

Yes, I kid you not: those are all technical linguistics terms.  :-P

I hope you all have a wonderful and lovely Valentine's Day, full of sweet, yummy treats!

Read on for directions on making conversation heart cupcake toppers.

I like Pina Colada Cupcakes! (and getting caught in the rain)

I wasn't going to post these until next week since they aren't very "traditional" Valentine's Day fare, but they turned out so damn good that they just couldn't wait!  Hello, lover.

Pina colada cupcake:

Coconut cake

with fresh pineapple Italian meringue buttercream

Yes, the pina colada cupcake.  But, before you all get another look at these yummy-licious beauties, I must first inflict some pain on you, because every time I hear or say the words "pina colada," this immediately gets stuck in my head:

Yes, okay, I apologize for that.  But, misery loves company.  Now that we have a soundtrack (of most arguably one of the worst love songs ever), back to more pleasant things.

This idea of pina colada cupcakes has been floating around in my head for a while prior to execution.  The original spark of inspiration, to give credit where credit's due, comes from my friend Toni, who I regard as one of my biggest dessert fans and who happens to be an amazing photographer.  For Christmas, Toni got me Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes, promptly opening the book to page 23, pointing, and saying, "I want to make that into a pina colada cake."

A few weeks later (okay, the Christmas gift happened in mid-January), the pina colada cupcake was born (or baked, I guess, would be the more proper word choice)!  With a base of coconut cake, taken from page 23 of Rose Levy Beranbaum's book, and a liberal topping of Italian meringue buttercream flavored with freshly made pineapple puree, this cupcake is absolutely heavenly.  And I am not kidding.  It literally hurt me in the gut to give these cupcakes away to both the people who had ordered them, and, I have to confess, to Toni.  I just wanted to keep them all for myself.

The coconut cake recipe is really good and super coconut-y.  But what really makes these cupcakes for me, personally, is the fresh pineapple puree in the pineapple buttercream.  You absolutely don't want to cut corners here and use canned pineapple.  It's just not going to be the same.  And fresh pineapple puree is easy to make.  All it involves is cooking the pineapple down with sugar and water, draining away the liquid, and whizzing it through the food processor.  The resulting puree is so good and light-as-air that I ate most of it fresh out of the food processor.  It's better than any applesauce you will ever touch.  Don't throw away the pineapple syrup, either!  It makes a great base for homemade pineapple soda (just add fizzy water) or cocktails.

The punch of pineapple and coconut flavors in this cupcake linger in your mouth for a long while even after you've finished the cake, making you really, really crave more.  I can seriously scarf down about ten of those mini ones in one sitting if I'm not careful.  Trust me: make these for your Valentine.  Despite not being made of the traditional chocolate, they are sure to impress.

Oh, but a fair word of warning: you'll most definitely want to make an even number of these cupcakes.  If you and your Valentine have to fight over one, it's not going to be pretty.

(P.S. On an unrelated topic, a reader kindly brought to my attention yesterday that there was no obvious way to subscribe to this blog's feed located on the homepage--a gross oversight on my part!  (Thanks, June, for bringing this to my attention!)  I have since remedied this situation, and you'll find links at the top of the side bar -----> that can allow you to subscribe easily via your feed reader of choice (e.g., Google Reader) or via email (Thanks to my Adopt-a-Blogger mentor, Kristen, for pointing me in the right direction for this).  So go subscribe!

In other blog-related news, I've started a recipe index page, also located for now on the *new* left sidebar <----, where you can find a list of recipes by category.  It's still a work in progress, but hopefully, you'll find it helpful!)

Read on for recipe...

A Candyland (Cupcake) Adventure (+vanilla cupcake recipe)

Welcome to Candyland!

Nostalgia central!  Oh man, I have such found memories of that game--how Lord Licorice was so scary and thinking how weird it was that "plums" were considered candies.  Or how I loved Queen Frostine and the Ice Cream Sea.  I mean, who wouldn't like to go to an Ice Cream Sea?!?

(bokeh = sprinkles of the photographic world.)

A few weeks ago, when I made my holiday cupcakes, I took some to my hairdresser, to whom I'm always grateful for for fixing my bangs (after I, out of impatience, give them a hideous trim).  Upon delivering the box of cupcakes, the entire salon stopped dead in their tracks as everyone oohed-and-aahed in jealousy.  And I was asked on the spot to do these Candyland-themed cupcakes for a one year old's birthday party.  Oh, and before I forget, here's wishing Aedyn another year as great as her first!:

Okay, so I've said over and over again that cupcakes just aren't my thing.  I mean, first of all, there's that whole spiel that I'm sure you all don't want to hear again about how cupcakes are not equal to "mini-cakes."  But then there's the whole decorating thing.  I'm the same way with sugar cookies (which is why you'll almost never catch me making sugar cookies).  All those different frosting colors equals all those bowls and spoons to wash.  I just can't do it.  But the minute I heard "Candyland-themed," I was DOWN.  There are just some opportunities that are way too cool to pass up.  Oh, that, and I'm a huge sucker for nostalgia.

I ended up making two flavors of cupcakes: chocolate and vanilla.  You'll find my chocolate cupcake recipe in the Christmas cupcake post here.  As for vanilla yellow cupcakes, I've actually spent quite some time trying to find the perfect yellow cake recipe.  More recently, I've tried the yellow cake recipe from The Cake Bible, and though it was good, the cake would shrink a bit after baking and pull away from the cupcake paper.  So that one was out.  Finally, I turned to Magnolia Bakery, whose red velvet cake recipe I absolutely adore.  And bingo!  These vanilla cupcakes were so moist and airy with a buttery texture and laced with just a hint of lemon (okay, the lemon was my addition).  And, another huge plus for these cupcakes because they used whole eggs rather than just egg yolks--and really, egg whites are useful, but I'd really prefer not to have to store so many of them.

To go on top, I made two types of buttercream: a heavier classic buttercream, made with egg yolks, and an Italian meringue buttercream, with egg whites.  Buttercreams, and especially egg white-based ones, continually amaze me.  Whenever I make Italian meringue buttercream, I always have to repeat the mantra (from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for you geeks): "Don't panic."  Because the trick to an Italian meringue buttercream is that, even if the mixture looks curdled after you add the butter, you should not panic.  Just keep whipping, and the whole thing miraculously becomes an ever-so-light and creamy frosting!  Yes.  Amazing.

For decorations, I made four different cupcakes, plus an extra large one for the special birthday girl, inspired by different characters and areas of the Candyland game.  From left to right above, we have candy cane, lollipop, gingerbread, and gumdrops.  The lollipop flowers were so much fun.  Basically, I took these great organic fruit lollipops from Trader Joe's and piped yellow chocolate letters on the surfaces.  For leaves, I cut leaf shapes out of different colors of taffy and attached them to the lollipop stems.  My downright favorites, though, were the gingerbread men.  I actually didn't have cookie cutters, so I hand-cut all of the men out (each one's an individual!).  Then, I piped three dots of buttons, and in a stroke of genius (if I may say so myself), added a small sprinkle heart.  Because, come on, that just makes it way more cute.

I had such an awesomely fun time making this order of cupcakes.  Sometimes it's nice that I'm "self-employed" on a job-to-job basis so that I can just take the orders that I want to do.  Anyways, enjoy the yellow cupcake recipe below!  I'm off to a conference in the cold part of our country (*ahem*, east) for my "day job," so I will see everyone next week!

Oh wait--one more thing.  I wanted to share something I learned about cupcakes after making them a couple of times over the past few weeks:

The key to cupcakes is sprinkles.  Lots of them.  (I'm not kidding.)

And Collette Peters is right: luster dust does wonders.  :-)

Read on for recipe...

Christmas cupcakes!

Last week, I did something completely uncharacteristic of myself: I baked cupcakes.

For anyone who knows me, you'll recognize immediately that baking cupcakes is soooo not me.  I'm not a cupcake girl.  In fact, I have a huge rant prepared about how cupcakes are NOT cute and mini versions of cakes.  No, cute and mini versions of cakes should still look like cakes.  Cute and mini versions of cupcakes should look like cupcakes.  But really, I should spare you all the rant.

And back to the cupcakes.  The other reason that I tend to steer clear of cupcakes is the same reason that I don't like making sugar cookies: the decorating.  There are just so many frosting colors involved!  And the thought of all those little bowls with all of those different colors of frosting, all of which have to be washed at the end of the decorating session, along with all of the spoons that you used to mix the different colors.  Just the thought of it is extremely exhausting to me.  (background note: I abhor doing dishes.)  So, the short of it is that I don't usually do cupcakes.  Mini cupcakes are my thing.

But, for some unexplained, crazy reason last week, I had the sudden urge to make cupcakes.  I think it was all of the peppermint ganache that I'd eaten.  Really, it was.  After making my molten peppermint chocolate cake, I ended up with a few cakes that were left uneaten.  At first, I didn't think that the peppermint ganache would be good after it had cooled and hardened inside the cake, but, upon trying one of the cooled cakes, it tasted really good!  So, why not put peppermint ganache in chocolate cupcakes?  yum yum!

Alas--there was a problem.  Mini-cupcakes just would not do in such a situation.  There just wouldn't be enough room for cake AND chocolate ganache in the mini molds, so full-sized cupcakes it would have to be.  And that's the story of how my Christmas cupcake extravaganza came to be.





Anyways, the cupcakes were super yummy.  The chocolate cake here is THE chocolate cake recipe I turn to for pretty much everything under the sun.  It's so moist, which is perfect here, because the peppermint ganache sort of melts into the chocolate cake and cools to form an amazing amalgamation of pepperminty-chocolatey awesomeness.  Top with a generous dollop of peppermint-schnapps-infused buttercream and some sprinkles, and you're golden.

Oh, and of course I made mini versions as well (not with peppermint ganache).  I mean, everything is better in miniature, no?

Read on for recipe... (this chocolate cake recipe also works well fresh-out-of-the-oven for molten chocolate cakes!)

A Sunflower and Pastry Wedding

So here goes the long-awaited post about Maria and Nicholas's fabulous September wedding! I've already been posting recipes from the various desserts at the wedding for a while now (vegan chocolate pumpkin cupcakes, key lime heart pies, pomegranate-basil-vodka cheesecakes), but I have yet to give you all the big picture, so here goes.

This was most definitely my largest order thus far in the history of my little pastry start-up. I not only made Maria and Nick's wedding cake, but also a whole dessert bar! We'll get to that, though. First--the cake.

Chocolate cake

with cherry filling, dark chocolate ganache,

cream cheese frosting, and sugarpaste flowers

Maria is a huge chocoholic, so she most definitely insisted on a chocolate cake, and they wanted cherry, so I decided to make a chocolate cake with dark cherry filling, dark chocolate ganache, and cream cheese frosting on the outside to balance out the darkness inside! (I don't believe in fondant and try to avoid it whenever possible.) The sunflowers were all made by hand out of sugarpaste.

I have to admit, though, as much as I liked the final result with the sunflowers and ducks (Maria and Nick have an awesome rubber duck collection!), the cake looked even better after they had cut into it and taken the first slice. I'm so glad that I was around for it--it makes me feel so special that a couple is eating a cake that *I* made for their special day.


Anyways, so now on to the good part: the dessert bar! I have to say that I love this new trend at weddings. I did another similar dessert bar set-up in August for another wedding, but that one was far simpler and involved a lot more miniature cupcakes. Maria is also a huge tea connoisseur, so she wanted to have a fabulous, miniature pastry spread for everyone to enjoy with tea post-dinner. *Right* up my alley! So I whipped up the most fantastical menu I could think up for them:


Dark chocolate truffles with crushed cacao nibs

Espresso dark chocolate truffles

Amaretto dark chocolate truffles with almonds

Chocolate cupcake with pumpkin buttercream (vegan)

Fresh fruit tart

Pomegranate-basil-vodka cheesecake

Key lime pie

White and dark chocolate dipped strawberries

Lemon pie meringues

Man, was it a spread! Three different types of handmade truffles (for the chocoholics, of course!), cheesecakes, tarts, pies, cookies, tuxedoed strawberries! Everything turned out to be quite a hit, and the desserts really flew off the tables... Yes, that's tables. Here's just one half of the set-up:


*whew* It was so much fun to do a large mini-pastry order like this, I really have to thank Maria and Nick for the chance!

Oh, and before I'm done, a quick peak at those truffles:


(What you see there off to the sides are the lemon pie meringues--basically, the best parts of a lemon meringue pie, minus the crust--and fruit tarts.)

Congrats on your marriage, Maria and Nick!