Chocolate Salted-Caramel Mini Cupcakes

This is the last cupcake post from the days prior to Challengers of the Unknown, which means I will have to go back to using this blog as a vehicle to talk about my love life.

These are really good. They were a recipe I was looking forward to making, and I was right to be excited about it. If you make these, you will want to make them as mini cupcakes. As a rule, I think mini cupcakes are kind of a pain, since they take a lot of work and you have to make three times as many as you would if you were making regular-sized ones. But this recipe is pretty rich, and it might be hard to eat a whole full-sized cupcake, particularly if you do not have a glass of milk, as the women in my Relief Society did not.

This recipe is slightly complicated. First, you bake the cupcakes. The recipe is not difficult, which is good.

Next, however, you have to hollow them all out. I used a 1/8 teaspoon like a mellon-baller to hollow out my cupcakes.

Then, you make salted caramel, which goes inside the little craters.

Unless you, like me, follow Martha Stewart's recipe exactly and still manage to end up with this:

Yeah, that was supposed to be caramel.

The worst part about it was that this happened right before I was supposed to go to church. I carefully weighed my options:

1. Ditch out on Sacrament Meeting, run to the store, come back and make new caramel.

2. Leave the cupcakes and go to church without them. Hang your head in shame, as the Relief Society sisters have come to expect the cupcakes. Hope your lesson makes up for the lack of treats. Make the caramel tomorrow and find ingenious ways to get rid of 58 tiny cupcakes.

3. Use what what I had on hand, which happened to be Smucker's Caramel Ice Cream Topping. I cannot remember ever buying it, so that was pretty fortuitous.

I picked option 3, but don't think that it was an easy decision. Smucker's Ice Cream Topping bears no resemblance to homemade caramel. However, no one seemed to notice. And if they did, no one mentioned it to me.

I'm a little disturbed that I actually considered option 1. It has me a little bit worried about how seriously I am taking this stupid cupcake thing. At the end of the day, whether or not I make salted-caramel chocolate cupcakes will not matter much, even if it means I won't have them to show off in Relief Society. Once in awhile, I need to regain a little perspective.

The next day, however, I made another batch of salted caramel for the few remaining cupcakes, which I took in to work. I felt they were well worth the extra effort.

But it doesn't end there. After you fill the cupcakes and sprinkle the filling with a little sea salt, you have to make chocolate ganache frosting.

This you pipe on top of the cupcakes before sprinkling them with a little more sea salt.

Aren't they gorgeous? They ended up being almost like tiny, cupcake-shaped chocolate truffles. And, as I pointed out in Relief Society, they are the ultimate chick food: sweet and salty and very rich. If only I could find a man like that.

Chocolate Salted-Caramel Mini Cupcakes (makes about 56 mini)

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

3/4 c. unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1 1/2 c. sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. baking powder

3/4 tsp. salt

2 large eggs

3/4 c. buttermilk

3 Tbsp. vegetable oil

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

3/4 c. warm water

sea salt-I used the sea salt I bought at Trader Joe's.

Preheat oven to 350. Line mini muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and and salt. Add eggs, oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and water. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until smooth and combined, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups. Bake for about 15 minutes. Let cool completely.

Use a knife or a spoon to remove a small amount of cake from the center of each cupcake. Discard pieces or wolf them down with a glass of milk. Spoon 1-2 teaspoons of warm filling into each hollowed out cupcake. Sprinkle a pinch of sea salt over filling.

Fit a pastry bag with a medium open-star tip (Wilton #18) with dark chocolate frosting. Pipe frosting onto each cupcake, swirling tip and releasing as you pull up to form a peak. Garnish each cupcake with another pinch of sea salt.

Salted caramel filling--I do not trust Martha's recipe, as I will still maintain it was the recipe that made the caramel turn out badly, not my human error. I used the caramel recipe in my Essential Mormon Cookbook.

Caramel Sauce

1 1/2 c. packed brown sugar

3/4 c. light corn syrup

2/3 c. heavy cream

3/4 c. butter

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil 2 to 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Cool. Makes about 1 1/2 pints.

And here is a link to the frosting. It is extremely decadent.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

I had a few recipes that intended to make over Christmas that I did not. This was one such recipe. Again, I don't really understand why Martha Stewart includes so many recipes that are somewhat similar, like the two pumpkin recipes, and two ginger recipes. But this was a good one. Simple, sweet.

Had I made them Martha's way, I would have topped them with gingerbread men and women. Seeing as how it is past Christmas, I elected not to do that.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

Makes 22

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

2 Tbsp. ground ginger

2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

3 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/2 c. sugar

3 Tbsp. unsulfured molasses

4 large eggs

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Line standard muffin tins with liners. Sift together flour and spices. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add molasses, and beat until combined. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until just combined.

Divide batter evenly among lied cups. Bake about 25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Frost with fluffy vanilla frosting. Or, if you prefer, top with sweetened whipped cream, instead.

Because there isn't a lot to say about this recipe, I thought I would showcase my aprons. As I mentioned before, I received three aprons for Christmas this year. Each one of them was unique and reflective of the person who gave it to me. I love all of them, and consider it a shame that when I bake, it's usually just me, so no one actually gets to see me in my cute aprons.

Stephanie gave me this one. If you can't tell, it is covered in very intricate embroidery, and, when I put it on, it looks like a cute halter dress.

Maria made me this one by hand. I am a huge fan of the pockets, and it matches the appliances in my kitchen.

Anne gave me this one. If I can find a skirt out of this fabric, I will be very excited.

I think these cupcakes have become a big part of my identity. Either that, or I am walking around with food stains on my clothes.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes & Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Before starting the new blog, which I have been much more excited about in the last few days than my dissertation, I began several cupcake posts on this blog. I am not sure if I should post these old ones on my new blog, or just start with the cupcakes I've baked since starting the new blog, so as not to overwhelm the group site with cupcake recipes. I guess I'll just post my old recipes here and see how it all goes. Also, since I made these cupcakes the same day as the maple cupcakes, it only seems appropriate to at least post these on the same site.

Between the maple cupcakes and these, I decided to take an hour and clean my kitchen. For the first time in a long time, all of my dishes were clean, my counter was clean, my sink was clean, and my mixer was clean. I took pictures to document the occasion.

This was in preparation to make two more recipes, the first of which was peanut butter cupcakes.

I got invited to a cookie exchange with the women from work. I was faced with a dilemma: make a fabulous cookie recipe, like I was supposed to, or make more cupcakes and check another recipe off my list. As a compromise, I made two recipes that touted themselves as "cupcake cookies." These are recipes for cupcakes that are based on familiar cookie recipes, like peanut butter and oatmeal raisin.

Here's the link. And here's the other link. I am not a big raisin fan, so I substituted them for milk chocolate chips.

I have to say, these were not my favorite cupcakes I have ever made. I think I am sort of a purist. I like cookies to be cookies and cupcakes to be cupcakes, What was leftover from the cookie exchange went to Mix 'N Munch, and then into work three days before Christmas.

The nice thing about my job is that, if I leave something in the break room, someone will either eat it or throw it away for me. Sometimes people take bites out of things and put them back on plates, but nobody is perfect-particularly not psychiatrists.

The New Blog is Up!!!!

I will create a link to it on my page, but, in the meantime, the url is ninjapowerteam.blogspot.com. It doesn't have anything to do with anything, but no one else was using that blog address, so I snatched it up. If you would still like to be involved in the new blog but haven't been invited yet, let me know, and I will add you. I'm kind of embarrassed to be as excited about this as I am.

Starting a group blog

Can I just say how relieved I am that a) people actually got excited about joining a group blog and b) I am not the only person who ever thinks about which actress would portray me in a movie of my life (Keiko Agena).

So, the first step in starting this group blog will be to come up with a name for the blog. It turns out you can't even start a blog until you come up with a name for it. Any suggestions? I think it should be something punchy that reflects all of the different goals that people are trying to accomplish, whether they be baking or yoga or whatever. Leave your suggestions in the comments section. And if you, or someone you know would still like to join us, it's not too late!

An invitation to start a group baking blog

This idea was actually spawned by my brother-in-law. For those of you who know George and are scratching your heads, hang onto your hats for this story:

Over Christmas, I bought my brother-in-law, George, a book called All Cakes Considered. It is a book written by Melissa Gray, who is a producer at NPR's show All Things Considered, hence the title of the book. She is known around her office as the cake lady because she bakes a cake once a week and brings it into the office to share with her coworkers. Her book is a series of her cake recipes (one for every week in the year) that get progressively more complicated as the book goes on. If you were a cake novice, by making each recipe in her book, you could become a cake expert by the time you finished. Sounds like a fun idea, huh?

George heard about the book on NPR and thought about getting a copy for his wife. They checked the book out of the public library to try the recipes out, first. Then, a really amazing thing happened: (amazing if you know George, whose cooking talents include--according to him and Melanee--scrambled eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches) George decided to bake a cake himself.

What was even more amazing was that he LIKED it. George is a very meticulous person, and he followed the instructions in the book exactly, and the cake turned out wonderful, so I'm told. So, he went on and made another cake, and it was great, too.

While I was visiting, George made a sweet-potato cake, which I was slightly skeptical about, given that I am not a sweet potato fan, but it was GREAT. It was incredibly moist, and it combined sweet potatoes with apples for a really great fall/winter flavor. It didn't even have frosting, and it was still a great cake.

After tasting his cake, I tried to convince George to start a baking blog with me, where we would both chronicle our respective baking projects. I also invited Melanee to come up with a baking project of her own and join our blog. She's thinking pie.

The more that I thought about it, though, the more I thought it might be fun to invite everyone who reads my blog, whether you are friends, family members, or slightly sheepish blogstalkers, to be involved in this hypothetical baking blog and chronicle your baking projects. Just consider the prospect for a minute: a blog where multiple contributors chronicle a baking/cooking goal, sharing experiences, pictures, recipes (if you feel so inclined. I don't want anyone to feel weird about copyright issues). I think it could blow Julie Powell and TastyKitchen out of the water (just kidding. I love Julie Powell and TastyKitchen). Pretty soon, we'll have a book deal. Maybe they'll even make a movie about it.

In all seriousness, though, this would be a great time to start a project like this, given that it is a new year and we are all striving to be better people and such, by working out more, finishing our unfinished projects, and baking high calorie desserts. It wouldn't even have to be baking, per se. If you want to spend your year cooking pork or making Jell-O salads, that is okay, too. In fact, if you have no culinary aspirations but want to participate by blogging about a goal you have set or a New Year's resolution you want to be accountable for, come join us.

In all reality, I don't know if this will work. This could be like inviting a bunch of people to a party and no one showing up. Of course, your best course of action if you are anticipating such a party is to make sure that a couple of cool people are going to be there, and that everyone else knows that. That said, Melanee and George have given me permission to say that they will participate in this blog. This means that a) if you decide to participate, you know you won't be the only one at the party with only the lame-o host b) you know that this party is going to be super-cool, because that is the only way to describe my sister and brother-in-law.

If you would like to be involved, please leave a comment and let me know. After a few days/weeks, we'll start the blog. In the meantime, if you are working on a project, make sure to take some pictures. Also, think about who's going to play you when this blog becomes a movie.