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Friday, August 27, 2010
Recipe / Priscilla Tsai / Dessert Mocha cupcakes
Posted By Priscilla Tsai on Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 11:49 AM
So this week's recipe is a mocha cupcake with coffee buttercream. Surprise! Another cupcake!
With a half cup of coffee and a few teaspoons of instant espresso in both the cake and frosting, these can pass as a breakfast food and take the place of your morning coffee.
I found this recipe floating around on food blogs recently. Garnering great reviews and looking very photogenic in all its foodie photo shoots, I thought I'd give these cupcakes a spin. The cake is chocolate and coffee flavored (duh, they are "mocha"), and the frosting is a basic buttercream flavored with vanilla and espresso.
I thought these cupcakes were only okay ... nothing spectacular. The cake wasn't as rich and dark chocolately as I had hoped, and the crumb was too loose – I like a dense cupcake with a tight crumb. These were more fluffy.
The frosting is whipped so that it's soft and deceptively light. As it melts on your tongue, you'll get a hit of some more coffee flavor.
Check it out for yourself.
I frosted the cupcakes three ways: rosettes dusted with cocoa, the traditional swirled top, and a flat-topped mound with sides rolled in chopped chocolate.
Read on for the recipe.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Recipe / Priscilla Tsai / Dessert Creme brulee cheesecake cupcakes
Posted By Priscilla Tsai on Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 3:50 PM
My cupcake hiatus is over. I just can't do it. It was cupcake craziness and I had decided to take a break from making any more baby cakes, but I really can't help myself anymore.
Inspired by the creme brulee cheesecake from Capital Grille, I created the dessert in cupcake form. The original dessert is a mini cheesecake with a crisp bruleed (French for "burned cream") top.
My cupcake version has a caramel cake base to reflect the caramel flavor of the brulee topping. For the cheesecake portion, I went with a cream cheese buttercream frosting. And for the crunch of the hard caramel bruleed layer, I wound spun sugar around the frosting to create a nest of caramelized sugar.
Working with spun sugar is a bit messy and complicated, but the results are beautiful.
So, as you can see, I'm still stuck on cupcakes. Are you? Do you think they are part of a dying fad? Is the cupcake bubble about to burst?
Some say whoopie pies are the new cupcake, others say doughnuts are the new cupcake. What do you think?
[poll id = "4"]
Read on for the recipe...
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