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Week Fifty: Eggnog Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting

December 23, 2009 in Cupcakes, Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good | 1 comment

(This week’s cupcake recipe came from How To Eat a Cupcake and the frosting recipe came from The Busty Baker. Thanks, ladies!)

For the past six years, I’ve known Christmas is near just by opening my refrigerator. While I’m not looking, my husband will sneak a carton of eggnog into our grocery cart every week. And he’s the only one in our house who drinks it.

Yes, readers, I am a nog hater.

The running joke (which is actually 100% true) is that the very idea of eggnog is enough to engage my gag reflex. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in eggnog? There are uncooked eggs is that stuff! It probably doesn’t help that I don’t like milk either. There are just way too many things going on in eggnog that I do not like.

But baking with it? Count me in! It seems like the perfect baking ingredient. So I knew I’d have to find an eggnog cupcake recipe somewhere…and I found it at How to Eat a Cupcake!

The culprits:
Rum and Eggnog

The recipe was pretty straightforward, and included a nice douse of rum (because if you’re going to drink eggnog, it should probably be alcoholic…) and cinnamon. The batter tasted yummy:
Eggnog Cupcake batter

And I even found somewhat holiday-ish cupcake papers!
Cute cupcake papers

The batter went into the cupcake tins:
Eggnog Cupcakes

And when they came out, I frosted them with Cinnamon Rum Frosting (the same frosting I used for my Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes at Halloween). I dusted the tops with a little cinnamon:
Eggnog Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting

Very pretty. I had one of these cupcakes right after I baked them, and thought it was okay. Not spectacular. It seemed a little dry. But I put them in the refrigerator and hoped for the best. I don’t know what happened in that refrigerator, but the next day these cupcakes were ah-mazing. They looked amazing, they smelled amazing and they tasted amazing. A few of my co-workers said this cupcake edged out the Tarte Tatin with Carmelized Apple Cupcake as their favorite. One of the account executives took a cupcake and sniffed it experimentally, then looked at me in amazement and said, “It smells like a Yankee Candle!”

It’s that frosting, I tell ya’. That frosting could save a burnt-black cookie.

Two more weeks, two more weeks, eek! This week I’m baking a Grasshopper Pie for my sister-in-law’s Christmas Eve party. And I still haven’t made a decision on the final project. I’ve got two ideas in mind, but both could prove to be beyond my budget. I’ll have to put some more thought into it. I feel like it needs to be something spectacular, seeing as how it’s The End!!!

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Week Forty-Eight: Thanksgiving!

December 16, 2009 in Internet Recipes, pie, Weekly Baked Good | Comments closed

(The Pear-Honey-Cranberry Sauce recipe came from allrecipes.com and the Pumpkin Chiffon Pie recipe came from How to Eat a Cupcake.)

Thanksgiving! The second best holiday of the year (Christmas is number one, of course, and Halloween is probably third). My Thanksgiving this year was different from all my past ones; instead of watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, I got to see it in person!
Tom Turkey

Also, my mom came out to visit from Ohio! This was also a pretty big deal, as my mom has never been to New York City before. We took her around to all the tourist traps and posed for pictures with the Naked Cowboy. Much fun was had.

My darling husband insisted that I make some kind of crazy cranberry sauce this year, so I scoured the Internet for recipes. I found one that combined cranberries with pears, sugar and honey and seemed easy enough to figure out. It actually turned out quite lovely. I’m not a cranberry sauce fan, but even I put a little on my turkey this year:
Pear Honey Cranberry Sauce (I made this!)

My main project though was a Pumpkin Pie. My husband’s family is all about traditions at holiday events, so when I told Rob I wanted to mix things up a little bit and make a Pumpkin Chiffon Pie, he was beyond nervous. He was so afraid that the pie would be some radical experiment. But it wasn’t! I followed the recipe from How To Eat a Cupcake, and it turned out great! The only problem I had was that my pre-baked pie crust slid down the pie pan on one side a little…not enough to ruin the pie, but enough to ruin the aesthetic.
What makes this pie a little different is that it incorporates gelatin and whipped egg whites in with the traditional pumpkin filling. It makes for an incredibly light pie. I like pumpkin pie well enough, but after one piece I’m usually done until the next Thanksgiving. I could have eaten two or three slices of this one.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the pie-making process, as I was really busy putting it and the cranberry sauce together the night before Thanksgiving (we had to be up at 5 a.m. Thanksgiving morning to get to the parade route in time). But here’s the finished product, which went over very well:
Pumpkin Chiffon Pie (I made this!)

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Week Forty-Seven: Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

December 16, 2009 in Cookies, Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good | 1 comment

(This week’s recipe came from allrecipes.com)

A few weeks back, Rob and I went to visit our friends Alison and Brian in Scarsdale. They have two kids who are four and two, and it was my responsibility to bring dessert. I tried to think of something that kids and adults would like that wasn’t just a chocolate cupcake or sugar cookie. I found a recipe for Pumpkin Whoopie Pies and thought, “Eureka!” Pumpkin is a flavor that adults and kids both seem to enjoy, and who doesn’t like a nice, thick layer of sweet creamy filling?

The recipe started with a really thick batter. It definitely did not have the consistency of a chocolate chip cookie dough, but it was thicker than a cake batter:
Pumpkin Whoopie Pie dough

The batter went down on cookie sheets and, as I learned from the Iced Pumpkin Cookies, I put it down in exactly the way I wanted the cookies to turn out, as pumpkin cookies don’t spread much:
Pumpkin Whoopie pies

They baked up into beautiful golden cookies that were slightly springy and moist:
Pumpkin Whoopie pies

The filling for the middle was made of Crisco and sugar and a few other things and was delicious. I spread a thick layer on half the cookies, and then sandwiched another cookie on top:
Cream filling for Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

The cookies were a big hit. Brian and Alison both loved them, and their kids worked on those cookies for the better part of ten minutes (they were pretty big cookies), licking up every crumb. I’m so happy that they enjoyed them, because I was living in fear that they’d take one bite and then spit it out.

Kid-tested, mother (somewhat) approved (the kids did run around like crazy people after all the sugar!).

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Week Forty-Three: Iced Pumpkin Cookies

October 21, 2009 in Cookies, Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good | 3 comments

(This week’s recipe came from allrecipes.com.)

Autumn is definitely here in New York. The trees in Prospect Park are changing colors, and hints of Christmas shopping are starting to show. The weather’s gotten chillier and that means it’s time to bust out pumpkin recipes.

I was getting a little tired of baking cupcakes, so I decided to find a nice pumpkin cookie to bake this time around. I scoured the Internet for recipes, and finally found one that looked delicious. And it included a glaze as well! Wonderful.

The recipe started with flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and salt being combined in a bowl and set aside:
Pumpkin cookie dry ingredients

Next, butter and sugar were creamed together and pumpkin puree, eggs and vanilla were added once the mixture was creamy. Finally, the dry ingredients were added:
Pumpkin cookie dough

The cookies were dropped by tablespoon full onto cookie sheets and baked:
Pumpkin Cookies

The most important thing I learned about baking pumpkin cookies is that however the batter goes down on the sheet is pretty much the form the cookie will take. I tried to flatten my cookies down so they wouldn’t be mounds of pumpkin, but some of them still turned out kind of peaked. Eh, a little glaze will take care of that. The glaze was a combination of confectioner’s sugar, milk, vanilla and melted butter, and it was delightful. It added such a pretty touch to the cookie as well as just the right amount of sweetness:
Glazed Pumpkin Cookies

These cookies were a bit hit with my coworkers. One of them asked me if there was really pumpkin in the cookie before he would take one, claiming that he didn’t really care for pumpkin. He then took one bite and said, “Oh my God…”, then shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth.

Stay tuned for last week’s project, Tarte Tatin Cupcakes with Caramelized Apples. As soon as I post it, I’ll be caught up! But that’s not going to happen tonight!

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Week Forty-Two: Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

October 12, 2009 in Cupcakes, Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good | 2 comments

(This recipe came from Culinary in the Desert.)

This is definitely a cheater post. I’ve made these Lemon Meringue Cupcakes three or four times in the course of this year, but I just love them so much. I”ve done double posts in the past, where I’ve made more than one thing in a week, so I think it all balances out. Someday I plan to make the lemon curd and just eat it over vanilla ice cream. Mmm mmm good.
Lemon Meringue Cupcake batter

The recipe begins with putting lemon juice, sugar, lemon zest and butter in the top of a double boiler and letting it simmer until the mixture is quite thick. Lemon zest is then mixed in and the mixture is covered with plastic wrap and left to chill in the fridge while the rest of the cupcakes come together.

The cupcakes are a fairly straightforward vanilla cupcake with a little lemon juice thrown in.
Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Once the cupcakes are cool, a small cone is cut out of each and a couple of teaspoons of lemon curd are used to fill in the cone.
Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Meanwhile, egg whites and cream of tartar are whipped together until foamy, and then granulated sugar is slowly added and whipped for about ten minutes, until the meringue becomes thick and fluffy.
Meringue

The cupcakes were then topped with a dollop of meringue and put on a cookie sheet to bake in the oven for an additional five or six minutes to put a little color on the meringue.
Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Fantastic.
Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

My co-workers really enjoyed these. And I know that I did. These are my absolute favorite thing to eat that I make. In a couple of weeks, I will be making my absolute favorite thing to make. Mmmmm…

My next post will be about the glazed Pumpkin Cookies I just made this past Thursday, and then I’ll be caught up with the blog!

This post marks just ten more baked goods to make for this year-long project. Next year I plan to start something a little different, but more on that when it develops.

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