Cookies & Cream Cupcakes

This project starts by making chocolate cupcakes. The recipe I chose was a chocolate buttermilk cake, it uses Dutch processed cocoa and has been tweaked to make only exactly 12 cupcakes. On this day I could not possibly need more than 12 cupcakes. So use whichever chocolate cake recipe you're fondest of, or here's one from me if you don't feel much like looking too far.

While said chocolate cupcakes of choice are baking is the perfect time to assemble your filling and frosting. I filled mine with bittersweet chocolate mousse and frosted them with cookies and cream buttercream. Filling is an extra step and of course not necessary, but come on, why wouldn't you?  

Cookies and Cream Frosting
1/2 cup butter - room temp
1/4 cup whole milk - room temp (plus a little extra for later)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 pound confectioners sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
15 cream filled chocolate cookies of choice (here's where I admit that I went with neither the name nabisco or newman brands. I decided to take this adventure late Thursday night and the closest store to me is actually a gas station where they only sell giant generic packages of double-filled-shure-fine-stuffed-chocolate-sandwich-cookies. so that's what I got. no rules)

Beat butter until creamy, add milk and vanilla and beat until well combined. Add confectioners sugar and salt beating on low until combined, then increase speed to high. Continue to beat until frosting is light and fluffy. Break cookies into bits and add them to the frosting with mixer running. They will continue to break up into smaller pieces. (In case you're wondering, adding the cookies directly to the mixer bowl seemed to work better than giving them a whirl in the 'ol food processor because all of that double cream filling really wanted to stick to the side of the processor and gum things up. Been there, done that.) After cookies have been sufficiently combined and crumbled, you may want to add a few more Tablespoons of milk to get a lighter, pipe-able, frosting consistency. I did.

Ok. Now you have all of the pieces of the puzzle. Here's what to do with them:

 Get all of your ingredients together and your work area ready.

Make a filling space in each cupcake by cutting the middle portion out with a paring knife. Wait! Don't eat the middle parts! You'll need them in a little bit.

Fill that space with something. I used chocolate mousse. Maybe you'll use a cookie, or pudding, or mousse, or ganache. I don't know, anything could happen.

Put a cap on it. This is what those middle parts are for! As you can see from the photo, I needed to size the middle parts down so the caps would fit back on. This means there are some chocolate cake scraps to snack on after all.

Pipe or spread frosting on. I garnished mine with a broken bit of cookie. Cookie crumbs would be nice too...

A Cake Taken Apart

You didn't think the little one on the top got cut first, did you? I've been working on some edits, updates and newness here on my baking portfolio site. A little bit at a time.

Summer Wedding in Leopard Print

I've been working, on really cool stuff. Here's a sneak peek of wedding cake from early July. The leopard print tiers are chocolate cake with peanut butter filling. The white and black tiers are coconut cake with lemon frosting. Cupcakes in gold and leopard print wrappers to match. Better photos will be posted on my website at some point in the indefinite future. In the mean time, more cake.

Custards Last Stand

I'm fairly certain that almost every birthday cake I had as a small child came from a place called the Home Dairy. Once located in an old brick building in downtown Ithaca, the Home Dairy was a bakery and cafeteria in the truest form. It was here that Mr. Avery baked and decorated the cakes and cookies that my bother, sister and I would spend our formative years fiending for. It was here that I was first inspired to try my hand at making something sweet and good looking for someone else to eat. It was here that I also had my first taste of baked egg custard. Egg custard and egg custard pie are classic Southern desserts that I rarely come across. Delicious, simple, without excess - egg custard is one of my favorite desserts, and invokes some of the sweetest taste memories of my life. Here's how you do it:

Baked Egg Custard

6 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 1/2 cups milk

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350. Yield 8 6oz custards.

Put the eggs in a mixing bowl and stir just until mixed. Add the sugar, salt and milk, and mix until well blended.

Strain through a fine meshed sieve, and stir in the nutmeg and vanilla. Divide evenly among your custard cups.

Place cups in a baking pan, and fill the pan halfway up the cups with hot water. Bake in preheated oven for 30 min, or just until custards are set (this can seem tricky if you haven't made custard before because they'll be a little jiggly, but if a knife inserted in the center comes out clean - you're all good). Remove from the hot water bath and cool.

I like my custard at room temperature or chilled. Some like it warm. I support you in serving/eating it however you want to. Your kitchen - your rules.