Good afternoon fellow cupcake lovers!! I am so sorry that I have neglected to make any new posts (although I may have scared some people away after seeing my crazy experiment with cilantro cupcakes last time). Life has just been super crazy and I have been getting ready to go to culinary school, as well as working almost full time as a receptionist at a music school! I am also working on redoing my entire house starting with my kitchen so let's just say that I am a busy girl!

So, being that I still have wasabi sitting in my pantry that I have yet to use, I am thinking I will do the experiment this weekend! I recently was given a few days off work (very exciting!!!) So, my little cupcake followers, please continue to watch for posts. I am so very sorry that I have been gone for so long but I plan to be back in full swing soon!

As always, if there is anyone out there who is really interested in what I am doing and would like to suggest an ingredient, feel free to leave a message or a comment! I can always use extra help coming up with new ideas :)

Thank you all and I will be back soon!
-Carolyn

I'm so sorry everyone...what a crazy week this has been! I can't believe I couldn't find the time to do my wasabi test but it's sitting in my pantry waiting to be made into a delicious dessert! This Tuesday we will definitely see something good!

~Carolyn

We're getting crazier by the week! This week's secret ingredient is wasabi! Can we tackle it? I think yes! Something tells me that the wasabi will be a lot easier to get flavor from than the cilantro was....we'll see! Come back on Tuesday morning to see what happens!

Have a Happy Easter!

~Carolyn

Welcome to week two of my cupcake experiments! I apologize for how late this post is...we had computer issues :)

So the first test of the cilantro cupcakes was not a huge success. This one is definitely a challenge. My hypothesis for what was going to happen was completely wrong. The cilantro flavor was very hard to taste. I thought for sure that it would be too overpowering, but in fact, the only reason I knew it was in there was because I saw the green specs dispersed throughout it. So let me walk you through what I tried to do with the recipe. I tried to place it with flavors that it works well with. Since cilantro is used in Asian and Hispanic cooking, I decided that pineapple and ginger would be a good match with it. I decided to model the cupcake after a Boston cream pie cupcake recipe that I had because I thought the pineapple pudding would work well in it. The recipe I used for the first test was:

Cupcakes:

2 1/3 cups all purpose flour

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, softened, 1 ¼ cups sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

 2/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon ground ginger

4 teaspoons cilantro, chopped

1.       Heat oven to 350°F. Line 2, 12 cup muffin tins with cupcake liners.

2.       In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt and ginger; set aside.

3.       In large bowl, beat butter with electric mixer on medium speed 30 seconds. Gradually add sugar, about ¼ cup at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping bowl occasionally. Beat 2 minutes longer. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. On low speed, alternately add flour mixture, about 1/3 mixture at a time, and milk, about ½ at a time, beating just until blended. Add cilantro.

4.       Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.

5.       Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans; place on cooling racks to cool.

6.       Using a melon scooper, scoop out a hole in the middle of the cupcake and fill with pineapple pudding (recipe below)

*The problem with the cupcakes was that they just tasted like regular yellow cake. They were very tasty (my dad and I had a couple!) but you might as well just leave the cilantro out because we couldn’t even taste it.

Pineapple Pudding:

I used a 3.4 oz package of instant vanilla pudding mix and added about 10 tablespoons of pineapple puree to it (I pureed it myself in the food processor). This did not work and I do not recommend using this method, it got the pineapple flavor but it turned soupy and was not able to set again.

I do not recommend using this icing recipe either. I am putting it up simply so you can see what mistakes I made, but it did not turn out as I had hoped.

Icing:

1/3 cup unsalted butter

2 oz white baking chocolate

1 ½ cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup hot water

1.       In a 1-quart saucepan, melt butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring occasionally. Stir in powdered sugar and vanilla. Stir in hot water until smooth. If necessary, stir in additional water, 1 teaspoon at a time, until icing is spreadable. With metal spatula or back of spoon, spread icing over tops of cupcakes.

WHAT HAPPENED: My icing turned was not spreadable, it was mostly liquid. I attempted to fix the problem by adding more powdered sugar. The powdered sugar made the mixture harden very quickly and I was unable to spread it over the cupcakes.

Overall these cupcakes were a disaster to say the least. The pudding was not fully set so they leaked right through the cupcake and it was a bigger mess when I tried to spread to icing on top.

Let’s see what happened with test number two!

I chose to change the basic cupcake recipe I was using from a yellow cake to a white cake, because the white cake seems to be more of the texture that I was looking for. The difference is, it uses egg whites instead of the entire egg. Also, at this point I completely got rid of the idea to add pineapple and ginger flavor because I just wanted to get the cilantro flavor in there over anything else!

Here is what I did:

2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup unsalted butter

1 2/3 cups sugar

5 egg whites

1 ¼ cups milk

6 tablespoons cilantro, chopped

1.       Heat oven to 350°F. Line 2, 12 cup muffin tins with cupcake liners.

2.       In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

3.       In large bowl, beat shortening with electric mixer on medium speed 30 seconds. Gradually add sugar, about 1/3 cup at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping bowl occasionally. Beat 2 minutes longer. Add egg whites, one at a time, beating well after each addition. One low speed, alternately add flour mixture, about 1/3 of mixture at a time, and milk, about ½ at a time, beating just until blended. Fold in cilantro.

4.       Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.

5.       Bake 18 to 20 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans; place on cooling racks to cool.

*Again, these weren’t any different….just a slightly different kind of cupcake but we still were unable to taste the cilantro at all.

So what I did for the third test, was use the exact same recipe as in test two, except I through about 2 cups of cilantro in there as a final act of desperation to get some cilantro taste out of the cupcake.

THE RESULT: No cilantro flavor at all….the only thing I got out of that recipe was an awful texture because of all the herbs that had been baked inside.

That settles it folks…my cilantro experiment was a good attempt, with awful results! I would not suggest trying these recipes…save yourself the trouble and just make them minus the cilantro J thanks for reading my blog again and check back later this week…maybe we’ll have some luck next time! I can tell you that we have not quit on trying to make the cilantro work...it turns out that with the second recipe I used, there was a nice hint of cilantro flavor in there and we have decided that it might work great with a lemon cake so the tests are in production. As always, check back a little later to figure out what the new ingredient for next week will be.

~Carolyn

p.s. Have a happy Easter!

CILANTRO: It's not just for salsa any more! That's right everyone...the cupcake ingredient of the week is cilantro & you do not want to miss all the action! Be sure to look at my page Tuesday morning to see what happens...I'm going to try reallly hard to make it work :)

~Carolyn

I'm still working on choosing the ingredient for next week...I have a few in mind but I haven't settled on one quite yet...until then I thought I'd post some pictures from my last catering job! I made 100 cake pops for a baby shower a couple months ago...take a look!

 Lemon cake pops with white chocolate coating!

 There's my cake pops on the table at the baby shower! Unfortunately I did not make the cupcakes and the cake but they looked delicious :)

 From left: Tamika, Antoinette and I at Tamika's baby shower.

Thanks for checking these out! I'll be posting next week's ingredient soon!

~Carolyn

Hello folks! :) The ingredient of the week was sparkling pomegranate juice, as I announced earlier! Well we made it through week 1 and I got a pretty good cupcake recipe out of it too! The end result of the experiment was two different cupcakes, one, which far exceeded the other with color, flavor and texture. So let's see what happened!

The Opponent:                                                                                            The Game Plan:

  Find the best way to maintain the flavor of the pomegranate, while also making it work in a cake batter. 

   

What happened:

 I added butter...

 Then flour, salt and baking powder....

 Some egg whites, so it wouldn't be too dry.....





                    Then I mixed it all together....

BUT THEN.......

The batter was divided so that two tests could be done! In test number one, the sparkling juice was added directly to the batter without any preparation done to it...just straight from the bottle. After mixing it in, I added 1/2 cup of mini semi-sweet chocolate chips...because who doesn't love chocolate?

But from the look of the batter...it was lacking the dark purple color that I expected to get from pomegranate juice. But I waited to see what happened after they came out of the oven....AND....

still not purple :( So I had no choice but to move on! I knew it was time to reduce that juice! And that is exactly what I did...

Three cups of sparkling juice soon boiled down to only 1/2 cup...which I added to the batter. Then came 1/2 cup of chocolate chips for this batch too!

So I evenly divided the batter into the cupcake tin and popped it in the oven!

To my delight, this batch turned out just the way I wanted it to!

I whipped up some pomegranate buttercream icing (much easier to do than the cupcake batter), and piped it on top of the cake!

Winning Recipe!

Pomegranate Cupcakes Test #2 (with reduced juice)

2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour plus about a tablespoon

3 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup unsalted butter

1 2/3 cups sugar

5 egg whites

2 ½ teaspoons vanilla

½ cup reduced pomegranate sparkling juice **

1.       Heat oven to 350°F. Line 2, 12 cup muffin tins with cupcake liners.

2.       In medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

3.       In large bowl, beat butter on medium speed 30 seconds. Gradually add sugar, about 1/3 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape bowl occasionally. Beat 2 minutes longer. Add egg whites, one at a time. Beat well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix well. On low speed, add flour mixture gradually. Add pomegranate juice and mix well. Stir in chocolate chips.

4.       Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.

5.       Bake 28-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center of each comes out clean.

**I reduced the juice by boiling it over the stove until it became slightly thicker. It took me a little less than 3 cups of juice to get ½ cup of the reduction.



Runner-Up...still good but the pomegranate taste was not really there. It tasted more like a chocolate chip muffin with a hint of berry flavor...

Pomegranate Cupcakes test #1 (recipe using straight sparkling juice no reduction)

2 ¾ cups all purpose flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

¾ cup unsalted butter

1 2/3 cups sugar

5 eggs whites

2 ½ teaspoons vanilla

1 ¼ cups sparkling pomegranate juice

1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

1.       Heat oven to 350°F. Line 2, 12 cup muffin tins with cupcake liners.

2.       In medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

3.       In large bowl, beat butter with electric mixer on medium speed 30 seconds. Gradually add sugar, about 1/3 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape bowl occasionally. Beat 2 minutes longer. Add egg whites, one at a time, beat well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix well. On low speed, add flour mixture gradually. On low speed, add sparkling juice gradually. Stir in chocolate chips.

4.       Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.

5.       Bake 28-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans 15 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans; place on cooling racks to cool. Frost with pomegranate frosting (recipe shown above)







Pomegranate Frosting Recipe

Pomegranate Frosting (frosts 24 cupcakes)

6 cups powdered sugar

2/3 cups unsalted butter, softened

1 tablespoon vanilla

¼ cup sparkling pomegranate juice reduced**

Milk (add as needed)

1.       In large bowl, mix powdered sugar and butter with spoon or electric mixer on low speed. Stir in vanilla, pomegranate juice.

2.       Gradually beat in milk as needed to get the right consistency.

**Sparkling pomegranate juice can be reduced by boiling it on the stove. I used about 1 cup of juice and reduced it to ¼ cup.



So there you have it! I hope you enjoyed our sparkling pomegranate juice test! Check back on my blog or my twitter account CJCupcakery to find out what next week's ingredient is!

~Carolyn