Classic Cupcakes

Another Monday night show I admit to watching immediately following GG - The Hills. When Kelly Cutrone of People's Revolution said that if you work here, you're basically selling your soul to the devil, that reminded me of my last couple of jobs. If you ever laughed while watching the Devil Wears Prada, let me tell you, the story is scarily accurate to the ways of the industry. Even Miranda's office was so exact to Anna Wintour's, that she flipped out and rearranged, so I've heard.

I'm not an i-banker or a lawyer with 120 hours a week, but I've stayed many late nights and weekends in the office. There were nights where I wouldn't be able to sleep just thinking about work. And there were mornings where I'd jolt up out of bed worrying about production issues. I did this because I was emotionally attached to my work. However, if it's anything I've learned in fashion, it's not how hard working you are that will score you those brownie points. I'm gonna put it bluntly- you really need to *kiss arse. Isn't that just the way of the world. I've seen less than talented people getting hired and wondered how in the hell they even got in the door.

I'm not sure how the culinary world works when it comes to *networking, but if I do decide to pursue this route, I hope I can simply make classic desserts with style and that will be that.

This is a simple and classic batter that I love.




For the cupcakes
(recipe from Desserts by the Yard, Sherry Yard)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
6 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk

1. Make the Cake: Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degreesF. Spray two 9-inch round cake pans with cooking spray and line with parchment paper. Spray the parchment.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together two times and set aside.

3. Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or use a large bowl and a hand mixer, and beat together at medium speed for 4 to 5 minutes, until the mixture is very light and fluffy. Scrape down the paddle or beaters and the sides of the bowl.

4. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract.

5. Beating on low speed, add the milk and the flour mixture each in 3 additions, alternating wet and dry ingredients. Beat only until smooth. Fill the cupcake pans 3/4 full.

6. Bake for 30 minutes. To test the cake for doneness, lightly touch the top with a finger - it should spring right back into place; the cake should also be beginning to pull away slightly from the sides of the pan. If necessary, bake for 5 to 10 minutes more.

7. Let the cupcakes cool in the pans on a rack for 15 minutes. Allow to cool for at least 2 hours before frosting.

For the buttercream
2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (60 grams) water
seeds of one vanilla bean or 1 tbsp. pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
3 1/2 sticks (7 ounces; 200 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
flavouring of your choice (a tablespoon of an extract, a few tablespoons of melted white chocolate, citrus zest, etc.)

1. Combine the sugar, water and vanilla bean seeds or extract in a small saucepan and warm over medium heat just until the sugar dissolves.

2. Continue to cook, without stirring, until the syrup reaches 225◦F (107◦C) on a candy or instant-read thermometer. Once it reaches that temperature, remove the syrup from the heat.

3. While the syrup is heating, begin whisking the egg and egg yolk at high speed in the bowl of your mixer using the whisk attachment. Whisk them until they are pale and foamy.

4. When the sugar syrup reaches the correct temperature and you remove it from the heat, reduce the mixer speed to low speed and begin slowly (very slowly) pouring the syrup down the side of the bowl being very careful not to splatter the syrup into the path of the whisk attachment. Some of the syrup will spin onto the sides of the bowl but don't worry about this and don't try to stir it into the mixture as it will harden!

5. Raise the speed to medium-high and continue beating until the eggs are thick and satiny and the mixture is cool to the touch (about 5 minutes or so).

6. While the egg mixture is beating, place the softened butter in a bowl and mash it with a spatula until you have a soft creamy mass.

7. With the mixer on medium speed, begin adding in two-tablespoon chunks. When all the butter has been incorporated, raise the mixer speed to high and beat until the buttercream is thick and shiny.

8. At this point add in your flavouring and beat for an additional minute or so.

9. Refrigerate the buttercream, stirring it often, until it's set enough (firm enough) to spread when topped with a layer of cake (about 20 minutes).

Coconut Souffle

Is anyone else addicted to the WB11 show Gossip Girl? 3 Monday nights ago, B was trying to take Nelly Yuki down in a battle of the highest SAT scores. Since when did the SAT high scores jump to 2000? I remember when I was high school, they were 1600! Of course, Nelly Yuki was portrayed as a classic Asian math genius with over-sized thick black glasses who was pretty much unbeatable in the education category. She could have used some help from B as far as an outfit upgrade though! What's with her hanging around B lately?

So why do I feel like an Asian math idiot? Aren't we all supposed to be geniuses in math? I blame the fact that I'm in fashion. Practically no one in the fashion industry knows how to do math. Fractions were never my thing. If I need to divide a fraction in five minutes, I'll most likely call someone for an answer. No one told me that I needed a calculator to bake!

I was trying to half this recipe since I only had 4 ramekins. All these things are only eaten by me so far, so if I could I would have divided the recipe for one person if I knew how! Well it's a good thing I made 4 anyway - because I ended up eating them all anyway!

You're right G, I better start getting recipes measured by weight!

Beware - your house will smell lovely as these rise away in the oven!

Coconut Souffles
(makes 8 servings)

1 cup finely shredded unsweetened dried coconut
1 1/2 cups unsweetened coconut milk
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup whole milk
2 large eggs separated
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 sugar, plus more for sugaring the ramekins
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon all purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature,
plus more for greasing the ramekins
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg white


Put the coconut, coconut milk, cream, milk, egg yolks, salt, 1/2 cup plus 2 tablesppons sugar, and 1/2 cup of the flour in a medium saucepan, set over medium heat, and cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens and boils. The consistency should be like a very thick batter. Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter and vanilla extract.

Let the coconut mixture cool slightly, then strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a large mixing bowl, pressing on the coconut to extract all the liquid. Set aside to cool completely.

Preheat the oven to 425F. Generously butter 8 4-oz ramekins, taking care to butter the rims, and lightly sugar tapping out any excess. Refrigerate the ramekins until you are ready to fill them.

Put the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Whisk until the whites are frothy, then with the machine running, slowly add the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar. Continue whisking until medium peaks form. (When you lift the whisk from the mixture, a peak will form and the very tip of the peak will fall back down.)

Whisk the cooled coonut cream until it loosens and has a near liquid consistency. Add all the whites to the cream and fold in very gently until there are just afew white streaks remaining. Sift the remaining 1 tablespoon flour over the mixture and fold in gently until no traces of the flour remain.

Divide the batter among the ramekins. Bake until puffed and light golden brown on top, about 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

I submitted these to the Mansi's Montly Mingle. Check it out!

Happy Mother's Day!

My birthday always falls around Mother's Day. I usually have so many birthday events, that I sort of put Mother's Day in the back of my mind. I don't mean to be selfish, but my birthday celebrations run at least one full week and my Blackberry calendar doesn't seem to be big enough.

(Can you imagine what my future wedding will be like?!)

One of my biggest pet peeves is planning last minute. I don't mind spontaneous outings, but when I'm pressed for time, I am not myself. It almost feels like Tetris during the last seconds you're about to lose when it starts getting fast and you're trying to get all the pieces to work with each other to make the lines disappear. Except, I pulled it off and it wasn't Game Over.

I set my alarm for 7am yesterday morning to get some groceries that I didn't have stocked for a cake recipe. I had be out of the house by 10:30am to get to a family lunch celebrating my birthday and Mother's Day. This outing was planned 9 hours before I woke up. The actual day is never good for celebrating because that is the busiest day of the year for the family business. And celebrating after the occasion is never fun. I had no working stand mixer and barely any ingredients left. I baked 2 layers of cake that night and left the filling and decorating for the following morning. Needless to say, it was chaos! My cake looked too short, so I ended up baking another 2 layers. By this time, it was 9:30am. I still had to cool and ice! By the time I got to fondant, it was 10:30. Basically, I rolled out, stamped designs, and covered in 15 minutes and I was out the door.

I almost had one meltdown moment when I couldn't find my offset spatula (and never did) What can I say - people in Fashion work well under time crunches. Just when I thought it was hard to make a cake in 2 hours, I thought back to times when I had to get packages out for production or delivery into the stores would be late!

The First Wedding Cake

**Warning**
Terrible photos may be blinding
The bride requested a Precious Moments topper. The 300 something flowers are hand molded with Sugar Paste.

Glueing and Sparkling on site with one nice little elf :)

My lack of decent photos of this cake, makes me really regret that I was royal icing on those flowers up til the last minute! Photos over flowers!! These horrible photos are the only thing I have for show for this first wedding cake. They were not taken by me. God knows when or if I'll ever get the photos of the cake from the photographer that night. I was almost tempted to not post because of such TERRIBLE photos but everyone needs to have their first - so this will be my first and last mistake. The red tablecloth, yellow lighting and over sized low table really takes away from a beautiful cake. Just imagine a white ground!

At the beginning of this project, I made a Word formatted checklist table outlining all the supplies I would need to buy, and all the deadlines listed for every night before I went to sleep. Being that this is my first wedding cake ever, I felt like my head was going to explode from all the thoughts that went into constructing this! I was thinking, breathing and sleeping this project!


BTW, my Kitchen Aid mixer broke this past weekend. I was starting buttercream for my cupcakes and all of the sudden, blue sparks started flying out of the back and loud pops emerged. So I am mixer-less (and quite bored) this week until my new one arrives.

Lemon Raspberry Cupcakes

I spent all of last week making my first wedding cake for my cousin's wedding. 2 of those nights were spent making 500 little gum paste flowers. Being that it was my first wedding cake ever, I sort of expected the worst. I imagined that on the day of, I would be pacing around with a white cake only half way filled with flowers and an empty plastic Glad storage box. Of course that wouldn't happen, because I always come up with Plan B. Well, pictures of the cake will be to come - but I have about 200 left over flowers. I used Dorie's perfect party cake recipe to make these adorable little cupcakes topped with super cute flowers.





Lemon Raspberry Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream
adapted from Dorie's Baking: My Home to Yours


Ingredients
2 1/4 C cake flour
1 Tbsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 C whole milk or buttermilk (I used buttermilk)
4 large egg whites
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp grated lemon zest
1 stick (or 1/2 C or 4 oz.) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 tsp pure lemon extract

For the Buttercream
1 C sugar
4 large egg whites
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 C fresh lemon juice (from 2 large lemons)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Raspberry preserves

Getting Ready
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and adjust a rack to the center position. Fill 2 cupcake pans with cupcake liners. Set aside.

Sift together the cake flour, baking powder, and salt. Whisk the egg whites with the whole milk or buttermilk. Put the sugar and lemon zest in a mixer bowl and rub them together with your fingers until the sugar feels moist and smells lemony.

Using either the whisk or paddle attachment, add the butter to the sugar and beat at medium speed until the sugar and butter is fluffy and light, 3 full minutes.

Beat in the extract, then lower the speed and add one third of the flour mixture. If you continue to mix on medium you'll get flour poofing out. The add half of the milk-egg mixture, then beat in the rest of the dry ingredients, mix until incorporated. Finally add the rest of the milk-egg mixture and beat for a full 2 minutes on medium speed to insure that the batter is homogeneous and aerated.

Divide the batter among the cupcake pan only filling 3/4 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Check early.

Transfer the cupcakes to cooling racks and cool for 5 minutes, then remove them from the pans, and cool the cakes to room temperature.


To Make the Buttercream
Bring a saucepan of water to a simmer. Put the sugar and egg whites in a mixer bowl or heatproof bowl and place this bowl over the pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly until the mixture feels hot to the touch and the sugar has completely dissolved, about 3 minutes. The mixture will look white and shiny like marshmallow cream.

Using the whisk attachment, beat the meringue on medium speed until it is cool, about 5 minutes. It will become very white, fluffy, and sticky. Switch to the paddle attachment and add the butter one stick at a time. Beat the buttercream until it is thick, fluffy, and smooth. At some point it will curdle but don't worry, this is normally and with continued beating it will come together. Gradually add the lemon juice, making sure each addition is absorbed before adding more and finally add the vanilla.


I added the buttercream in a piping bag filled with a large star tip. I put a coat of raspberry jam on the top of the cooled cupcakes and piped the lemon buttercream on top - then I added the leftover flowers from the wedding cake.


Happy Decorating!
XOXO
J

Green Tea Meringues

I'll leave you with these sweet little green tea meringues while I'm away on business to Beijing, Shanghai and HK this coming week. I look forward to catching up when I get back.



Green Tea and Walnut Meringues
(adapted from Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan)

1 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup of matcha powder
4 large egg whites, at room temperature
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup very finely chopped walnuts

Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Line too baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.

Sift together the confectioners sugar, and matcha powder

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large dry bowl (make sure your bowl is impeccably clean and dry), whip the egg whites and salt on medium speed until the whites are opaque. Increase the speed to medium-high and continue to whip as you add the sugar about 1 tablespoon at a time. Then whip until the whites are firm and hold stiff peaks--they should still be very shiny. Bean in the vanilla, and remove the bowl from the mixer. With a large rubber spatula, quickly but gently fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the chopped walnuts. The whites will be inevitably deflate as you fold in the dry ingredients--just try to work rapidly and use a light touch, so you deflate them as little as possible.

Drop the meringue by tablespoon fulls onto the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between the mounds.

Bake for 10 minutes, then, without opening the oven door, reduce the oven temperature to 200 degrees F and bake for 1 hour more. Remove the baking sheets fromt he oven and allow the meringues to stand in a cool, dry place (not the refrigerator) until they reach room temperature.

Carefully peel the meringues off the parchment or silicone lining.

Vietnamese Coffee Affogato

I remember how horrid my first week of college was. I was terribly sick only after a couple of days after it started and I forced myself to go to class after hearing the strict attendance policy. Parsons was not a school where you could skip all your classes and just study from the books for midterms and finals. We were expected to hand in projects to be graded for every class. I clearly remember the rule that a 3 day absence for the semester was a failure. If you were late, it would count as half an absence.

Whenever people ask me how it was like in fashion school, I always say it was like bootcamp. A lot was expected from me; as a result, I felt I matured faster. I grew up a small town girl and threw myself into the adventure of the city to go to design school. Every night was a late night and every morning was an early morning. Some nights, I didn't sleep at all. I had 9 hour days of classes 5 days a week and then another 4-6 hours of homework to do every night. If you ask me, I would never do it again.

But through all the sick days, I still worked through because it was my passion.

I haven't been in the kitchen much this past week because I came down with some sort of infection that stranded me in bed for a few days. Though I was in bed, I couldn't sleep much because I hallucinating food.

This is a favorite of mine at Spice Market and I never knew it was so easy and straight forward!



Vietnamese Coffee Tapioca "Affogato"
Pichet Ong's The Sweet Spot
8 servings

Condensed Milk Ice Cream
5 large egg yolks
2 cups whole milk
1 1/4 cups sweetened condensed milk
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise in half, seed scraped out
and seed and pod reserved, or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt

Vietnamese Coffee Affogato
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup small tapioca pearls
1/4 cup Vietnamese chicory, or French-roast coffee powder
8 walnut cookes, crushed to small crumbs

To make the ice cream: Whisk the egg yolks in a medium mixing bowl until broken; set aside. Put the milk, condensed milk, vanilla seeds and pod, if using, and salt in a medium saucepan and set over medium heat. When bubbles start to form around the edges, removed from the heat. Pour 1/2 cup of the warm milk mixture onto the yolks in a slow, steady stram, whisking constantly. Transfer the yold mixture back to the sauce pan, set over low heat, and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon and registers 165°F, about 5 minutes.

Strain the mixture into a large mixing bowl. Stir in the vanilla extract, if using. Set the mixture over a larger bowl of ice and water and stir occasionally until cool to the touch, about 40°F. Alternatively, cover and refrigerate until cold.

Transfer the mixture to your ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer's instructions. Transfer to a freezer container and place in the freezer.

To make the affogato: put the sugar, salt and 6 cups water in a large saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the tapioca and cook, stirring, until the water returns to a rapid boil. Turn the heat to medium and continue stirring occasionally until the tapioca is cooked through, about 15 minuts. It's done when it's almost translucent, with a pinpoint of white in the center; the balls should be tender but still chewy. Drain, rinse under cold water, drain again, and immediately divide among eight serving bowls or glasses.

Brew the coffee: If you have a traditional Vietnamese drip coffee canister, use it; otherwise, use a coffee machine. Line the filter with two paper filters and pack in the coffee tightly. Add 3 cups water to the machine, and use the slow drip option if available. You should end up with about 2 cups of very strong coffee

Divide the hot coffee among the bowls and put 2 scoops of ice cream on top. Garnish with cookie crumbs. Serve immediately with fat straws or spoons.