The cupcake is dead.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/real_food/article7097540.ece

Project Cupcake

Today I decided to test out an idea for a birthday party I'm helping a friend out with. WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS... I said I'd bring jungle-themed alternate birthday cake (there will be a store cake present) and wanted to make sure I wasn't going to show up with something too tacky. Nothing wrong with a little test bake, as far as I'm concerned!

The original request had been for me to do a jungle-themed cake. However, as I don't have an airbrush or any working knowledge of rolling fondant, a little experimenting and research quickly illuminated the difference between "I like to bake stuff" and "I'm good at designing cakes." Let's just say I'm not about to show up with a big green glob of frosting with randomly-placed plastic jungle critters sliding all over the place any time soon...

So I worked out a compromise for jungle-themed cupcakes instead.

I just used white cake mix and cream cheese frosting, Betty Crocker style. For funness and coolosity, I put green food dye in the batter before baking the wee cakes - there's mah jungle! For the icing, I used Ms. Crocker's cream cheese frosting, and made my colored accent frosting using powdered sugar, water, and food coloring. If you must know, to achieve an acceptable shade of black you mix mostly blue and red food coloring with a little less green and yellow. Or you buy it. Like I'm going to next time.

I googled "leopard print frosting" and "zebra stripes frosting," looked at a bunch of photos, and got to painting. The patterns were easy and looked pretty cool (I like the use of unexpected colors instead of brown and yellow and black), and to add a little extra bling I dyed some sugar and sprinkled it over top of the designs. See my little sketches? That's how advanced I am.

The taste testers were local hooligans Julie and Phoenix, and they thought that (a) The frosting looked cool, (b) The green cake part was also cool, and (c) The cupcakes were tasting good. So Project Cupcake has a 100% Kid Approval Rating, based on positive reviews from both testees, who were representative of their overall demographic. That's statistics for ya.

Pie #6: Creamy Green Grape Pie with a Lattice Crust

This whole pie project is really starting to get interesting. Pie #6 - Creamy Green Grape with a Lattice Crust - was interesting, unusual, tasty, and a little bit of a challenge/learning experience with the lattice crust bit. It had to cool for a minimum of 4 hours before cutting-in, so I waited until I got home from work Saturday night to eagerly test the results. As I was pulling into my slightly overgrown driveway, I noticed our local cab driver parked nearby, and I decided to enlist his help in the tasting. As I was delivering the morsel to his dimly-lit vehicle (scared the crap out of him, by the way) I heard "I want some damn pie!!!" hollered from my neighbors' front porch... All-in-all, test subjects 1 and 2 (Ed and Heather) managed to re-enforce the late night community-building strength of Pah, and gave me a good belly chuckle not once but twice in one evening. I consider that a win.

With no further ado...

Creamy Green Grape Pie.

Bumba wanted to help with this one so we sifted the crust's dry ingredients into a bowl and got to mixin'.

The flaky pie crust recipe (made flakier by the use of butter *and* shortening) requires minimal smushing of the dough in order to maintain its glutenous flaky fibers when baked.

The fats need to be cut-in to the dry ingredients until the mix resembles coarse crumbs, and then 5-6 TBSPs of ice water are added by the TBSP from the outer sides and then lightly mixed in using a fork and pushing the outsides into the middle. All of this effort is to eliminate beating or over-mixing the dough. Once it's all holding together, the dough must be lightly formed into two balls, scored on the sides with the bakers' hands to relax the gluten, padded into disks, and then refrigerated at least 30 minutes before rolling it out.

The photos of the rolled crust are proof that I need more work on distinguishing 13" circles from broken-edged hexagons, so let's skip to the lattice part. To weave the lattice portion of the crust, lay down 6 strips of dough, turn the pie 90 degrees, pull-back strips 2,4/1,3/4,6 etc. slightly more than half way, and then individually place each additional strip, alternating between the 2,4/1,3/4,6 strips. I never would have come up with that myself. Then you pinch the edges together, trim the excess to a 1/4 inch overhang, and paint with egg white before baking.

I've started covering the whole dang thing with foil for the first 2/3 of the baking time, and then removing the foil and browning for the remaining 1/3 baking time. I tried the whole "cover the edges with strips of foil" thing, and was burning the pie crust every time. I think I've almost got it figured out now...

It came out looking great!

Rating: *****Pielettes *(My first 5 star!)

This pie gets an automatic star for being so weird-sounding, and another for the flaky lattice crust. I had my doubts about using shortening, but man... it totally made a difference. The crust was light and flaky and even TASTY (gasp)! Although it required annoying things like, oh, ROLLING, the lattice part was fairly easy and aesthetically worth it in my book. As for the filling... I wouldn't have thought of using grapes in a pie but they are good! The creamy part (comprised of heavy cream, sugar and vanilla) baked into this awesome cobbler-y consistency that I loved, and the grapes held their form and firmness, creating an all-together pleasing texture. My new signature cobbler is gonna be green grape (maybe with some kiwi!) after this because the tartness was delightful. Heather and Ed both really liked the pie, and my Black Feather Focus Group, while somewhat bemused by the oddity of it, seemed to like it as well. And I loved it. Turns out I totally overlooked the fact that I was supposed to garnish it with almonds, which I am sure would have been great, and I think with a dollop of freshly whipped cream this would totally knock anyone's socks off. Five pielettes, yo!

Etsy find of the day: Pie necklace.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/roscata?page=1

Pie #5: Chocolate Cream Pie with Chocolate Crust

It's been a thuper busy week with work and... work, so I haven't been cranking pies out as quickly as I would like to! But for the latest endeavor I thought I'd go a different direction and do something with chocolate. Really quickly, I should say that I don't generally favor chocolate dishes - too sweet, too much chocolate! Ha. (*A side note to Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Dudes: Why do you have to put chocolate in *everything*?! Some of us don't like fudge or chocolate chunks or chips or chocolate icing. Some of us would appreciate something like hazelnut or pistachio or some unexpected element OTHER than chocolate in your ice cream, which we may or may not buy religiously. That's all I'm sayin'. Your heath and coffee flavor ROCKS by the way.)

The recipe for said chocolate cream pie called for a rolled cornmeal crust, which I thought was very bland and pecan-y with the peach pie fiasco (pie #2). Instead, I opted for a chocolate crust. [From here on, assume that I will mostly use that easy pie crust recipe because it's so fast and simple I can't really justify substituting a labor-intensive option without good reason.]

I added 2 TBSP of cocoa powder to the dough and pinched the edges into a "scalloped" crust before baking and then cooling it in the freezer...

As the shell chilled like a Smirnoff Ice (okay, I've never actually tasted one to my recollection, but I imagine they would only be tolerable chilled) I made a custard filling similar to the profiterole cream - eggs, cream, cream of tartar and flour for thickening, sugar, vanilla... After getting the base cooked to the right consistency (as to thickly coat le spatula), I took it off the heat and added my version of finely chopped dark semi-sweet chocolate. By my version, I of course mean that I didn't bother to chop it finely, and I used TWILIGHT delight chocolate! Yessss! Directions require that the chocolate sit atop steaming custard delight for approx. 2 minutes to (mostly) melt, and then the adventuresome baker is to stir the pudding lightly until the chocolate is all combined with the pudding and chocolate-looking.

Once the chocolate is all melted into the custard, it must be strained into a large bowl using a fine mesh strainer. This eliminates the little inevitable chunklettes of egg and flour. Once de-chunked, add vanilla and butter and stir until combined. Remove pastry shell from yon cooling apparatus, pour the pudding into the crust, and cover with greased plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming. The chocolate wonder must then chill for a minimum of 4 hours. I let it chill for 24, and man did that wrapper come off like magic!!! No puckers or anything! =)

Lastly, you pipe lightly sweetened whipped cream over the chocolate, and then (if you're like me) shave approx. 12 chocolate chips over the top. Or if you're less prone to doing things the hard way, shave off of a chocolate bar until you've got as much as you want and thprinkle it artistically for dramatic effect...

...Like so! Since the topping is whipped cream you need to cut/eat it quickly or get it back in the fridge before the cream slides off. It will hold its shape for at least 5 minutes in a relatively warm-but-not-hot vehicle as long as it's not in the sun. I tried it.

AND THE RESULTS...

Rating: ****Pielettes

This pie made me think of those Bill Cosby-endorsed Jello pudding pops that used to be so popular back in the 80s. The 80s, for those humans college-age and below out there who WEREN'T COGNIZANT at the time (!!!!!), were the Good Years, during which awesomeness happened, like the New Kids on the Block and L.A. Gear High Tops and Michael Jordan and stuff. And Jello Pudding Pops. Anyways, the pudding part really held its form well. I polled a group of local 4-6 year old's, and reviews included "I didn't wealize this was dark chocowat and I hate dark chocowat, I sorry!" and alternately, "I...wike...dark...chocowat..." from the 4 year-old. I loved how barely-sweet the whipped cream was in contrast, and the crust was chocolate-y without being too rich. The shaved chocolate garnish looked nice too. All-in-all, a somewhat foolproof dish and sure to please most children and adults.

Croqeumbouche Part Deux

I also made some caramel sticks and dots since I had plenty of boiling candy syrup left over (drizzle onto a greased cooking sheet and let cool) to add as decoration, as well as an "M" for Marc... just to see if it would work... it did! The whole piece held together well despite mild casualties when the platter tipped over in the car (only 3 puffs fell off) but everything else stayed put...

And here's the finished result of the Croqeumbouche experiment du jour!

And the review... "It's so French! You have no idea how French this is!"" about sums it up! (A nice compliment from a Frenchie indeed...)

Croqeumbouche Extraordinaire!

Oui Oui, my chickies, it's gettin' crazy up in here! My manager at Le Deauville had a birthday this week, and I decided to tackle the (in)famous Croqeumbouche since he's French and all. It's not in my pies and tarts book, but... Meh. Zee tower of zee cream puffs was calling to me sweetly!

So, first you make the cream puff pastry, or Pate a Choux Sucree. (These are also known as profiteroles.) It's very basic - boil water, season with salt and sugar, add butter (cut up into small pieces), and when it melts remove from heat and add flour. Then you beat in the eggs one at a time until it's well-blended and forms a doughy ball, like so... .

You can either spoon or pipe the dough onto un-greased parchment paper or directly onto a baking sheet, then you paint with an egg/cold water wash before baking. This helps smooth the rough bits and gives these puppies (chiots) a little shine.

Bake the puffs for about 20 minutes on 425 degrees, then turn off the oven, pull 'em out, fork some air holes in the sides, and return them to the oven for another 10 minutes to dry out with the oven off and the door ajar.

While this is happening, make the pastry cream - traditionally a custard but you can do a Bavarian cream (with gelatin) or whipped cream as well. I used a recipe for French Pastry Cream - Creme Patissiere - that consists of egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch (to thicken), half and half cream or light cream, milk, and vanilla. (You can additionally flavor this filling with cocoa powder, spirits, pulverized almonds or nuts, etc.) Scald the cream, combine all the other ingredients, add the cream, and then cook until thickened enough to thickly coat your spatula. Take it off the heat and let it cool until further thickened. Meanwhile, slice the profiteroles 1/3 of the way open, spoon in the (custard) and then you stack...

.

Since I didn't have much time at this point (or any experience with spun sugar), I decided to make a caramel candy drizzle for the topping, which also helps hold the pyramid together. Martha Stewart has a fairly easy recipe - but beware! Even if The Great Martha says to let it cook on high heat for 7-8 minutes, *your* stove might only require 4-4.5 minutes!!! I'm not sayin' she's wrong, I'm just sayin' my stove must be different! After burning the first two batches of sugar, I successfully caramelized 3 cups of sugar with 1/4 cup of water and a lemon squirt! Yesssss! Mix all the ingredients in a heavy bottomed saucepan, heat up to "high heat," and cook until the sugar around the side of the pan starts to brown, and then you take it off the heat and let it sit until thickened to a good drizzling consistency. It still continues to cook when it comes off the heat, so really, you take it off *as soon* as the edges start to get caramel colored!

Then you drizzle the pyramid of cream puffs with the caramel syrup using a metal spoon, and it quickly hardens, holding it all together and tasting/looking loverly to boot!

All-in-all, mistakes and additional batches included, this project took me about 3 hours to complete. I think I could easily shave off maybe half an hour, but really, since there's cooling to be done you should expect to be able to do this in no less than 2 hours, pretty much ever.

The finished photos will be in the next post!