Creme Brulee Cupcakes

My little sister Isabellah's signature cupcake is the "Churro Cupcake." It's basically some kind of cinnamon and sugar concoction that tastes like heaven and everyone raves about. Among the family and friends that have been on the receiving end of our creations, Churro Cupcakes are always some of the highest rated.

Until now.

I may have found something that rivals her Churro Cupcake. Behold...the Creme Brulee Cupcake.

I can thank my hair dresser for this one. We have a fair trade system (not actually that fair at all) between us - she does my hair/and or nails, I make her whatever she wants. I obviously get the better end of the stick, but she seems to think that she gets the best deal so we'll leave it at that. This time around her request was either cupcakes or creme brulee, whichever I felt like making. Knowing that Pinterest has a recipe for virtually anything I type in the search bar, I looked up Creme Brulee Cupcakes and sure enough, there it was. The recipe I used came from here. I had a feeling these were going to be good based on the recipe reviews, but I wasn't sure how good.

Lets start with the cake, this part was easy.

Pretty regular cake ingredients, with the addition of a few tablespoons of caramel syrup. This made the cake a little dulce de leche-esque. Once it was baked it actually tasted a lot like a sugar cookie.

Next step was to hollow out the insides to make room for a ridiculously good cream filling.

Most cupcakes that have a filling usually have a small portion of the cake removed and just a bit of the filling squeezed in there. Since there wasn't going to be a frosting on top of the cupcake I didn't hold back on the size of hole I carved out.

Figuring out how to get the innards out in a clean way actually turned into somewhat of a science project. Good thing I have these giant kitchen tweezers to help me. And for anyone that needs to do this, icing tips were a huge help. If you press it (bigger end down) into the middle of the cupcake and twist it around when you pull it out the cake should stick inside of the tip and leave you with a nice hole. However, if it doesn't stick, this is where the kitchen tweezers were handy.

 

All of my cakes hollowed out and ready for the cream filling. And this is where I got frustrated. The filling is a Swiss meringue buttercream. In short, you just make a meringue with brown sugar instead of white, and then switch your mixer to the paddle attachment and add tons of butter and beat it until it turns into a frosting. Sounds easy enough. Let me tell you, it wasn't.  

First, I realized that I was out of butter. I had margarine but that wasn't going to cut it. It's called buttercream for a reason. So I ran to Safeway and grabbed some butter. Then, I made the mistake of separating all of my eggs into one big bowl. I should have done them one at a time in a smaller bowl and then poured them into the bigger bowl after each one. This is because on my fourth and final egg, the yolk broke, ruining the rest of my egg whites. I tried to salvage it but after I started whipping them in the mixer I realized it just wasn't going to work. Not much room for error when you're making a meringue. It was about this time that I realized I needed more eggs, so back to Safeway I went. This time around I didn't make the same mistake with the egg separating and I was glad about that since I ended up breaking a couple more yolks.

I got my whites prepared and pasteurized them with the sugar in the double boiler and threw them in the mixer. This time I had perfection. 

As you can see, my egg whites are light, fluffy and sticky. I was so happy that a dozen eggs later I had finally figured it out! Or so I thought...

I added the butter 2 T at a time just like the recipe said and I slowly watched my light fluffy egg whites turn into a deflated wreck. The frosting shrunk to about half the size it was and it appeared chunky and curdled. The butter was room temperature just like it called for and I could not figure out where in the world I had gone wrong. I was just about to scrap this batch and start again before I decided to watch a couple of youtube videos about how to make Swiss meringue buttercream. Yes...they have instructional videos on those kinds of things. I was so happy to hear the lady say "If it starts to look curdled, you're on the right track! Just keep beating it awhile longer and it will come back together." So I gave it a shot, and sure enough, it came back together.

Filled each cupcake to the brim with cream

Topped them with sugar and did some blow torch action

Great success!

I heard from multiple people that these were the best cupcakes they've ever had in their life. And after all the frustrations I went through to get them done I'm glad they turned out to be a crowd pleaser. The good news is, the next time I make them I'll know exactly what not to do. Also, I'm willing to take the Churro Cupcakes on head to head with these bad boys. All blind taste testers are welcome. 

Green, Eggs & Ham

While I am on this whole pie kick I decided to try out something else that I've always loved but never attempted making myself: Quiche. It was never something that intimidated me much, it was just something that I would get around to later. Besides, most people put some kind of stigma on quiche. Its like people either love it or they've never tried it...because 'real men don't eat quiche'. Kyle being one of those real men, that had never tried it but didn't hesitate to tell me how gross it was when I said that's what I was making for dinner. After informing him what I was going to put into it though, he agreed to give it a shot. I was going to go with a plain broccoli cheese quiche but then I found a good chunk of ham in the fridge that needed to be used up so I decided to chop that up and throw it in too.

Lets start with the crust:

Same recipe as last time, the only difference is that I pricked it a bunch of times with a fork and baked it and cooled it before I filled it to avoid a soggy crust. Apparently this process is called blind baking. I was supposed to use pie weights so that the crust didn't shrink, but I don't have any, and I didn't have any dried beans to use as a substitute. Some other suggestions included coins or heavy metal screws and washers...but I thought that would be weird, so I opted not to have any weights on it at all. They say that if you put enough holes in it with the fork then it won't shrink much, so I took my chances and it turned out just fine. I baked it for about 15 minutes at 400 degrees then let it cool completely before filling it.

The filling was a lot easier than I expected. 3 eggs, 3/4 C milk and 1/4 C half and half, (because that's all I had) salt and pepper. I read something that suggested pressing the grated cheese into the bottom of the crust rather than mixing it up with the filling because they say that's another way to avoid a soggy crust. It creates a little bit of a raincoat. So i pressed about 3/4 C grated sharp cheddar cheese into the bottom, emptied a bowl of chopped steamed broccoli and diced ham into the pan and then covered it with the egg mixture. Super easy.

I didn't get any pictures of this part of the process though because I was on the phone, which is also my camera.

I lowered the oven temperature to 375 and baked it for about 40 minutes. They say that the very center should be a little jiggly when you pull it out and that will carry-over cook while you let it cool. I wasn't sure just how jiggly it was supposed to be, so I erred on the side of less jiggly because no one wants to eat a runny-egged quiche, especially when I am trying to make a good first impression with it.

  

Here it is fresh out of the oven. I let it sit for about 20 minutes before slicing into it, but at this point I thought it looked pretty good. 

And here we have the finished product: green, eggs and ham. Its basically an omelet encased in a pie crust, I don't know whats not to like. Kyle even ate all of his and said it was pretty good, so there you have it, real men do eat quiche.

Wandering to Seattle

I took my name 'Wandering Cook' a bit literally this past week and wandered up to visit my older sister Rebekah in Seattle. She needed a ride back up there after Christmas, so I agreed to it as long as I could stay at her place for a few days rather than driving straight there and straight back. (I have the freedom to do those kinds of things now that I have a real grown up job complete with Winter Break.) She would be working during the majority of every day that I would be up there so I would need to find something to keep myself occupied. She just moved very close to downtown so the first day I was there was spent wandering around the city in and out of stores and coffee shops until my legs decided they'd had enough walking. The next day I told her I would make her some dinner that would be ready after she got off work. For Christmas I had received all kinds of new things that my cupboards were lacking, such as a few pie plates, a mini pie mold, a nice bamboo rolling pin, and an awesome silicone pastry mat to roll out pie dough on with measurements printed on it so I can how big of a circle I need to roll out depending on how big my pie pan is. I realize that not everyone  would be as excited to rip the wrapping paper off of a pastry mat on Christmas morning as I was, but anyone that is into baking should definitely own one of these. In lieu of all of my pie baking supplies, we decided chicken pot pie would be a good idea for me to make. We discussed using the mini pie molds, but opted for the 10 inch full pie for the two of us because we knew it wouldn't go uneaten. I learned how to make mini chicken pot pies during "Townie Mom's Pie Class" but had yet to tackle a full sized one. But I figured with my new supplies it would be cake...or pie. (That was a mom joke, but I couldn't resist.)

The downtown city-living was awesome. The views are beautiful, I could walk downtown in 8 minutes, or to Pikes Place in 15, and options for what to eat for lunch are endless. The only downside I could find was the size of the apartment. The kitchen in particular. Here is what I had to work with:

 

Believe it or not, this picture actually makes it look bigger than it actually is. That refrigerator went up to my chin, and to say counter space was lacking was the understatement of the year. You'll also notice no dishwasher, so I was constantly cleaning dishes as I was using them because I had no where else to put them. I made it work though.

I haven't been able to master a pie crust on my own yet. The Thanksgiving apple pie turned out to be somewhat of a disaster that my mom had to come over and fix before I could even roll it out. After that though, I felt pretty confidant that the next one I made would be right since I now knew everything not to do. I used the most basic pie crust recipe in the world (3 C flour, 1 C shortening, 1 t salt and 1 C water). I didn't end up using the full cup of water because I thought the consistency looked about right and I didn't want to over water it, so I wrapped it up and stuck it in the fridge for a few hours while I prepped the filling.

For the filling I did equal parts flour and butter (about a 1/4 C of each) a can of chicken broth, a can of cream of mushroom soup, about 6 yukon gold potatoes diced up, a cup and a half or so of frozen peas and carrots and a whole chicken chopped up. I thought about using a couple of raw chicken breasts and cooking them and following that whole process, but for the same price we could get a whole chicken, already cooked. Considering the kitchen I was using, I thought I deserved to cheat a little on this one aspect.

Here is a snippet into the type of counter space I was working with.

I finished the filling a couple hours before I needed to start baking the pie, so to avoid soggy crust I stuck the filling in a bowl and put that in the fridge along side the pie dough that needed to be rolled out. When the time came, (the time being 11:00 at night after Rebekah was done with work and back home) I started rolling out the pie crust. I was pleasantly surprised with how easily the crust rolled out. It was smooth and elastic and easy to work with. Finally a crust that wasn't crumbling before I even tried to roll it!

Here is the bottom crust rolled out and pressed in the pan. You'll also notice my awesome rolling pin and pastry mat underneath the pie plate. And in case you were wondering where I found the counter space to roll this out, the answer is: I didn't, I cleared off the coffee table in the living room and used that.

Loaded up with the perfect amount of filling

Top crust on - ready to bake!

Finished product

Things were looking and smelling good when it was finished. I wasn't sure how the oven was going to work since it was probably installed in 1954, but I didn't burn the crust or the apartment down so that was a win in my book. We cut into it close to midnight and it turned out even better than I had expected! It came out of the pan cleanly, crust was flaky and the consistency of the filling was spot on. 

Artistic side shot

As an added bonus, I had been busy making a coconut cream pie all day for dessert. It had a coconut gingersnap crust, vanilla coconut custard filling and topped with whipped cream and toasted coconut. Here it is looking like George Washington during the whipped cream process:

We did end up just about finishing both pies by the time I left a few days later, and I learned a couple of things during this trip. One, I can make pie crust by myself now, and two, I appreciate the room in my kitchen so much more after cooking in that pin hole of a kitchen.

Edrie

It's a known fact that every little girl dreams about their wedding day. Their Prince Charming, the dress they will wear, the colors that will be chosen and the flowers that will be held. It is perhaps a lesser known fact however that little girls also dream of the day they get their very own KitchenAid Mixer. For as many years as I can remember, I have theorized that a kitchen isn't complete until it has a KitchenAid sitting atop the counter. I am happy to report that as of this week, my kitchen is complete - and it was Kyle (my very own Prince Charming) that made this happen as a late birthday/early Christmas present.

It was the day after I received this gift, this passed week, that my grandma Dorene lost her battle with cancer. Up until her final days she was one of my blog's biggest fans. She was one of the first ones I sent the web address to, and she was instrumental in encouraging me to make it public to share with the rest of the world. She really enjoyed reading it, and I will truly miss sending her the link each time I write a new post and waiting for feedback via email or phone call.

Now I don't know if this is just something my family does, or if it is more common than I may think, but we like to name our mixers, just as young boys name their first cars. The mixer is such an important part of the kitchen, it just deserves to have a name. I saw it only fitting that in honor of my grandma, my mixer be named after her. Her full name was Edrie Dorene McNulty. She hated the name Edrie and chose to go by Dorene, but I actually like the name Edrie, and it fits my mixer a little better than Dorene does. Now everything I make will have a piece of her baked into it. She has always supported my cooking, and though she has passed, I will be reminded of her support forevermore.

Grandma in the kitchen

Edrie in the kitchen

Butternut Squash Cream Sauce

I guess its been long enough, its time for me to post again. I actually really like this whole blog thing because unlike school, I can write when I feel like it without being docked points for grammatical issues...or turning it in late. I really haven't made anything this passed month that was blog worthy anyway besides the tiny pumpkin pies, which I will still get around to writing at some point. I have been planning this meal for over a month now but I needed to find the right audience to make it for. Not something I would want to make for myself, not something Kyle would have been interested in, and not something my sister wanted last time she was home. So when one of my friends, who isn't too picky (when it comes to vegetables) wanted to do dinner, I knew this would be a good opportunity. I also invited my mom, knowing that she would appreciate just about anything I made.

Last month while wandering around at World Market I came across this:

Little pastas in the shape of pumpkins and leaves! Since its no ordinary pasta. it had to be paired with an un-ordinary sauce. Spaghetti or alfredo sauce just wasn't going to get the job done. I got to thinking, and thought that a butternut squash cream sauce just might do the trick. Squash and fall just go together so this seemed like the perfect idea for my fall harvest pasta.  I've never really had anything like that, but I figured someone had to of tried it before and there must be a recipe somewhere on the internet. Sure enough, I googled it and came up with about 2,500 different options. They didn't all seem to be quite what I was looking for though, so I settled on one that was adapted from a pumpkin cream sauce recipe by Rachel Ray. The adapted recipe can be found here.

First thing was first: slice the squash in half lengthwise and scoop out the inside. Seemed easy enough. However, after a good 10 minutes of battling with it, I ended up with a semi-mutilated squash and a sore wrist. I literally had an easier time carving Professor Snape in my pumpkin with a tiny knife.

Not the cleanest cut, but it got the job done

Next step was to place both halves cut side down on a roasting pan and slap them in the oven for 45 minutes at 400 degrees. I'm not exactly sure what a roasting pan is, so I got out a cookie sheet, put some foil down on it and called it a roasting pan. After it was done I was happy to find a couple of soft squash pieces that didn't stick to the foil and scooped extremely easily out of the shell. I scooped them into a bowl and pureed them with an immersion blender. My mom, who was at my house by this time insisted that an immersion blender probably wasn't the right tool to use, but I did it anyway, and it turned out just fine...

Pureed version of squash.

 I like squash, so I liked the taste and texture of it at this point. It was a lot like baby food, which is apparently something I like. Next, saute an onion over medium heat with a couple tablespoons of butter, salt and pepper. Once the onion is cooked add the squash and a cup of half and half. That will start to boil and then add a half of a cup of parmesan cheese. At this point I also added a teaspoon or two of dried sage.

Don't you just want to eat that by the spoonful?

Once the cheese melts, its done! Add your cooked pasta to the pot and combine them. And don't forget extra cheese on the side.

Finished product

The bread that I fixed was homemade as well, but I'll save that for another posting. And just as I suspected, I picked the right crowd to serve this to. I had three empty plates to clean after dinner, a full stomach and new recipe to add to my repertoire. 

Gang Up Volume 2

I wanted to get this published earlier in the week but life got in the way and I haven't had much of a chance to sit down and write until now. After serving my gang-up dish last Monday, I wanted to follow up with the dish my mom came up with for anyone who in interested. Besides, she gets mentioned enough throughout my posts I figured it was time for her to be in the spotlight. Her face when I put my plate down in front of her on Monday looked slightly shocked. She told me it was eerily similar to what she had planned but wouldn't tell me what it was. So on Tuesday night, I sat down and this is what wound up in front of me...

I know it doesn't really look anything like mine, but the concept is similar. Mashed potatoes with the beef and sauce served over the top and bread on the side. The difference is, I made a joke about my bread being made out of barley and potatoes and hers really was. I guess as far as competition goes, she has a one-up on me there. She called this dish "Beef Ragout with Mashed Root Vegetables & Potato Barley Flatbread" Not sure what Ragout directly translates to, but I'm going to guess "stewed beef in a chunky tomato sauce." She used all 10 ingredients and added an onion and an egg. The onion was used in the mashed potato mix-up. It was mashed potatoes and turnips with caramelized onion. The addition of the onion was a good choice - these were good. The pumpkin went into her Ragout, but I don't know any of the specific details on how this was put together. All I know is that it was put together well. The flat bread was an interesting addition to the meal. It tasted a little bit like a cream of wheat cracker if you can imagine that. The fact of the matter is, it was made using only the ingredients allowed so that in itself is impressive to me. She ate more of the flat bread the next morning toasted with jam. So it looks like she got a couple of meals out of this. So versatile!

Normally we make a competition out of this complete with judges and scoring sheets but we didn't go to that trouble time around. My brother ate mine but I don't think he had a chance to taste hers. So just because she made homemade barley potato bread and used a fancy French title AND got breakfast out of it the next morning, I'm going to go ahead and say its still up in the air as to who won this one.

Her friend Deb, who put this whole thing together wrote up a blog presenting all of the final results. It's kind of interesting to see what everyone was able to come up with using the same ingredients. If you are interested, check that out here! Gang-Up Challenge Results

Gang Up Challange

Something that my mom, sister and I have been involved in throughout the last couple of years is what's called the "Gang-Up Challenge." It started on Allrecipes, where my mom and many of her proclaimed "AR friends," as well as anyone else on the website who wanted to participate would partake in a friendly cooking competition. I don't think it was meant to be a competition at all, but between the three of us we always made it that way. The premise of the competition is that 10 random ingredients are suggested by those who decide to participate. Once the ingredients have all been decided on participants must make a dish (or a meal) containing all 10 ingredients. 2 changes may be made (omitting 2 ingredients, adding 2 ingredients or omitting 1 and adding 1.) Water, salt and pepper are always freebies. Long story short, this competition doesn't take place on Allrecipes any longer, but my mom and her friends wanted to keep the tradition going amongst themselves so they decided to set one up for the month of October, and of course I wanted to play along.

The list of ingredients that was decided on is as follows:
Beef (any cut)
Potatoes
Pumpkin (my contribution)
Tomatoes
Red Wine
Beef Stock
Sage
Oil (olive or canola)
Barley
Turnips

This time around was obviously no "Chopped" competition, all of the ingredients are pretty coherent. No marshmallow cream or Lucky Charms to throw me for a loop. The set up was there for me to make some kind of Beef Barley Stew, but I wanted to try and come up with something slightly different. I had to work all day today so I decided to call upon my crock pot to get the job done for me. I omitted the barley and added butter. And my final product was...

12 Hour Beef and Turnip Roast with Pumpkin Mashed Potatoes 

...or "Fall on a plate" for short. The fact that it literally cooked for 12 straight hours deserved a mention in the title.

You'll notice the bread in the background. No I didn't bake that out of barley and potatoes. Call me a cheater, but I just thought bread would be a nice addition to the meal. Here is how I made it:

Around 6 o'clock this morning I put most of it together before I went to work. First thing I did was get out a pan and sear all of the sides of my roast in olive oil. I ended up using a chuck cross rib roast (or something to that effect) Normally I coat the roast in flour before doing this but flour wasn't one of my ingredients. This makes a crust on the meat and seals in all of its juices...from what I hear. Then I stuck it in the crock pot and added 3 C of water, 2 t beef stock, half a can of diced tomatoes, about 3/4 C red wine, salt, pepper, and sage. I set it to cook on low and went to work. When I got home I started my potatoes. Just peel them, dice them up and boil them in a pot of salt water. When They were fork tender I drained them, added a can of pure pumpkin (not the huge can, just the normal size one) and a half a stick of butter. Then used my mixer to whip them up. These actually turned out as good as I had hoped they would. I'm glad I thought to do this, because I'd like to make them again. Around an an hour and a half before serving I added the turnips to the crock pot. I've never cooked with turnips before, and frankly I didn't know how to handle them or what they even taste like. I peeled them and used my mandolin to slice them up thinly and threw them in the pot. They also came out as good as I had hoped...kind of had a carrot taste to them. My mom came over for dinner at 6 and I put it all together on the plate. I was pleasantly surprised with how well everything turned out. If this meal isn't the epitome of Fall on a plate then I don't know what is. My mom will serve hers tomorrow night and hopefully it isn't exactly the same as mine. Otherwise that will pretty much nullify all the creativity that I thought was using.