Ramekin Cupcakes
Sometimes I have really good ideas that the internet hasn’t already thought of five thousand times before. Hopefully ramekin cupcakes are one of them. Okay, so people have totally baked cake batter in ramekins before, but piping on frosting and treating the ramekin as a cupcake “wrapper” isn’t all over food blogs…yet.
I had some time to kill last week and ended up perusing the baking section at a store where I found a bunch of blue ramekins on sale for 88 cents. I immediately envisioned a cupcake baked into the ramekin topped with swirls of frosting, sprinkles, and a cherry on top. I put every one on the shelf into my basket and headed to checkout.
I filled each ramekin (thoroughly lubed up with Earth Balance or vegetable oil) halfway with root beer oatmeal stout cupcake batter. Four inch ramekins took 24-25 minutes to bake, while the slightly larger five inch ramekins took about 28 minutes. Depending on your cupcake batter, your baking times should be similar. I got three “cupcakes”: one four inch ramekin and two five inch.
After the ramekins have cool off, top with whipped cream or buttercream frosting. If you pipe out half the pastry bag onto one cupcake, your cake is going to be drowning in frosting and end up way too sugary. Instead, think about height rather than mass of frosting when you start piping, and supplement the cupcakes with other garnishes and decoration. Here, I used a thin layer of buttercream, a swirl of coconut whipped cream, root beer syrup, a chocolate dipped strawberry, straws, and a chocolate decoration.
Chocolate drizzle decorations are a great way to add height and a posh look to your desserts. Make the chocolate by melting chocolate chips in a glass bowl (maybe with a teensy bit of vegetable shortening if it won’t smooth out) and pouring the melted chocolate into a ziploc bag. Cut off a bit of one of the corners and drizzle out your design on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Let the chocolate harden at room temperature. If you stick it in the freezer right away, your chocolate will not temper and end up going into shock and melt when you remove it from the freezer and attempt to peel it off the baking sheet. Or end up melting after you stick it into your cupcake. Once the chocolate hardens, remove it from the sheet and stick it into your cupcake as decoration. I brushed my chocolate drizzles with gold luster dust to add shine and color right before carefully peeling them off the sheet.
These ramekin cupcakes would be great for gift-giving, or an alternative to a birthday cake . Buy a few cheap ramekins, bake them into cupcakes, tie a ribbon around the ramekin, and gift them to a lucky recipient! That person is bound to feel special because cupcakes imply single serving, even if they are giant. After single-handedly finishing off the cupcake in one sitting, they get to keep the ramekin and think about what a nice thoughtful person you are every time they use it from then on.
Perhaps the single-serving quality of cupcakes is a curse and a blessing in this application because the amount of batter each ramekin holds is the equivalent of 3-4 cupcakes. Share with a friend if you must, but of course there is nothing shameful in downing multiple cupcakes in one go!
Chocolate Stout ‘cakes
I was perusing the shelves of Whole Foods on a recent shopping trip, searching for ingredients, flavors, and beverages to translate into dessert. I tracked down a bottle of chocolate stout hiding in the corner of the cooler and immediately, a few ideas crossed through my mind. I checked the vegan-friendliness of my finding (Young’s Chocolate Stout), and headed to check out.
Whether you’re looking for another socially acceptable way to drink before noon, or just want to give your brunch a little extra something, coconut chocolate stout pancakes are the way to go. Most of my pancake recipes are built off of my basic recipe, a vegan version of the pancakes I’ve been making since I was a kid, unchanged for the past several years. I supplemented this recipe with chocolate, a few different forms of coconut, and chocolate stout. Coconut and chocolate stout is not the most common combination, but the two flavors go together like PB+J. Google confirmed that I was on to something, because coconut chocolate stout does exist! I haven’t been able to confirm the veganness of any of those stouts, so I guess marrying the flavors in pancake form will have to do for now.
The rest of the bottle went into cupcakes (don’t worry, I got two!). Besides translating s’mores into pies, cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and a myriad of other treats, the flavors and components of the s’more have remained relatively unchanged in the culinary world. Perhaps a bit of peanut butter makes its way into the campfire treat occasionally, but more often than not, we’re dealing purely with marshmallows, chocolate, and graham cracker. I decided to go with a grown-up take on the s’more with this cupcake by infusing the batter with chocolate stout and coconut, then topping it with buttercream, marshmallows (toasted, of course!), and a homemade toasted coconut graham cracker cut into the shape of a heart.
I declare the chocolate stout experiments a success. The creaminess of the stout makes for a wonderful rich flavor that pairs well with other chocolate elements, and provides a bit of leavening in a cake. I’m hooked! Earlier today I was baking with oatmeal stout. What are your favorite ways to incorporate chocolate stout or other beers in baked goods or cooking?
Red Wine Truffles, Valentine’s Day Musings, and THE RECIPE
Valentine’s Day was just another normal day for me, but with some truffles that boast the classic combination of chocolate and red wine. After a day of essay writing and poetry about how I’m going to live alone with 17 pets for the rest of my life (it was a homework assignment, I swear!), I left the house just once to represent the take out bag toting population of February 14th. Rest assured, I returned to the comfort of my couch to indulge in some Pad Thai, watch Veronica Mars season 2, and listen to my upstairs neighbor sing badly. So badly. Hold the red wine though. I was a little disillusioned because the previous night I learned that I’m ace at cleaning Cabernet out of carpet. It was really just all the magic of Googling “how to clean red wine out of carpet” (also does wonders for coffee). I’m avoiding wine for a while though because the glass in the photo below decided to slip out of my hand and shatter in the kitchen sink as I was cleaning up after this shoot. Sticking to neutral colored beverages seems to be a better plan from now on.
Because red wine truffles are the breakfast of champions, I brought some to my 8am class today to share and a whole host of ball jokes ensued. I finished rolling the rest tonight and set them up on a cute little cherry plate with some pink and red hearts I cut out of paper and a glass of wine I will later accidentally shatter in the sink. Ta-da!
The chocolate flavor is balanced by just the right amount of wine flavor and creaminess from the margarine.
I’m leaving you guys with the recipe because this is what you need to make when you want some Merlot chocolatey balls ASAP. It gets a little messy, but rolling truffles in cocoa is WAY easier than making the chocolate dipped-variety. Cocoa is a very smooth complement to the filling and cuts the sweetness of the chocolate a bit, for when chocolate on chocolate sounds like a bit too much. The recipe directions are quite long, but they’re just thorough! The most time consuming part of the truffle making process is rolling them into balls.
Red Wine Chocolate Truffles
Makes 15-20, depending on size
2 cups chocolate chips
½ cup wine
2 tablespoons soy milk
¼ cup margarine
2 bowls: one for the ingredients and one for a water and ice bath
Cocoa powder for rolling
Melt the chocolate, wine, and soy milk together, then pour into the first bowl. Stir until completely smooth then set aside to cool off. It doesn’t need to be cool, as it needs to be whipped up when still liquid-y, but too warm will melt the ice and make the process take longer than necessary, with unnecessary breaks and refilling the ice bath.
Fill the other bowl up with ice and water. 7-8 cubes will do. As for the water, you don’t want so much that it spills over the side when you place the other bowl in the water, but too little will not cover the entire surface of the bowl where the chocolate is and it will whip unevenly. Try putting the other bowl in the bath and adjust the water level as necessary.
Place the bowl filled with the melted chocolate into the ice bath. Using electric beaters on high speed (but not the highest. slightly less than the most powerful setting is perfect), start whipping up the chocolate evenly around the bowl. Add the margarine and continue whipping. You will see bubbles forming everywhere and the chocolate mixture will start to thicken up to the consistency of heavy cream after a few minutes. Continue whipping until the consistency becomes very thick. Now STOP. Over whipping could cause the filling to become soft and collapse, or become grainy.
Place the bowl in the refrigerator and let chill and thicken. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment or a silicon mat and pour some cocoa powder into a shallow bowl. Remove the mixture from the refrigerator and begin rolling. Using a small cookie scoop, make balls that are about an inch in diameter, then roll in the cocoa powder and place on the baking sheet. If the truffles are coming out a wonky shape or you don’t have a cookie scoop and you must use your palms, make sure they are a little wet so that your hands won’t be covered in chocolate-y goo when the balls make contact with the heat of your palms. Place the tray of rolled truffles in the refrigerator for at least one hour, then eat! Keep stored in refrigerator in an airtight container. They will last at least a few weeks before they start to taste funky.
Hazelnuts
Hazelnuts. AKA filberts, the base of (vegan) Nutella, and a very delicious flavor to add in coffee. I’d known them as filberts for a long while because I grew up cracking the nuts out of their shell, along with almonds and walnuts, and eating them plain. Then I went vegan and really became passionate about baking and found out, filberts and hazelnuts: totally the same thing! I brought home some hazelnuts and got my hands on a bottle of fancy hazelnut coffee syrup, then got to work in the kitchen and baked up a few distinctly different treats.
For a hazelnutty brunch, I have Hazelnut Black Tea Pear Muffins which, I promise, are far less weird than they sound. Adding the black tea was on a total whim. I was so focused on making pear hazelnut muffins that I completely forgot…drink theme! It would be quite a stretch to say chopped pears and toasted hazelnuts were a part of any drink, so I had to think quick. Hazelnut pear already had this hearty tea shop vibe going on, so the answer was clear. Black tea ended up adding a certain something to the mix! These muffins are great for breakfast, and a little bit more substantial than a cupcake. The pear flavor complements the nuttiness of the hazelnuts and the black tea gives it a complex earthiness. A thin drizzle of dark and white chocolate completes the muffin tops. I’ve been really into adding tea to baked goods by grinding the contents of a tea bag (or loose tea) and adding a small spoonful. This works best with black tea, as in chai cookies.
When I first made these, they were kind of dense. Then on a completely separate wavelength of thoughts, I realized I never put any oil in them, or even took the bottle of canola oil out of the pantry. Shortly after, I put two and two together and facepalmed a little. See, unless I meticulously measure out all my ingredients, these mistakes just happen sometimes all the time. But even so, they turned out yummy!
These are Hazelnut Latte Cupcakes, a recipe by Carla Kelly of Quick and Easy Vegan Bake Sale. I was talking with Carla about my upcoming project and she sent this recipe my way! The cake is infused with coffee, hazelnut syrup, and toasted hazelnut meal (homemade with a food processor), then topped with a fluffy buttercream. I added some of the syrup to the frosting for a touch of flavor.
Hazelnut Salted Caramel Cake. This is basically just my salted caramel cupcakes made in cake pans, with a few generous glugs of hazelnut syrup in both the batter and frosting. Friends and family love the salted caramel cupcakes, so the cake version is one of my go-to cake recipes for birthdays. The hazelnuts are a great addition to the sweet and salty combination. This cake was for my mom’s birthday last month!
There you have it! Three ways to use hazelnuts. Getting the most out of one ingredient is a great strategy to force yourself to be creative in the kitchen and is also quite cost effective. You end up with a few new recipes out of the deal too! What are your favorite ingredients to bake up several different ways? I’m pondering my next move!
Holiday baking!
December was quite a busy month and I didn’t get to bake as much as I would have liked, but I did make some satisfying seasonal treats!
Winter 2011 brought so many different options of nog from Earth Balance, So Delicious, Silk, Rice Dream, and Vitasoy, so it was no surprise that nog taste challenges were all over vegan blogs. Everyone named their favorites, tested which variety tastes best served with rum, and professed excitement that there was nog made with milk other than soy, like rice and coconut.
With all these nogs circulating vegan blogs and drink-themed desserts in mind, I wanted to try it out in some baked goods. Cupcakes were the obvious choice, so I wanted to try out something a little adventurous (even though I did end up making cupcakes too)…truffles! Some googling revealed the truffle idea has been done a few times, but I wanted to find the best formula and make it vegan. I ended up with a white chocolate truffle full of rum flavor and freshly grated nutmeg, dipped in semisweet chocolate.
And I had to make some cupcakes too, so these are chocolate nog cupcakes with rumnog buttercream, sparkly edible glitter, and a mini candy cane.
Peppermint bark. Super easy to make! A layer of semisweet chocolate with a bit of peppermint extract topped with a layer of white chocolate and crushed candy canes.
I also made peppermint candy cane chocolate chip cookies, which ends up happening pretty much every year.
The nog truffles and cupcakes, as well as some peppermint chocolate cream bars, went to December Milwaukee Vegan Bake Sale!
A Couple Smart Cookies GF cookies review
I’m not gluten-free, nor have I delved deeply into gluten-free baking. All those different flours and combinations of grains to deliver the best texture, and xanthan gum…what does it do and why does it cost $14?! Also, some people also have the misconception that veganism is synonymous with gluten-free. There’s plenty of foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that are easily made gluten-free and many candies are naturally free of gluten, but cakes, pastries, cookies, bread, and pies are a little more difficult. I’m not one to reject the unfamiliar, and always willing to learn more about different foods, especially when it’s related to baking. I haven’t been too impressed with the packaged gluten-free cookies I’ve tried before, so I want to taste test as much as possible!
So a little while ago, A Couple Smart Cookies sent me samples of their product to try. Little gluten-free cookie bites in three flavors: Fudge Squared, Peanut Butter <3's Chocolate Chip, and Pumpkin Dates Cherry. Hello, cute names!
I noticed that Vegansaurus reviewed these cookies last year as well and upon trying them, I had a lot of the same feelings. First up, the Pumpkin Dates Cherry cookies. The sweet ginger pumpkin flavor combined nicely with the tart cherries studded throughout. The texture really secured these as my favorite because they were soft and fluffy and I wasn’t thinking about how they were gluten-free. Second, the Fudge Squared cookies. Since these cookies are more like fudge bites than full cookies, they’re very rich in chocolatey flavor. Sometimes fudge bites like this can be overwhelmingly rich, but I think these cookies struck a balance with the amount of flavor and richness. The only letdown was a hint of a grittiness from the rice flour. Finally, the peanut butter cookies were so chewy and sweet, kind of in-between cookie and peanut butter caramel candy, and didn’t really do it for me.
You can buy A Couple Smart Cookies at their online shop. Take my word and try out the Pumpkin Dates Cherry, or check out a sample pack and try them for yourself or a gluten-free friend. You can also check them out on Facebook and Twitter!
Apple cider donuts, upcoming events, and activism
Apple cider donuts, quite possibly the most important part of pumpkin and apple picking in the fall. Deep fried, sugary, apple-y goodness in a pastry. Well, I haven’t gone apple or pumpkin picking in years and haven’t had an apple cider donut in at least 8 years (pre-gan), so I’ve been completely missing out. But I’ve made donuts before, so I decided to take on the challenge of making vegan apple cider donuts! After some research, I completely revamped this very poorly written Food Network recipe. See, I have a bad habit of not reading recipe instructions. I just look at the ingredient list and throw the ingredients in a bowl using my best judgment. I definitely should’ve read this recipe more carefully because it does things like combining the cinnamon for the dough and cinnamon sugar coating into one amount, so I put all 2 1/2 teaspoons in the dough right away, which wasn’t supposed to happen. I removed as much cinnamon as I could, but it still was more than the recipe called for. But guess what? I really like cinnamon, and the extra cinnamon in this dough was AWESOME. Joke’s on you, recipe!
This is a variation on the original recipe: apple cider cranberry donut holes, made them as a dessert for Thanksgiving! I blogged the entire feast over on Seitan Beats Your Meat.
Upcoming Events
This Saturday, December 3rd is the 4th bi-annual Milwaukee Vegan Bake Sale and there is still time to sign up to bake! And you can RSVP on Facebook! Give us your money, baked goods, and/or attendance! The proceeds will benefit the Urban Ecology Center and Milwaukee Animal Rescue Center.
Please spread the word! Tweet, Facebook, Google+, and blog about it! Please and thank you!
Not surprisingly, bake sales are my favorite form of activism, hands down. They are a great way to bring a community together, show off your baking skills, make deep-fried sprinkled-coated delicacies in the name of veganism, and raise money for a cause in a positive way. While I truly respect those out protesting and leafletting on the streets, I prefer to take a behind the scenes, non-confrontational approach to activism. Winning over curious omnivores with cupcakes, cookies, donuts, and candy is one of my favorite things to do, so I participate in bake sales whenever possible.
If you’d like to start a bake sale of your own or get involved in food activism, these are a few of my go-to resources: The Vegan Girl’s Guide to Bake Sales by my friend Melisser Elliott, Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale tips, and Let the Donut Do the Talking (pdf), a talk by Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan.
On a similar note, I recently published an article on One Green Planet called Social Media as Positive Activism. Two things inspired me to write this article: I’m sick of seeing pictures of dead, mutilated animals posted on Facebook by vegans and I’m even more sick of charities and fundraisers struggling to meet their goal. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other social media sites can be powerful tools for activists if used properly, so this article is all about using these networks in a positive manner and reviewing all the ways you can contribute to a cause when opening your wallet isn’t an option!
And I also made this picture of Gnocchi pretending to type as the featured image, so I automatically win at life. Or Gnocchi does. Yeah, probably Gnocchi. But anyway, go read my article. Thanks!
Finally, another Milwaukee event. Photographer Jessica Kaminski will be hosting an art sale on Sunday, December 11th and I’ll be baking for it! Check out the Facebook event here. Come buy some prints and other gifts, and sample baked goods!
Halloween Birthday Cake
A couple weeks ago on Twitter I asked what 17 year old boys like because I was going to make a birthday cake for my brother. Within minutes, the general consensus was BOOBS. While this clearly was the way to go, I wasn’t ready to make a boob cake.
The search went on for a couple days and I finally decided on a cake. His birthday is the day after Halloween and he loves the movies, so a Michael Myers cake it was!
I made the film noir cupcakes and this cake within a few days of each other, so his cake is also pumpkin chocolate chip with sweet cinnamon buttercream.
I was out of red food coloring, so I ended up mixing a rose color with black. Maybe it’s not the same as a true red color, but the pink definitely adds to the gruesome nature of the cake.
Now I’m totally obsessed with painting fondant and cakes, so I ordered a set of food coloring, plus some other colors I wanted to try out, edible glitter, and more fondant. I excitedly found the box waiting for me outside my door over the weekend and can’t wait to make more cakes!
Film Noir Cupcakes
Although Vegan MoFo is over and it was quite a lot of work, I really miss devoting so much time every day to recipe creation, brainstorming blog posts, doing interviews, and actually blogging! Plus reading about what everyone else was doing in their kitchen. MoFo also forced me to use Google Reader, if only to keep up with the hundreds of posts published everyday throughout the month. I quickly realized how intuitive Reader is, and how many blogs I could follow without having to visit them all separately, and now I’m using it full-time.
Looking beyond the grief-stricken lament of Vegan MoFo’s completion, I achieved my goals! The final interviews on Seitan Beats Your Meat were posted days before the deadline and the last post on here made it to a published status while the clock was teetering between 11:59pm and 12am on the first of November. That last post was a sneak peek into today’s post, Film Noir cakes and food coloring paintings!
This semester, I am taking a Film Noir-inspired photography class and one of the major events of the semester was an on-location photoshoot organized by the class. 1940s props and clothing, femme fatales, and dramatic lighting consumed the carefully crafted set. Off-set required just as much planning and organization with the inventory of vintage clothing, props, hair and makeup, model seeking, and food. The necessity of catering obviously made my ears perk up more than usual because I love any opportunity to create thematic baked goods. A thing that I can do! Film Noir? Lustre dust, glitter, food coloring as dark as my soul, fake blood!
I decided to take a more classic approach and paint mini portraits of film noir characters with black food coloring on fondant disks, as well as film negatives and stripes to allude to Venetian blinds. It’s Double Indemnity in cupcake form.
There was totally gold lustre dust to make the mini starlets glitter. The cupcakes were pumpkin chocolate chip (the Vegan Cupcakes recipe) with cinnamon buttercream. I could say the alluring shiny buttercream and sweet pumpkin cake were the façade of a deeper chocolate-studded spicy flavor, much like a manipulative femme fatale seduction of deliciousness, but I’m not gonna lie. I just really like pumpkin cupcakes.
Now I want to paint everything with food coloring onto fondant. I might need to start making up holidays to justify my rampant extraneous cake baking.
MoFo #20: Noir cupcakes sneak peek
I’m catering a photoshoot for my Film Noir class this Thursday and decided to make Noir-inspired cupcakes, so I’m posting a sneak peek of the practicing today. Even if I don’t get to draw and paint as much as I’d like to nowadays (it’s been, like, over a year!), I can pretend I’m painting with food coloring! So here is Barbara Stanwyck’s character in Double Indemnity, 1×1-inch fondant disc version. It’s so nervewrecking painting portraits so tiny with food coloring! Now I’m going to do a billion more of these and I’m assuming my painting skills will return as I go along!
I’ll post a full report later this week after they’re completed and photographed! Happy Halloween and last day of MoFo, everyone! I did it! With about 5 seconds to spare!
