Notes from the field: Cupcake Secrets

(Ferraro Rocher Cupcakes, March 2011) 

Baking I think in many ways is a personal journey.  I was born into a family that bakes, and it's really been part of who I am for my entire life.  I could wax poetic for days about this, but what I'd really like to do is answer a few questions that have come in from you over the past few weeks, mostly surrounding being a new baker, tips and tricks, and recipes.

While I'm definitely not an expert, I have accumulated a few bits for new cupcake makers and bakers alike.  So let's start at the very beginning...

• Perfect the basics. Find good vanilla and chocolate recipes. Make them well with consistency.  Memorize them.  Many of your other recipes will either branch off from or contain one of these bases, so getting them down pat is a very good place to start. 
• Learn to read your batter and frosting. Does this sound nutty?  Perhaps.  But this is the school of thought that I come from.  Baking is, indeed, very much science. Unlike cooking, if your measurements are off, the end result is not necessarily salvageable.  That being said, the Italian in me knows that a cup of flour is about the size of my fist, and a pinch of salt is more or less a quarter teaspoon.  I've gotten to the point where I rarely measure ingredients for my buttercreams.  I know when the consistency is off, when I need more milk and when it's sturdy enough to hold a chocolate dip or get piped into ruffles.  This also takes me to the next two points.
  
• Cream the butter and sugar.  No, really. Whip it good.  And do it for at least three minutes. This process of incorporating sugar and butter exists because it brings air to your base, which helps cakes rise to a light texture once in the oven.  If you don't eat rocks, don't bake rocks.
• Overbeating is the enemy. Just as crucial as creaming in the beginning is not overbeating during the flour incorporation at the end of most general cupcake recipes.  Overbeating is like the un-athletic kid who gets picked last in gym class dodgeball.  It's great that he's is so enthusiastic, but he always gets hit first. Buzzkill. Just say no to overbeating by sifting your flour prior and never underestimating a proper fold-in technique.  I prefer to mix a little and finish by gently folding the last of the flour in with a spatula or wooden spoon at the end.
• Recipes are everywhere.  Ok, well, kind of.  Clearly the best place to find basic recipes is the internet.  Food Network and Martha Stewart are great places for novice and seasoned bakers alike.  Many cupcakeries have cookbooks or publish their recipes too.  But what I mean by recipes being everywhere is that the better you can learn how to make a basic cupcake, the more likely you are to be able to modify it into your own recipe. 
• Know thy oven. I've learned through the power vested in me by moving every year since college that no two ovens are the same.  What might rise well in a brand new convection might fall flat in a one pan oven from the fifties. So the sooner you learn to understand your oven, the more readily you will be able to alter your own recipes and find success with what the oven demands of you.    
  
• Art is art is art.  Have you seen the video where no New Yorker identifies "art" in the same three words?  This is how I feel about baking.  To me, it's art, and it's personal.  It is art when I have an idea and turn it into something.  It is art when I find myself covered in flour and frustrated mid-process ("ah!" I think, "this is what a pissed off Picasso must have felt like!" Riiiighhhhht.) And it is definitely art when juxtaposed with the fact that I spend my days reading the minds of the people running financial institutions in New York. So above all, and I stress this, own your creativity.  If your purple frosting actually looks brown, then add some more vanilla because that's brown too!  If you ate a really good ice cream sundae and want to recreate it, then get the whip cream and sprinkles ready (and add a cone).  AND if you want to put bacon and eggs on a pancake cupcake, then do it, dammit.     
• Go forth and bake!

Notes from the Field: Little Bunny Foo Foo

I'd like to think that when I get in the kitchen, I have the best intentions.  But to be honest, every time the oven turns on, the motive is different.  On the best days, I bake to bring the brush to canvas, to see what happens when the flavors, the colors and the stories that have been brewing go from head to hands to reality.  At other times I bake to order, which, is a lovely routine that requires little thought and a lot of heart, because tell me, who sends cupcakes out the door without heart?  

But quite frequently, there is another reason I do it.  I bake to forget the hours before the apron was tied on, the candle was lit and the music was turned low.  This kind of baking typically yields one of two results: that which is completely brilliant and that which turns totally disastrous. 

Tonight I met that second result.  Things started off well enough, as many adventures with Easter candy generally do.  There was vanilla and there was food coloring.  The butter was beat just right and the piping was lovely.  But then, well then things ended not so wonderfully, as, ironically, many adventures with Easter candy also tend to do.

There was a chocolate dip, there was a hammer (!), and there was a whirlwind that looked like Little Bunny Foo Foo went on a straight up bippity-bopping bender all over the damn forest, trashing cupcakes, hotel rooms and more.  And the Good Fairy was nowhere to be seen.

Luckily in every disaster there is, of course, a lesson.

In Italy, there is a cookie called Brutti ma Buoni.  The "ugly but goods."   This name has always made sense to me for many reasons, not excluding the fact that those biscotti and a cup of coffee just so happen to be holy matrimony in a breakfast-in-bed treat.  

I think that what you learn traveling through the creative process is that, just like in life, the key to growth is to stop taking the disasters so seriously.  Or to look at them not as failures but as beautiful messes that took you from point A to point B...even if point B finds you sitting on the kitchen floor with a half-spilled glass of wine, laughing through tears as some horribly moody old John Lee Hooker song plays in the living room and you are faced with the ugliest cupcakes you have ever seen.  

Which is where I was tonight, when my thoughts and imagination exploded into something not-so-pretty, but hell, deliriously delicious and worthwhile in its own right.  

Notes from the Field: A Return, of sorts...

Just a little hello! and how are you? as the cupcake hiatus is going along swimmingly. Spring has arrived in New York City, and there has been more time than ever to re-focus, then focus again and really settle in.  Here are a few shots from when I waded back into the baking pool this past sunny weekend.  

 

Plain old fashioned double vanilla bean cupcakes.

Seems I kept my floaties on when it came to creativity this round.  But you know, I'm quite alright with that. Sometimes it's the simplest route that just keeps you afloat.

Cupcake Hiatus.

"Worth: Purpose"

This little cupcake needs a break and a little refocusing. See you on the flip side, chickens.

Case Study 82: "The Happy Hippo"

Sometimes you find yourself home from work on a random Thursday with a delightfully long weekend ahead and you think to yourself...

 

What could be better than just some sweet baby hippo-faces atop chocolate cupcakes filled with Nutella and topped with a vanilla buttercream?

At least that's how my thought processes go.

Case Study 81: "The Long Distance Love"

I've done the long distance relationship before, and let me tell you, it ain't easy!  So when a friend got sent on a business trip to Japan for several months, she decided to order a little something special for her Valentine...

   

Chocolate cupcakes topped with peanut butter frosting and a hidden banana slice, raspberry buttercream, and mint chocolate chip buttercream.

You know, just to remind him that even though they're on opposite sides of the world...she's still sweet on him. 

 

Happy Valentine's Day, lovers.

Notes from the Field: On Love.

A few random thoughts on love.  

I love Valentine's Day, for reasons that can only be explained by counting backwards the months from my birthday.  People ask if knowing something like that is strange, and I say no as I'm consistently reminded of a nice line that I read in passing through: We loved here. I love that quote, and I love knowing there was love, then and there.

I've found love, fallen out of love, had unrequited loves and discovered new facets of love that I never knew existed.

There is some famous quote that says love is complicated. Really? I guess that after twenty-six short years of loving, I haven't quite yet figured out how. So for now, I'll leave you with my favorite love poem and some pretty pictures.  

This poem is about a time or a place.  Maybe it won't make much sense.  Maybe I've been there or I'll never get there, and maybe it's not really a poem about love at all.  But for me, this is love.

Route Six

Stanley Kunitz

The city squats on my back, 

I am heart-sore, stiff-necked,

exasperated.  That's why

I slammed the door,

that's why I tell you now, 

in every house of marriage

there's room for an interpreter.

Let's jump in the car, honey, 

and head straight for the Cape, 

where the cock on our housetop crows

that the weather's fair, 

and my garden waits for me 

to coax it into bloom.

As for those passions left

that flare past understanding, 

like bundles of dead letters

out of our previous lives

that amaze us with their fevers, 

we can stow them in the rear

along with ziggurats of luggage

and Celia, our transcendental cat, 

past-mistress of all languages, 

including Hottentot and silence.

We'll drive non-stop till dawn, 

and if I grow sleepy at the wheel, 

you'll keep me awake by singing

in your bravura Chicago style

Ruth Etting's smoky song, 

"Love Me or Leave Me,"

belting out the choices. 

Light glazes the eastern sky

over Buzzards Bay.

Celia gyrates upward

like a performing seal,

her glistening nostrils aquiver

to sniff the brine-spiked air.

The last stretch toward home!

Twenty summers roll by. 

 

Case Study 80: "The Schott Trio"

When I think of the ultimate bad ass rebels without a cause, I inevitably think of men of yore: Dean, Springsteen, Brando, The Ramones... the list goes on. 
 

 

Schott NYC, the fantastic American leather jacket company, has dressed them all, and I had the honor of collaborating with them to create concept cupcakes.   But take heed, these confections are not your typical sweet delights.  

They're for the salty sailors and the motorcycle boys.  They're a bit offbeat, tough, and like Schott itself, they represent "the heritage of America and the rebel inside everyone."

 
"The Drunken Sailor" is a Valrhona chocolate cupcake topped with whiskey vanilla bourbon buttercream and cacao shavings.  It's offbeat, liquored up and inspired by Schott's Classic Melton Wool Naval Pea Coat. 

 

"The Top Gun" is a pistachio cupcake topped with a light caramel buttercream and a homemade pistachio chocolate crunch.  Dressed in its best fatigues with an aviator spirit, it's inspired to take flight and live dangerously by Schott's G-1 Top Gun Leather Bomber.

 

And then, there's "The Perfecto," and it doesn't get any better than this: an Oreo cupcake topped with a chrome-detailed vanilla buttercream and sugar studs.  Marlon Brando personified motorcycle cool by donning a black leather Perfecto in 1953 in The Wild One.  Shoulder stars, metal snaps, silver finish on the exact fit, the jacket has been produced flawlessly for over fifty years.

Schott's done it right for nearly a century, making classic jackets that are iconic pieces of American history and heritage.  Did you know that they were the ones who first put zippers on jackets?  Bad ass and innovative all at once!  When asked what he was rebelling against in The Wild One, Brando's Johnny replies: "Whaddya got?"   Some people don leather, salute anarchy or sail the winds by sea.  But in the end, attitude, pride and spirit are a state of mind, so don't forget to wear them well.

Notes from the Field: Non Mas.

This year, we rang in the Superbowl and a birthday with wine, succulent brisket, white truffle mac and cheese, stromboli bread, crudite and the Cheesehead my dad brought back from Wisconsin for me when I was 10.   

But oh, there were also...

double vanilla cupcakes with crunchy peanut butter frosting and milk chocolate dipped banana slices...

sweet little pink raspberry baby cakes...

 

the most light and fluffy salted caramel cupcakes, topped with homemade fleur de sel caramels...  

And then, well, then my friends, there was a food coma. 

Notes from the Field: LET'S BAKE

Friends frequently ask if they can hang out in my kitchen.  Save for a few fortunate souls, who inevitably lay victim to copious amounts of wine, a veritable library of my senseless stories and a light dusting of confectioner’s sugar, it doesn’t happen enough.  You want to know what it looks like when I strap on the apron and the oven gets hot? 

This.  Every time.

Shall we bake?  Let’s bake.

Case Study 79: "The Golden Ticket"

Glamour.  I've been thinking a lot about it lately as I settle into the Manhattan life I've been creating for myself.

It's a bit more decadent here in New York - a little excessive at times and a hell of a lot more luxurious just by nature alone.  Swanky cocktails in classic Manhattan bars are quickly followed by dirty late night underground dance parties and white truffle pizza at 2 AM.  We are surrounded by more forms of art and culture and diversity here than I could ever imagine, even coming from another large city.  And for Christ's sake, half the time I get my groceries delivered now, and I can't even tell you about the wild goods that can arrive at my doorstep.  With this all, I am reminded of that famous quote by Kate Moss when she said "My mum used to say to me, 'you can't have fun all the time,' and I used to say, 'why not?'. Why the fuck can't I have fun all the time?"  

 

Making life extraordinary.  Over the past few years, I'm finding  that this is one of my golden rules.  Adding a little extra effort to make the everyday a bit more fantastical, in even the simplest of ways, brings a bit more fulfillment to my life.  That is what New York City has been for me so far.

"The Golden Ticket" is a chocolate cupcake with golden dust encrusted hazelnut buttercream.  It's an over the top, sparkling and glamorous addition to an otherwise dreary winter weekday, and that's what makes it absolutely spectacular. 

 

Fellini, master of fantastical cinema, believed that all that we create in our lives is autobiographical- that even the pearl is the life story of the oyster.  In the end, the lives that we make for ourselves- the people we are surrounded by, the journeys we embark on, the lifestyles we fashion- are worth only the value of what we want the pages of our life histories to say.  For what it's worth, I hope mine reads that no matter what came my way in life, I loved and I lived, and most of all, I really made it fun.

Notes from the Field: "How to Make Friends at Work"

Step One: Bake one dozen delicious vanilla cupcakes.

Step Two:  Bring cupcakes into office on a Friday at new job.

Step Three: See how many new friends you made.  I can count one dozen.

Case Study 79: "The Dauphin"

In a cavernous Connecticut bistro, filled with cellar stone walls and bottles of Sauternes...

On the Upper East Side, accompanied by mostarda, compotes and full-bodied squeals of delight...

On a sunny riverbank of Toulouse with one hand wrapped around mon amour and the other around a glass of rosé champagne...

Two nights in a row last weekend alone.

It is a fair statement to say that I am part of a completely, utterly and obsessively wild love affair with foie gras. And though I cannot remember when I first tasted the flesh, I can declare with confidence that I never forget a good foie experience. 

With oysters and truffles, this petit delicacy makes up my most holy food ménage à trois. I've always reasoned that my affinity for these fares deals with a theory of essences alone: in the oyster, I taste the sea, in the truffle, the musty earth, and in the liver, the body of life.


"The Dauphin" is a dark chocolate cupcake filled with sour cherry compote and topped with a whipped foie gras chantilly and a slice of almond brittle. Light and moist, yet rich and earthy, it is the ultimate of tiny cakes.  In the nineteenth century, English writer Sydney Smith stated that his idea of heaven was “eating pates de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.” I'd say that sounds about right to me.

  

When I began "The Cupcaketologist" over two years ago, I had envisioned it not only as a chronicle of my foray into self-discovery through baking, but also as a diary of my culinary growth.  I've always considered my case studies less full of kitsch and more full of flavor; true testimonials of my hunger for life, through travel and experience. 



For me, this is a cupcake two years in the making.  The table Cupcaketology has now been set for a different kind of occasion: cupcakes for the super gourmand.  Will they be for the faint of heart?  I'm not certain.  But what I do know, my friends, is that we can only go up from here.