Oh, almost forgot, as I was checking out of the grocery store, I spied Cookies and Cream already made frosting. I had to try it… note to you, it’s not so hot. Probably because it’s ready made but I’m not a big fan (and you won’t find it on any of these). But if you see it in the store, you can skip it, in my opinion.  I just had to take it for a test drive since it had the potential of fitting in perfectly. Thanks for taste testing as usual.. I think next time will be banana honey cupcakes, probably this week.  Enjoy!

 While on vacation in LA, I visited a bakery from the Cupcake Wars TV show. Naturally, I tried the cream cheese frosting flavors.

I bought 18 minis, I only ate 4 and forgot the rest in LA.

Their chocolate mint was good, more minty than mine but I thought their frostings were a little too sweet (so did my companions).

Last week, here at home, I tried some cakes from The Sugar King. Again, just more encouragement that I really prefer mine! Maybe it’s just that cupcakes should not be refrigerated!  In any case, the challenge for me, is still finding the perfect HIGH ALITITUDE cupcake, so these were mainly to try flavor comparisons. They were nice and moist, which is much easier when you don’t live in a semiarid dessert, get it, dessert?

         This vanilla batter was sooo delicious. I could hardly keep from eating the entire bowl before I added in the whipped egg whites. I made sure the eggs were room temperature… I’ve read that makes a difference.

This dark chocolate frosting consisted of both cacao AND regular dark chocolate added to sugar. Pretty chocolatey! It doesn’t have the best consistancy if you want big frosting tops, it’s rather thick but I don’t mind that in exchange for the fudginess.

I didn’t do much for the altitude adjustment this time- I just added a bit of extra soy milk (I don’t usually use soymilk but I couldn’t find a small container of milk at Target).  I think they could have been a little more moist. Next time, I’ll have to go back and check my other posts to remember exactly what I did for the altitude as it’s been 6 months since I baked!  The photo below is the chips added to the batter. The frosting was pure melted chocolate!

Dark Chocolate Frosting.

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon boiling water
2 1/4 sticks (8 oz) butter
3/4cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1/4 teaspoon salt
12 ounces best-quality semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled

I made these for the CItywide night of worship/homeless event  in downtown Colorado Springs. Hopefully I’ll get some feedback!

These cupcakes turned out moist and minty.  I’ve never had to go through so much work to make a frosting. We’re talking double boiling, sieving, tempering (which keeps egg yokes from curdling in case you were wondering). To make the frosting, I first added milk, vanilla and freshly chopped mint leaves to a saucepan.  Then,  I separated 2 eggs and then added sugar to the yokes and (this was new to me) took the mixing pan from my Kitchen Aid and put it right on top of a simmering saucepan to make a double boiler. Fancy fancy.  Then the milk mixture is added 1/3 of it, in with the yokes, averaged the temperature, and all is back into the saucepan. It’s finally sieved and a sweet minty liquid emerges.  That wasn’t all however, next were the egg whites and butter. 

The cakes called for dutch cocoa powder. I have to admit, I’ve shyed away from chocolate before now because I couldn’t find the powder. I must have not been looking hard enough. This time, one trip to my fav. Whole Foods (man i love that store, every day is like Christmas)  and I had no trouble finding dutch cocoa powder. WF had it in 3 varieties. *Note to self, the Ghirardelli is actually dutch, it says so in small print on the back. Seems like they’d mention that up front. As I’ve learned, DCP is treated with an alkali to neutralize its acids.  Because it is neutral and does not react with baking soda, it must be used in recipes calling for baking powder,  over natural cocoa.  Interesting.  And again, as a high altitude adjustment, I added 1/4 more milk, a tad less sugar and baking powder to the cakes and they were decliciously moist and perfect.  Here’s a link to the cakes basically:

I also took taste tester Tammy’s advice and made these cakes larger than I had been. I think that was a good idea, they’re much more satisfying a size!

As for the frosting, the recipe had way too much butter in it (4 sticks yuck) so I cut it in half, and ended up adding some of a pre-packaged icing mix (which was pretty much sugar and vanilla) and cream cheese (as usual).  I kept the rest of the egg/mint concoction in there. I think that was a nice end however, I still need to come up with a good butter cream recipe. I’ve never been a fan of the stuff but maybe I can find one that works for me.  Does anyone really like buttercream??   

 I also read a good frosting hint- Add milk only at the end to get the desired consistency or eliminate it altogether if you don’t need it. And plan for some chilling time before you frost with it.

For this month, I’m making a traditional Latin recipe, to practice what I’m thinking I’ll do for the Denver Hispanic Chamber of Commerce event (no word on the date yet, I hope that goes through).  Tres Leches Cake – Also called Three-Milk Cake is a dense, moist cake topped with a cloud of vanilla whipped cream. Tres leches cake is particularly popular in Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guatemala. The interesting part about this Latin American recipe is that the cake, after baked, bathes in a sweet milk concoction of three different milk products: evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and whole milk or heavy cream, hence the name Tres Leches.  The three milks when combined, make just the right amount of sweetness and moistness, making it moist but not mushy. 

So far, these have these have cupcakes have been the easiest to make. The whipped cream topping is super simple, just heavey cream and sugar. I wish I had some fresh Chinese cinnamon, I think it would be great on the top, regular cinnamon will have to do!   The batter by itself is pretty plain, it’s the soaking that give them flavor. A variation of these could be a dulce leches flavor, which usually incorporates caramel and which were very popular in Florida at Cuban restaurants.

You have to make sure that if you make these, you get the muffin liners that have both a paper and a foil wrapper. If you don’t, the milk bath will soak through the wrapper. I saw some blogs where people actually transferred them to little paper cups-seems an extra unecessary step if you ask me!

Afternote: I should have poked holes in them when they were hot, too bad I didn’t read more recipes before I tried them to compare. The milk did not want to soak in. I’m thinking they didn’t make the cut, pretty much a fail. I don’t think I’ll attempt these again as to me, though it’s traditional they’re too bland for my taste. I might add more sugar or vanilla, but then, they wouldn’t be as true. No wonder everyone does the dulce leche (the caramel version which came after tres).

We’ll see what you say. I hope you enjoy!

 I ended up getting ’Vietnamese Cassia’ aka ‘Saigon Cinnamon’. Saigon cinnamon has 1-5% essential oil in content and 25% essential oil- that just means it’s very spicy and hot like a candy-hot as opposed to sweetish, like Chinese Cinnamon (think cinnamon toast).  

The MS cupcake club requests that we do not, as they are from a purchased recipe book, post the entire recipe.  You can find the recipe posted elsewhere if you really want to look   I was surprised that the cake contained only brown sugar, not sure if that’s any better health wise (probably not, I’ll just pretend).  In the end, they’re definitely a cupcake, not a bread. 

 I also have to say that her cream cheese frosting is exactly what I’d hoped a cream cheese frosting would be. DELICIOUS. I’m a little sad because it’s so perfect that I don’t feel I have to search for another. Maybe a little less cheesiness, so you can’t single out the cream cheese would make me happy.  I just added my usual high-altitude adjustments and also, freshly ground the cloves and nutmeg. Also, the mix has lemon zest which I thought was interesting and unexpected.

Annabelle supervising

  HA= high altitude adjustment