PewPew 2.0 - Blogs about baking

Frosting.

My mom said the frosting I put on those cupcakes was good, and so I promised I'd post the recipe for that too. Here goes:

• 1/2 pound cream cheese, room temp
• 1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
• 4 oz bittersweet baking chocolate, melted
• 1 pound powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla

Start slowly and mix it all together, for about 7 minutes. This yielded more than enough frosting for my 2 dozen cupcakes, though I tend to frost lightly. (I've found that I can microwave the chocolate on low speed in a ramekin. This is much easier than fashioning a double boiler.)

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Chocolate Cupcakes.

I made more cupcakes this weekend. These were follow-on cupcakes to the batch that I made for the husband to take along while working with his 48 hour film festival team. (Alas, the film is not available on-line for a while yet.) My cupcakes were apparently much enjoyed by the film cast and crew; even though I substituted one cup of hot water for the coffee called for by the recipe.

Since I had a bunch of frosting left over, I decided to try the cupcakes again, this time with the coffee. The with-coffee cupcakes were better - noticeably larger and fluffier. Here is the recipe that I used, taken from Caprial's Desserts, by Caprial Pence and Melissa Carey.

• 12 ounces flour (that's 3 cups to some of you)
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Whisk these.

• 1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
• 1/2 cups buttermilk

Mix these into the above, until well blended.

• 3 eggs

Mix into the above, one at at time.

• 1/2 cups freshly brewed hot coffee
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

Mix into the above; low speed.

For medium sized cupcakes, bake at 350° for about 20 minutes (use a toothpick). I got about 28 cupcakes out of this.

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Patriotic Cupcakes.

This weekend, I experimented with a delicacy from my childhood - cupcakes baked inside ice cream cones. They were patriotic because I put star-shaped sprinkles on them; not because they voted or something. Baking the cupcakes inside ice cream cones had advantages (self contained, easy to eat), but there's a few things I need to keep in mind for next time.

• Fill the cones all the way to the top for a nicely rounded top.
• Use a light, fluffy batter. (The brown sugar based batter I used was reminiscent of actual chocolate chip cookies. Very tasty, but too dense to work out well inside the cones.)

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Baking Lab: Cookie Customizations.

This blog continues on the topic of varying the gold standard chocolate chip cookie recipe to find a perfect variation for my tastes. I'm too sick to make any new cookies on my own this weekend, but I was able to watch T.V. and type. Here are Alton Brown's alterations on the basic recipe for different specific results - the thin and crispy chocolate chip cookie, the puffy and fluffy chocolate chip cookie, and the chewy chocolate chip cookie.

Thin & Crispy:

• Replace 1 egg w/ 2 oz whole milk.
• Replace some brown sugar with more white sugar.
• Stick with all butter for the fat.
• Stick with baking soda for the leavening agent. You could even increase the baking soda by up to half for extra crispy cookies.

You can find Alton Brown's complete recipe for the Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip cookie here.

Puffy & Fluffy

• Use butter flavored shortening instead of butter.
• Use cake flour instead of all purpose flour.
• Use baking powder instead of baking soda.
• Add extra brown sugar.
• Chill the dough before scooping onto baking sheet.

You can find Alton Brown's complete recipe for the Puffy and Fluffy Chocolate Chip cookie here.

Chewy

• Use bread flour instead of all purpose flour.
• Melt butter before adding the sugars.
• Replace almost all of the white sugar with brown sugar.
• Replace 1 egg with 1 yolk and 2 tablespoons whole milk.
• Chill the dough before scooping onto baking sheet.

You can find Alton Brown's complete recipe for the Chewey Chocolate Chip cookie here.

Note - Alton uses kosher salt and extra vanilla extract (1 1/2 teaspoons) in each of these recipes. The recipe variations listed here should work on any kind of cookies, not just chocolate chip.

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Baking Lab: Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I'd been disappointed by recent batches of chocolate chip cookies that I'd made. The "control" cookies (made using the recipe on the bag of chocolate chips) were too flat, and too gooey / greasy for us (the husband and myself). I thought that my problem might have been old baking powder, but for this experiment I had bought fresh chemicals.

Last month, I attempted to correct these imperfect cookies by dropping the standard recipe cookies into mini-muffin tins instead of directly onto the Silpat. This method did work to prevent spreading, but the edges of the cookies climbed up the side of the muffin tins, without cooking the middle to a more satisfactory consistency.

This weekend, I conducted another experiment in the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. I replaced one of the two sticks of butter called for by the recipe with half a cup of shortening. This worked out quite well - the cookies are taller, with that lovely "baked" crust, and nice soft filling. Very satisfactory, but not quite perfect.

I will continue with experiments, and keep you updated on progress. The very day after my most successful experiment, cooking mad scientist / culinary Prometheus Alton Brown provided many deliberate substitutions for specific results on his Food Network show Good Eats. It was a prophetic show, and I'm looking forward to trying the variations. I hope the husband doesn't get tired of fresh baked cookies.

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