Bacon, Beestings, and Beatrice

The week came to a sugarless close just in time to start the creating process again and to let the Halloween festivities begin, aka hours of Halloween 1,3,4, and H20. After much contemplation during the week I decided to grade all creations on flavor and fluffiness.  I began the weekend with the usual run in to town for supplies and was excited to explore flavor and fluffiness.  The same thing that pushed me in to that bakery the day this all began pushed me to find the perfect rubber scraper leading to a stumble upon my ultimate dream mixer.  I am fairly certain I came out of the womb demanding a Kitchenaid and now I finally had one!  Let the creating begin!!!!

I broke Beatrice out of the box in time to start a batch of double chocolate cupcakes with a hearty heap of orange cream cheese frosting.  The adventure began after discovering I bought unsweetened dark chocolate, which if any of you have tried it will make you feel like your mouth is going  to fall off.  I doctored up the melting chocolate and butter with sugar in my first successful attempt with a double boiler and the beauty went off without a hitch.  The orange frosting complimented the richness of the Dutch coco and the "make your mouth fall off chocolate." I used orange zest and the juice of half an orange for the frosting and I believe on the next go around I will only use the juice, the zest made it a tad bitter.  The cake was a hearty cake that could withstand the weight of a heavy royal or buttercream icing and fell short on the fluffiness scale but excelled on the flavor train.

Day two was and will remain Murphy's Law Day. The first recipe consisted of grinding cardamom seeds, making chai tea, and dumping every spice in my pantry into Beatrice.  The smell was incredible. The chai filled the house and I am fairly certain that is how the North Pole smells.  Riding with my head high I mixed, wisked, and got down and dirty.  Anxiously I turned the light on in the oven and my heart dropped as the centers of my tiny beauties collapsed on what I believe was my overly large head. They came out of the oven, cooled, and were smeared with white chocolate frosting.  My crowning glory had been in the fridge marinating all day and atop the white chocolate sat my candied bacon.

In between batch number one and batch number two my black lab Bodhi managed to get in to a sleeping/dying den of wasps and Justin and I noticed that he was starting to get well.....lumpy.  His faced looked like the kid off Mask, the Cher version. His jowls got so fat he looked like Lisa Rhinna.  One emergency trip to the vet and another batch of collapsing cupcakes and this gal was ready to hang up her pearls.

But, being the relentless searcher I am I continued on.  The second chocolate cupcake used coffee and coco powder to create a runny batter which caused me to second guess adding the coffee, but I charged ahead refusing to give up my pearls.  A couple trials and several errors and my table was littered with cupcakes waiting to be frosted.  Atop the fluffy chocolate cakes I worked on my frosting roses with a simple buttecream dyed for the holiday.  The final FF for chocolate number two, fluffy awesome cake and a chocolate flavor that resembled a boxed cake mix.

The final consensus of the weekend, Chai tea, white chocolate, and bacon is something I will be dreaming about for months.  The journey to create the perfect chocolate cupcake is going to continue. Lastly, if you stick your melon in to a bush and it stings you once, get your face out of there so you don't have to go to the vet on a Sunday.

In the Beginning There Was Butter Cream

The cupcake journey began after a recent visit to a local bakery.  I entered the tiny shop, it is in a very old one level farm house, and was immediately greeted by the display case, namely all of the things INSIDE the pastry case.  The donuts waved, the cupcakes smiled, and the cheery baker gave me a warm welcome to the quaint shop. I could feel the desserts waiting with bated breaths to see who the lucky winner would be.  After an inward debate of cupcake or donuts I finally decided and inwardly said, "I am 24 years old, why the hell do I need to chose one!" I chatted excitedly with Roberta about my purchases of a maple bar with bacon and my all time personal favorite, a vanilla cupcake with buttercream frosting and sprinkles.  I excitedly walked to my car with my treasures tucked under my arm and decided to drive in to the country to enjoy my desserts among the fall foliage.

I reached my destination and pulled over and after salivating the entire drive I opened the perfect boxed that housed the tiny cake.  The frosting was elegant and was in equal proportion to the cake, I hesitated for a moment admiring the things beauty and dove in.  A full bit from top of frosting to bottom of the cake.  My mouth watered with the immediate rush of butter from the frosting and then I was hit with a wall, a wall of cake. The build up proved to be more exhilarating than the event itself.  The four inches of butter cream masked any flavor of the cake and probably for good reason.  The cake was dense, almost like a boxed corn bread. The vanilla flavor was lost in the blandness of flour and the richness of the frosting was a lasting flavor in my mouth.  After sitting for sometime with the half eaten cupcake on my lap I felt a wave a disappointment that I was not given a light fluffy vanilla rich cake. The disappointment rapidly disappeared and was replaced with feelings of excitement that something so small could create a level of passion inside of me.  With the butter cream and determination smeared across my face I vowed to find and create the perfect cupcake.

This blog is a journey through bakeries, cookbooks, experiments, and is transforming a dream in to a reality.  I will be accompanied by my adoring husband of three months to the day, our goofy dogs Clementine and Bodhi, and the countless amounts of people needed to sample my creations.  This is day one and I am headed to kitchen to make brown sugar cupcakes with cinnamon pumpkin cream cheese frosting! Justin is hunting for the weekend and while the husband is out the Mad Housewife will create!