Pumpkin Cupcake-Muffins

I call this recipe Pumpkin Cupcake-Muffins, because I was trying to create something that was dense and moist like a muffin, but slightly decadent, like a cake. I was making these for a weekend brunch, so I wanted them to be more appropriate for breakfast than for dessert. My vision was to make individual pumpkin treats that had a layer of cream cheese inside, instead of on top, of the muffin.

This is one of those recipes that sounded good in theory, but didn't work out quite the way I had hoped. But in the end, they turned out great after I did some improvisational tweaking.

Martha Stewart has a great recipe for pumpkin cupcakes (minus the cream cheese) on her web site. This is the basic recipe that I used for the cakes.

I started by whisking together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices in a large bowl.

Next, I used an electric hand mixer to beat together the sugar, eggs, and canola oil (I substituted 1/2 cup oil instead of the butter in Martha's recipe, because I wanted these to resemble pumpkin muffins instead of cupcakes). I also added some molasses for flavor. Normally I would've used my stand mixer for this, but I was trying to keep it clean so I could use it to make the cream cheese layer.

This is what the mixture looked like after I mixed everything together. After creaming the eggs, sugar, and oil, I added the pumpkin puree, and then folded in the flour mixture. I forgot to take a photo of this step (sorry)!

Now I had to figure out how to make the cream cheese layer. I ended up using this recipe:

Cream Cheese Layer:

9 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

¼ cup granulated sugar

¼ cup brown sugar

6 TBSP real maple syrup

1 tsp maple extract

1 TBSP all-purpose flour

1 large egg

Beat all ingredients together for 2 minutes until smooth and creamy.

This is what the ingredients looked like before:

And after:In retrospect, I think this mixture needed to be a LOT thicker. Maybe there was too much maple sugar. Maybe I should have creamed the cream cheese, sugar, and eggs together first, so they could have become lighter and fluffier. The mixture tasted good, but the texture was wrong. Nevertheless, I marched onward.

I tried to layer the cupcake/muffins with a layer of pumpkin cake on the bottom, topped with a layer of the cream cheese mixture, and then another layer of pumpkin cake on top. This didn't work out so well, because the cake mixture was MUCH thicker than the cream cheese layer, so it kind of collapsed. See what I mean?I didn't give up though. I decided to go ahead and bake them, and I crossed my fingers that they would turn out well. They actually baked up fine, although the cream cheese mixture completely blended with the pumpkin cake, and they ended up looking like this.They didn't have a defining cream cheese layer, which I thought was necessary for flavor contrast. So, I decided to whip up a pumpkin cream cheese frosting to put on top of the cakes.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting:

6 oz. cream cheese

1/4 cup pumpkin butter (I bought this from Trader Joe's)

1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

Beat all ingredients together on medium speed for 3-4 minutes until light and fluffy.

This frosting was INCREDIBLE, by the way. I love pumpkin and cream cheese. This would make a great cake frosting.

Because of the additional frosting, these ended up resembling cupcakes more than muffins, but they were still delicious!

Buttermilk Biscuits

On a cool fall day, what's better than a hearty bowl of soup paired with warm, fluffy, fresh-from-the-oven buttermilk biscuits? These are quick and easy to whip up for a weeknight dinner, and they're much tastier than the instant-mix versions (Bisquick, I'm looking at you).

In the interest of full disclosure, I based my biscuits on Alton Brown's recipe, not Martha's. Mr. Judge insisted that Alton has the Best. Biscuit. Recipe. Ever., and he insisted that I try his recipe first. Sorry, Martha! I'll try your recipe next time.

Technically, I used the recipe from Alton's baking book, not the recipe on the Food Network site. The recipes are similar, but slightly different.

As usual, the first step was to mix together the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt). Alton's recipe included the unique step of using a box grater to grate the butter into the dry ingredients. He thinks this is easier than the usual method of using a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour.

Next, he recommends rubbing the butter into the flour with your fingers, until half of it is integrated with the flour, and the rest of the butter is pea-sized (or smaller).

The recipe in his baking book uses only butter, not shortening.

Next, it was time to combine the liquid ingredients. Alton's recipe calls for buttermilk and yogurt, which is kind of unusual (most biscuit recipes don't include yogurt). Apparently the yogurt adds extra moistness and a nice tang. His recipe specifically states that you cannot use fat-free yogurt, which is what I usually buy. I knew my husband had recently picked up some yogurt at the store, so I asked him what kind it was. He assured me it was whole-milk yogurt, because he would never buy skim yogurt. So, I looked in the fridge, and guess what I found?



D'oh! But instead of giving up, I decided to forge ahead with the fat-free yogurt and hope for the best. I decided if the biscuits didn't work out, I would blame the yogurt first, and my husband second.

I mixed together the liquid ingredients (buttermilk, yogurt, and one egg).

Then I added the flour mixture to the buttermilk mixture. This formed a very gloopy, lumpy batter.



I turned the batter out onto some parchment paper before kneading, because I knew this would be an extremely sticky process.

Instead of "kneading" the dough, I used Alton's suggestion of folding it three times, kind of like a tri-fold wallet. This is what it looked like after the third fold.

I flattened the dough to about a one-inch thickness, and I used a 2-inch round biscuit cutter to cut out the individual biscuits. They were very sticky, and my hands were covered with dough, so I couldn't take a good photo of them during this stage.

I placed the biscuits on a baking sheet and put them in the oven.

Twenty minutes later, I had warm, fluffy biscuits. They were moist and buttery on the inside, and crusty brown on the outside. Mmmmm yum.

This is how I like to eat them - with a nice pat of butter on top. They're also very tasty with pumpkin butter (which is how I ate them for breakfast the next day).

Alton Brown's recipe was a success, and I'm going to try Martha's recipe next time. Either way, I highly recommend making your own biscuits from scratch. The small effort involved is well worth the result.

Miniature Gingerbread Cakes

I was invited to attend a Fall Baking potluck brunch last weekend, and I wanted to take something seasonal and festive. I had a feeling there would be a lot of apple and pumpkin treats, so I decided to be a rebel and make these gingerbread cakes. Aren't they cute? Ginger is one of my favorite foods, so this was perfect for me. This also gave me an opportunity to use my decorative mini-muffin tins for the first time. This means they were a good investment, right?

As usual, I used the recipe from my copy of Martha's Baking Handbook, but I think this is the identical recipe on Martha's web site.

I made some slight modifications to her original recipe. Her recipe calls for mixing together one cup of boiling water and 2 teaspoons baking soda, setting them aside, and then adding them into the batter as one of the final steps. I've never heard of doing this before. I spent some time searching the internet, trying to figure out what kind of magical chemical reaction occurs when you mix together boiling water and baking soda. I couldn't find anything useful related to cake baking (although I did find a lot of recipes for polishing silver). So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to skip this step entirely. I added the baking soda to the rest of the dry ingredients, and instead of adding one cup of water to the batter, I substituted one cup of milk. I thought this would give the cakes a richer flavor. Did it work? Stay tuned....

First, I sifted together the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, spices) into a large bowl.

Then I creamed the butter and brown sugar together in my stand mixer.
See, nice and fluffy. I added molasses, freshly grated ginger (key ingredient!), eggs, and milk to the butter/sugar mixture. Then I added the flour mixture to the rest of the cake batter. When everything was mixed together, I poured the batter into my cute little cake tin. Correction: my heavily greased cute little cake tin. I was really worried about the batter sticking to my molds, so I used a lot of non-stick spray on these babies.

After 15 minutes in the oven, they were perfectly baked.

I carefully flipped over my cake tin, and they came out of the molds perfectly!

The recipe in Martha's book involves covering the tops of the cake with chocolate ganache. That sounds amazingly good, but I thought it would be a bit heavy for a brunch, so I decided to dust the tops of the cakes with powdered sugar instead. The sugar also emphasized the different shapes of each cake.

Perfect for the holidays! And so tasty, too. I really loved these. They have a very strong ginger flavor, which I love. They also freeze very well, if you wrap them up individually in plastic wrap.

Fresh Strawberry Scones

I found some great strawberries on sale at my local market, which is a rare treat for October. I usually try to eat produce in season, but these were so irresistible! I bought two pounds of berries, and I decided to use half of them for baking. I wanted to try something a little different, so I flipped through Martha's Baking book until inspiration struck me. Scones! I love scones, but I've never made them before, and I've never tried strawberry scones.

Martha's Book includes three different recipes for scones, but none of them use fresh fruit. I had a feeling there would be some major differences in the moisture content with dried vs. fresh fruit, and I wasn't sure if wanted to "wing it" by myself. Luckily, one of my favorite food bloggers, Katie at Good Things Catered, published a great recipe for fresh strawberry scones. I decided to adapt her recipe for my own scones. Thanks, Katie! And this means I can actually print my recipe, instead of worrying about copyright infringement (I hear Martha Stewart has great lawyers).




Fresh Strawberry Scones

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cup all purpose flour (plus a little extra for handling the dough)
1/4 c. granulated sugar
1 Tbsp raw or sanding sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick (8 Tbsp) butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
1 egg
1/4 cup yogurt (I used plain Greek-style yogurt)
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp orange zest
1 pound fresh strawberries, diced (about 2 cups)

Directions:

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheet with parchment.

-In a small bowl, combine egg, yogurt, milk, and zest. Whisk to combine thoroughly and set aside.














-In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, powder, salt, and whisk to combine.















-Using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut butter into flour until all pieces are smaller than pea-sized.



-Add diced strawberries, and toss to coat.

-Add wet ingredients to dry and mix in lightly with a fork until dough just comes together.

-Turn dough out onto well floured work surface and pat into large ball. If the dough is too sticky, you can add up to 1/4 cup of extra flour, 1 Tbsp at a time. I had to add about 1/8 cup extra.


-Cut the large ball of dough in half.

-Shape half of the dough into a flat disk shape and cut it into 6 slices using a sharp knife.



-Place individual scones on the baking sheet, one inch apart. Repeat with the other half of the dough.

-Sprinkle the tops of the scones with raw (sanding) sugar and place in the oven.

-Bake until scones turn slightly brown, about 25 minutes.

-Remove from the oven and let them cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes.

-Transfer to a wire rack and let them cool for another 10-15 minutes.


Time to eat!


These scones were delicious! I will definitely be making homemade scones again. Yum yum yum! You could adapt this recipe to use any fresh berry.

Maple Pecan Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream Frosting

One of the first recipes I flagged in Martha's Baking Handbook was her recipe for Maple Walnut Cupcakes. I love maple, I love cupcakes, and while I don't love walnuts, I do love pecans. And who doesn't love buttercream frosting? Now that fall is in the air, I decided it was time to create some maple-themed goodness.

Although I used the recipe from Martha's book, there is a very similar recipe on her web site. That recipe is for a layer cake, but you can easily turn it into cupcakes by pouring the batter into lined cupcake tins and baking them for 25 minutes. I actually think the web site recipe may be better, because it uses maple syrup in the cake batter (the recipe in her book does not; it relies on the maple buttercream for all of the maple flavor).

These cupcakes were fairly easy to make, although there was one kitchen casualty. You have to keep reading for the details.

The first step of the recipe required sifting together the dry ingredients in a large bowl (flour, baking powder, salt, ground spices).


Then I used my stand mixer to cream the butter and sugar together.
I added the eggs and beat everything together until they were thoroughly combined. The mixture got nice and fluffy.Next, I added the rest of the liquid ingredients (maple syrup, vanilla extract) and stirred until everything was combined. (Sorry, no photo of this step.)

The recipe called for medium-to-finely chopped nuts. I toasted my pecans before chopping them, because I wanted to give them some extra flavor. In hindsight, I think I should have chopped them more finely than this, but I think this is a matter of personal taste.
I added the dry ingredients to the liquid ingredients and mixed them together with a rubber spatula.
Finally, I mixed in the pecans with a wooden spoon.

Now that my batter was ready, I poured it into lined muffin tins. I made half of them into regular-sized cupcakes, and the other half into mini-sized cupcakes.

This is what they looked like when I took them out of the oven. They were lightly browned on top, and they passed the "toothpick test."

Now I had to create the buttercream frosting. I love buttercream, but shockingly, I've never made it before.

The first step of the frosting recipe was to beat 6 egg yolks on high speed, until they became fluffy. This is a picture of the egg yolks while my mixer was whirring.

In the meantime, I had to boil the maple syrup on the stove and cook it until a candy thermometer reached 240 degrees, which was supposed to take about 15 minutes. I have never made homemade candy before, and I wasn't even sure if I had a candy thermometer, but I found one in the back of my utensil drawer.

If you've never done this before, I can tell you that maple syrup gets kind of volatile after it's been boiling for 15 minutes. It looks fine here:

But after about 10 minutes, it threatened to overflow the rim of my saucepan. Stirring it only made things worse! I had to remove the pan from the burner several times, to prevent boiling maple syrup from erupting all over my stove.

Can you see the candy thermometer clipped to the left side of my saucepan? When the maple syrup reached the proper temperature, I tried to remove the thermometer, but the sticky syrup didn't want to let the thermometer go. Part of the glass of the thermometer broke off, and the thermometer came apart into several pieces. RIP candy thermometer. My first Martha-related kitchen casualty. :(

After removing the syrup from the heat, I slowly poured it into my egg mixture, and I beat them together for about 2 minutes. Then I added the chilled butter, and I thoroughly beat everything together for several minutes, until the frosting was nice and fluffy. Hello, maple buttercream! Come to mama!
Nom nom nom! We ate the cupcakes with homemade maple ice cream (which is my new favorite ice cream, by the way).

I want to give an honest evaluation of all of the recipes I make, so I will admit that these were not the best cupcakes I've ever had. I LOVED the maple buttercream, and I will definitely make that again. But the actual cupcakes were only okay. They seemed more like muffins than cupcakes to me. I think the nuts threw me off, because the texture of the cupcakes reminded me of the banana-nut muffins I made earlier in the week. Also, the recipe in Martha's book didn't add any maple syrup to the actual cupcakes. They weren't nearly maple-y enough. If I wanted to make these again, I'd try the recipe on her web site, which uses maple syrup in the cake. I'd also chop the nuts more finely, and possibly reduce the amount of nuts in the recipe.