Cupcakes

I always thought that I knew what palm sugar was. Somehow I thought that Indonesian gula djawa is palm sugar but it turns out that it is actually a mixture of palm sugar and cane sugar. This new found knowledge made me curious about real palm sugar. I managed to find some at an Asian grocery. It was much lighter than gula djawa and also harder. It had sort of the same taste as cane sugar but more intense, I would call it sugar candy :)
Palm sugar was to be the main ingredient for my entry to this month's Asian themed SHF hosted by La Petite Boulangette.
The recipe for these cakelets is a basic pound cake recipe. The Asian touch is the palm sugar and also the ground ginger that I used for flavouring and the sesame seeds that I used for decoration. I wanted to take these cakelets to my friend Y. who doesn't eat wheat so I used spelt flour instead.
The cakelets were a bit denser than regular pound cake. Probably a combination of the spelt flour which is a bit heavier than wheat flour, and the palm sugar. Contrary to regular sugar, palm sugar is much finer (when you've beaten it with a meat tenderizer) more like coarse confectioners sugar.
I loved the ginger taste of the cakelets, the amount was just right in my opinion. The sesame seeds looked nice enough for decoration but texture-wise I didn't think it was that good. It kind of interfered with the whole cakelet eating experience. Wouldn't add it next time.
Besides making these very small cakes, I also made some bigger ones. One of those was lucky enough to receive a pretty marzipan decoration which you can see in the previous post.



Palm sugar cakelets with toasted sesame seeds

makes at least 36 small or 18 medium cakelets

140 g (5 oz) spelt flour
1 ts ginger, ground
140 g (5 oz) butter
140 g (5 oz) palm sugar, beaten to (more or less) a powder with a meat tenderizer
2 eggs
2-3 tbs sesame seeds, lightly toasted

Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F). Line one or more mini muffin pans with paper cups.
Sift the spelt flour together with the ginger.
Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Mixing well after each addition. Mix for another few minutes. Add the flour and fold it in until just incorporated. Spoon the batter into the cups until about ¾ full.
Bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

When I think spring, I think flowers so it wasn't difficult coming up with this cupcake to enter Spring Funny Cuppy that is hosted by La casserole carrée and Les gourmandises d'Isa.
Also today is my sister-in-law's birthday so Happy Birthday S! She will be getting this little cupcake :)

I used a basic recipe for pound cake (creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs and finally flour) instead of using regular sugar I used palm sugar and instead of using regular flour I used spelt flour. I flavoured the cakes with ground ginger. Will be posting this particular recipe in the coming week. Decoration is - as usual - made of marzipan. The frosting is made of white chocolate ganache. The ratio was supposed to be 1 part whipping cream and 2 parts white chocolate but I sort of missed a chunk of chocolate so I ended up with a ratio of more like 1:1. I had to thoroughly chill the ganache to stick the marzipan in it. Hope I will be able to transport the cupcake to S. without the flowers falling...

I never knew there was a thing called yellow cake until I read about it on Mansi's Fun and Food. The yellow in the cake comes from using egg yolks instead of whole eggs, how interesting....
So when I needed to make some cupcakes for Arfi's Spectacular Cupcakes 2008 I decided to use the concept of yellow cake. I didn't use Mansi's recipe but used a basic recipe for pound cake and used egg yolks instead of whole eggs. With the egg whites missing in the recipe I added a little baking powder to compensate for this.
The cakes are flavoured with rosewater and cardamom. I've seen many recipes for cakes with rosewater but the amount used varies greatly. Trying to avoid a soapy taste I didn't put too much in. The end results were cupcakes with a hint of rose but nothing overpowering. I thought it was just right for the combination with the marzipan. If you're a big fan of rosewater you might want to use a little more. The cardamom is subtle too btw. I really liked the use of egg yolks, it seems to make the cake moister (more moist?) and richer. And of course more yellow (sorry no inside-of-cupcake photo).
I actually made ⅓ of the recipe below because there's a limit to the amount of baked goods one can eat or should eat ;) I used 2 medium egg yolks and weighed them, they were 35 g (1 ¼ oz). I needed 50 g (1 ¾ oz), adding an extra yolk would have been too much (have to be careful not to add more egg yolks than flour in weight). So I added a tbs of milk (=15 ml=15 gram (½ oz)...well nearly). So I'm not sure how much egg yolks you'd use for the recipe below. Best to weigh them till you have (nearly) 150 g (5 oz) and if necessary fill up with milk.
The decoration is made out of marzipan. My favourite molding material ;) and also in my favourite colour combination.

Note - be sure to use fresh marzipan or well stored marzipan, mine was a little bit on the dry side as is visible in the flower.

Rosewater and cardamom yellow cake cupcakes

makes 12

150 g (5 oz) flour
½ ts baking powder
½ ts cardamom powder
150 g (5 oz) caster sugar
150 g (5 oz) butter, diced and room temperature
150 g (5 oz) egg yolks (about 6 large I think)
milk (if needed to get to 150 g of egg yolks - see text above for explanation)
1 ts rosewater
green and pink marzipan

Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F). Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners.
Mix the flour, baking powder and cardamom. Sift the mixture.
Cream the sugar and butter. Add the yolks one at a time, mixing it in well before adding the next. (Add the milk). Add the rosewater. Add the flour in 4 additions and carefully fold it in. Fill the muffin pan and bake for 25 minutes or until pale yellow with a hint of brown. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Knead the pink marzipan until smooth, trying not to overheat it. Roll out the marzipan to 2-3 mm (1/16 - 1/8 in) thickness. Cut it into 12 rectangles of about 15 cm x 7 cm (6 in x 3 in). Lightly mark a line about 1½-2 cm (½ - ¾ in) on the long side of each rectangle. Repeatedly cut the marzipan up to the marked line, about ½ cm (1/5 in) wide. Fold the marzipan double lengthwise. Roll up the marzipan to create a flower. Adjust 'petals' that might come loose. Cut off part of the bottom to get a flatter flower.
They are not difficult to make, just use your common sense and forget about my horrible explanation ;)
Knead the green marzipan until smooth, trying not to overheat it. Roll out the marzipan to 2-3 mm thickness. Cut out a round that will fit on the cupcake.
'Glue' the marzipan circles onto the cupcakes using whatever 'glue' you like (or no glue like I did ;) You could use melted white chocolate, some heated apricot preserves or royal icing.
'Glue' the flowers on top.

This is my first time entering Cupcake hero. I'm not into the whole cupcake making thing myself but I love to look at pretty cupcake pictures on Flickr. So when I read about this foodblogging event by Laurie from Quirky Cupcake I thought why not give it a try. This month's theme is cranberries. I didn't feel like using fresh or dried cranberries and decided on using cranberry juice (I think I was inspired by the carrot juice for the carrot ganache). For the cake I used a muffin recipe that I made a while back and used cranberry juice instead of the coffee I used last time. The juice made the batter nice and pink. Also I added some lemon zest and melted white chocolate to the batter (Peabody's white chocolate cranberry cake was my inspiration for the white chocolate). The frosting is whipped cream with cranberry juice. Somehow you can whip that. The good thing is that is firms up a bit in the fridge (at least it was still firm after 3 hours, don't know after that because we ate them at that point). I wasn't sure if the cake would turn out ok but the taste was better than I expected. It reminded me of cherry clafoutis, apparently the combination of baked cranberry juice and lemon zest does that. I couldn't detect the white chocolate but I'm sure it wouldn't have been as good without it. The texture could have been better though, they were on the dense side. I didn't want the tops to crack so I didn't use too much baking powder. And the baking powder had sort of bubbled out when I spooned the last bit of batter into the paper liners (maybe I should have used baking soda? I sort of remember that you use that with acidic things....or do you use baking powder for that? I'm no expert, in the Netherlands most people haven't even heard of baking soda, everybody uses baking powder). The inside of the cake was still a bit pinkish after baking :)

The whipping cream is easy to make and is nice and tart and pink. It reminded me of an old-fashioned Dutch dessert called Haagse Bluf that is made by whipping egg whites, sugar and red currant juice.
The combination of the cake and frosting is ok but not great. For my taste it was a bit too much cranberries. In retrospect I'd opt for either cranberries in the cake or the frosting.

Cranberry cakes

makes 12

110 g (4 oz) flour
½ ts baking powder
½ ts vanilla
75 g (2 ⅔ oz) sugar
50 g (1 ¾ oz) white chocolate, chopped
25 g (1 oz) butter
1 egg
125 ml (½ cup) cranberry juice

Preheat the oven at 180°C (355°C). Line a muffin tin with paper liners.
Combine the flour, baking powder, vanilla and sugar in a medium bowl. Stir to mix. Melt the chocolate with the butter in the microwave or au bain marie. Put in a small bowl. Add the egg and stir until combined. Add the
juice and stir until combined. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until combined (will be lumpy). Spoon the mixture into the paper cups. Bake for about 25 minutes. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Cranberry whipped cream

250 ml (1 cup) whipping cream
25 g (1 oz) sugar
125 ml (½ cup) cranberry juice

Whip (on low speed) the cream and sugar to soft peaks. While still whipping, add the juice a
little at a time. Continue beating until more or less stiff.