It only took a few months to get it together enough to finish W.
W was originally going to be “Whoppers”. (The candy, not the hamburger.) I have malted milk powder in the house. I have chocolate in the house. At various times, I have had a box or 2 of Whoppers in the house in preparation. I didn’t do Whoppers for 2 reasons: First, the flavor profile is pretty simple. I’m not saying that I’m beyond simple by any means. (Wait for X!) I just thought it would be boring. Second, I could figure out how to give the cupcake that crunch without just putting a malt ball on as garnish. I wasn’t sure if they’d stay crunch if baked inside and didn’t know if the icing would make them soggy if I crunched them up. So, I scratched “Whopper” and decided on something that I’d never eat: Waldorf Salad.
Waldorf Salad has 5 ingredients: Apples, grapes, celery, walnuts and mayo. I dislike 40% of these ingredients. I’ll let you guess which ones. I could give you details about the origination of this salad, but I’d just be plagiarizing Wikipedia, so if you’re that interested, click here.
Waldorf Salad, stolen from Wikipedia
So I started off by making a simple apple cake. I combined blended together 2 eggs and 1 and 1/2 cups sugar. In another bowl, I combined 3 cups flour, 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder and a little salt. I wanted to include some mayonnaise in the cake recipe since Waldorf salad is traditionally dressed with mayo. I didn’t have any and forgot it at the store, so I sort of made my own. So…I found a recipe online for mayo which contained 1 cup oil, 1 egg yolk, 1 tablespoonful lemon juice and 1 tablespoonful vinegar. I didn’t see the value in whisking all this into an emulsion, so I dumped them together, then used 1 cup of the mixture instead of the oil. I added this and the flour mixture alternately to the eggs and sugar, then folded in 3 cups of diced apple and a handful of chopped walnuts. I thought about adding celery instead of some of the apple, but had intended to make a celery mascarpone icing.
I scooped batter into mini muffin pans and baked them at 350 degrees for around 15 minutes.
While the cakes were cooling, I juiced a little celery. I added this slowly to a whipped mixture of 1/2 cup whipping cream, around 1 cup of powdered sugar and 8 ounces of mascarpone cheese. Unfortunately, I think there was an enzymatic reaction between the celery and the dairy: curdling resulted. It wasn’t attractive. I thought at first that I had just put too much juice and had watered down the cheese too much. After adding another 8 ounces of cheese, I decided that it was unfixable.
Today’s cupcakes were more like muffins. Tasty, but naked without the icing.
I’ll try again soon. I think I may try using celery seed to flavor the mascarpone icing…
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