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eating cupcakes since the late 60's
    • Category: Mrs Shuck's Creations

      • More truffles

        Posted at 10:06 pm by MLea
        Feb 28th

        While I was making vegan Elvises, I also made another (huge) batch of dark chocolate cake truffles.

        So far, I have tried the following as accessory flavors.  All of these add a nice texture, but contrasting flavors (salty, spicy and sour) work best.  With darker and less sweet chocolate coatings, sweet toppings are fine.  Sweeter flavors on the vanilla coating can be a little cloying since vanilla candy coat is already a little too sweet for me.  Your local 7-11 is an excellent source for accessories…small package sizes and LOTS of junk food!

        • Fancy salts: Hawaiian black salt, Himalayan pink salt, Australian pink salt.  Black salt looks especially fancy on vanilla coating.
        • Crushed saltines: good for texture and as above, salt and chocolate = tasty.
        • Crushed Oreos: okay, but looks nicer on vanilla candy coat than chocolate
        • Crushed Butterfinger: nice color
        • Toasted pecans, walnuts or peanuts
        • Almonds: blanched, smoked, and plain roasted
        • Wasabi powder
        • Chipotle chili powder
        • Shredded coconut
        • Chocolate jimmies (boring, but looks nice)
        • Colored sugar (boring, but looks nice)
        • Chopped pretzels
        • PB2, Peanut butter powder
        • True Orange Ginger powder
        • Instant espresso powder
        • Coconut bacon
        • And my favorite junk food, Salt and Pepper Kettle Chips

        kettlebrandpotatochipssaltpep

         

        An assortment of accessory toppings looks nice as well.

        DSC_0029

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations | Tagged cake truffles
      • Cake Truffles

        Posted at 8:42 pm by MLea
        Feb 9th

        I so enjoyed making the football shaped cake truffles for the SuperBowl that I went a little truffle crazy… I did this over a couple of days.  I took no photos except for the end result.  My apologies.  Next time…

        On the first day, I used the same cake recipe from PCC as last time, but I had to make MORE substitutions since I didn’t want to buy more stout.  My revised ingredients are below:

        • 1 cup club soda
        • 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
        • 3/4 cup Dutch process cocoa powder
        • 2 Starbucks via Italian roast packets (unsweetened)
        • 1 & 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
        • 1/4 cup cornstarch
        • 1 cup evaporated cane juice (or white sugar)
        • 3/4 tsp salt
        • 1 cup brown sugar
        • 1 & 1/2 tsp baking soda
        • 2 eggs
        • 2/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
        • 1 tsp vanilla extract
        • 4 ounces chocolate chips

        Oven temperature= 350 degrees.

        Revised directions:

        • Heat the club soda and butter over medium heat until butter is melted.  Add the cocoa powder and the instant coffee and whisk util smooth.  Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
        • Sift together flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt.  Add the sugars and blend well.
        • In another bowl, beat eggs with yogurt and vanilla until smooth.  Add butter mixture and stir until combined, then add flour mixture in thirds.  Stir until just combined.  Stir in chocolate chips.

        Pour into 10×13 inch pan and bake approximately 30 minutes or until done.

        Note: This batter is extremely tasty when raw.  I know you aren’t supposed to eat raw batter because of the eggs, but I’m always afraid I forgot something so I ALWAYS taste…and this one I taste a little more…and lick the beaters and spatula the bowl CLEAN.

        Let the cake cool completely.

        Day 2:   I had some opened cream cheese and mascarpone left over from the football cupcakes, so I made some more of the whipped cream cheese icing using the following ingredients:

        • 4 ounces (ish) mascarpone cheese
        • 1/2 block cream cheese
        • 1/3 cup powdered evaporated cane juice (or white sugar)

        Whip cheeses together until smooth, then add powdered sugar and beat until smooth and fluffy.

        I wanted to make sure the truffles were truly truffles so I made a little more ganache, using a little less cream than usual since I was adding the cream cheese frosting.  I probably used 2 & 1/2 ounces of cream with 8 ounces of chocolate.  I combined this with the cream cheese icing while the ganache was a little over room temperature.  I mixed this into crumbled cake made yesterday.  I used a 1 ounce portion scoop to measure out uniformly sized quantities of cake mixture and rolled them into balls with gloved hands.  They went into the freezer on a Silpat covered cookie sheet until the next day…

        Day 3:  I had about 1/2 of a pack of Candiquik left over from last time.  (Clean up on this is really easy…put a lid on the bowl and put it in the cabinet.  It can be remelted later.)  I added some dark chocolate chips to this and melted it together.    I started off pulling out the leftover coconut from the pantry to dip these in.  I also had some toasted chopped pecans on hand.  Mr Shuck got into the fun and pulled out wasabi powder and a jar of PB2 (powdered peanut butter)

        pb2

        I skewered each truffle ball, dipped it into the melted chocolate and then either dipped into the garnishes or sprinkled on the garnishes while the chocolate was still melted.  I had to work fairly quickly to get the balls coated while the candy was still wet.  I set the skewers in a glass until the chocolate was solid.  I only have 4 skewers, so while each batch solidified, Mr Shuck and I would scour the cabinets for something different to try.   When solid, I put them onto a cooling rack.  When I ran out of chocolate, I melted down the rest of the bag of Vanilla Candy Melts.  When I ran out of that, I put the truffle balls back into the freezer for another day…

        The finished products:

        truffles

        From left to right

        Top Row:  (all dipped in vanilla candy): Garnished with pecans, chipotle chili powder, espresso powder and chocolate jimmies

        2nd row: (all dipped in chocolate candy): Garnished with PB2, chipotle chili powder, Hawaiian salt, and vanilla candy splashes

        3rd row: Vanilla coconut, chocolate pecan, chocolate coconut and chocolate chipotle

        4th row: Chocolate espresso, chocolate wasabi, chocolate pecan, and vanilla with red sugar

        5th row: vanilla dipped in orange ginger powder, chocolate with PB2, chocolate with Hawaiian salt and chocolate coconut.

        These disappeared amazingly fast at work.  The only fairly negative comment I received was that the wasabi needed more wasabi.  The ones with chipotle were especially well received.

        For Valentines Day, Mr Shuck used the remainders in the freezer to make treats for his staff.  He used as toppings: crystallized ginger, espresso, crushed potato chips, crushed pretzels, crushed smoked almonds, and Oreo crumbs.

        I’m definitely going to make these again!  They are easier than cupcakes.  Everything doesn’t have to be done on the same day since it doesn’t matter if the cake dries out since it’s being mixed in with ganache.  These are easier to transport since I don’t have to worry about them tipping over in the car.

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations | Tagged chocolate, truffles
      • Goooooooo Seahawks!

        Posted at 2:34 pm by MLea
        Feb 3rd

        Mr Shuck and I were invited to a Superbowl party and the host suggested that I bring “baked goods”.  I tried to go with a football theme…

        I started with a Chocolate Stout Cake recipe that just happened to be in the February issue of PCC Natural Markets’ Taste magazine.  I had to make a couple of substitutions. Instead of 1 cup butter, I used 1 stick of butter and 1/2 cup coconut oil (because I forgot to get butter when I went to the grocery store.)  I also didn’t have any instant coffee, so I used 2 Starbucks Via packets.  Also, lately I’ve been adding some cornstarch to my Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry flour to make it a little lighter.  I found the ratio at Joy the Baker.  Instead of 2 cups of all purpose flour, I used 1 & 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour and 1/4 cup cornstarch, sifted together.  This has got to be the best chocolate cake recipe I’ve used.  It’s light but has a very rich chocolate flavor.  You can’t taste the beer at all.  I made one rectangular cake (to turn into “footballs”) which baked for around 35 minutes, some regular sized cupcakes that baked for 20 minutes, and some mini’s, which baked for 13 minutes.

        For the icing, I used Aida Mollenkamp’s Whipped Cream Cheese frosting that I found at Chow.com.  I used 1/2 cream cheese and 1/2 mascarpone cheese to lighten the flavor up a bit.  I like this recipe because it does not have very much sugar in it.  I don’t normally use artificial coloring, but I needed some AstroTurf for my football, so I added a little green.

        Image

        I use Cacao Barry’s Extra Brute cocoa powder and it makes the cake very dark.

        For the grass effect, I colored some flaked coconut green…

        Image

        And dipped the cakes into it…

        Image

        I accidentally “fixed” the above photo and didn’t save the original.  It looks like it would glow with the lights out.

        To make the footballs, I made some ganache using 8 ounces of Callebaut 60/40 and 1/2 cup of heavy cream.  While this cooled, I crumbled up the previously cooked rectangular cake.  I added enough of the ganache to make the cake hold together and made football shaped cake balls.  To make them uniformly sized, I scooped the “dough” with a one ounce scoop.  They went into the freezer for a few hours to solidify.

        Once firm, I dipped them into melted chocolate flavored Candiquik

        Image

        and used Wilton Candy Melts to make the stitches

        Image

        Hopefully dipping the chocolate will get more attractive with practice.  I really like making the cake truffles.  They are delicious and very easy.  Although I made this all in a few hours, it would be easy to do each part on a different day when I have 20-30 minutes at a time.

        The end result:

        P1010235

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations | Tagged chocolate, coconut, cream cheese, football, ganache
      • Chinese New Year Cupcake

        Posted at 10:31 pm by MLea
        Jan 31st

        I had a lot of ambition for Chinese New Year Cupcakes. I purchased fondant and edible gold spray and I was going to make little red envelopes with fondant and spray paint Chinese characters on them…then my day off got away from me. I attempted making hard sugar fireworks…which worked, but I didn’t think about the fact that sugar is water soluble….

        20140202-213021.jpg

        Successful fireworks!

        20140202-213036.jpg

        Melted fireworks…fail!

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations
      • End of the alphabet!

        Posted at 7:57 pm by MLea
        Jan 11th

        Glikk sent me over the edge! No more goofy letters!

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations
      • Rest of the alphabet…

        Posted at 7:02 pm by MLea
        Oct 31st

        I’m on staycation for 2 weeks, which would be the PERFECT time to plow through a few letters…

        Unfortunately, I’m trying to lose some weight and having scads of cupcakes around is not compatible with that goal.

        I am brainstorming some flavors, though…

        Glikk, Nuh, Snee, Jogg and Spazz are conceptualized.  I just have to get back to work so I have someone to eat them all!

        Floob: seems like it should be filled and have a fluffy icing…but I have no idea about the flavors.

        Zatz: all I can think of is bagels…so cream cheese icing on something

        Quall, Thnad, Flunn, Itch, and Vroo: No idea!  Comments needed desperately…

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations | Tagged alphabet
      • “Fuddle” = Fudge Fennel

        Posted at 9:23 pm by MLea
        Oct 9th
        fennel

        the main ingredient…

        I’ll just say at the onset that I’m not very happy with this letter.   I could see the potential in it…fennel is a little licorice-y…chocolate covered licorice is popular…but it didn’t translate into delicious…

        I’ll tell you about it anyway…

        I made a fennel cake using the same cake recipe I did for the plum cake for “WUM”, just using pureed fennel instead.  The batter wasn’t heavy on fennel flavor, so I heated a little milk with some fennel seeds, whirred it with the immersion blender, then strained out the solids.  It helped.  The cake is fine on it’s own.

        I found a whipped fudge icing that ultimately wasted a lot of ingredients…it turned out extremely sweet but bitter at the same time, if that’s possible.   It’s also very grainy.  I’m not even going to reference it.  Before making this, I tried to find the recipe I used previously for the fudge filling in my Drumstick cupcakes.  It never dawned on me, until I just made that link, that I posted the recipe!

        Mr Shuck thinks it overpowers the delicate fennel flavor of the cake.  I agree.

        I garnished with some candy coated fennel seeds that I got at the Indian grocery.

        fuddel

        Fudge Fennel

        On top of all this…I’m not happy with my photos!   What’s wrong with the white balance?  Some days are just like this.  I hope I can get rid of all these cupcakes at work tomorrow…

        So far On Beyond Zebra has inspired 4 successes and one fail.  I’m still at a B average.

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations
      • “Humpf”= Hummus pFalafel

        Posted at 7:43 pm by MLea
        Oct 1st

        I have to thank Mr Shuck for this flavor.   He suggested hummus, although as a joke.  He reaped what he sowed though as this was his dinner…

        P1010134

        Dinner plate: falafel cakes topped with hummus, served with lemon tahini sauce and crudite

         

        Chickpeas soaking

        This recipe started with soaking some chickpeas…

        I did a fast soak…boiled for 5 minutes then let them sit for an hour.  Half of the chickpeas went into the food processor for the falafel.  The other half went into the pressure cooker to become hummus.    (Cooked at high pressure for 15 minutes, then quick-release of pressure.)  I usually DO cook dried chickpeas when I make hummus.   It’s less expensive and I don’t have to worry about the BPA in the cans.   In the pressure cooker, it takes about an hour to bring the pressure up, cook at high pressure for 40 minutes, then let the pressure release naturally.   If I’m in a hurry though, I’ll use canned.   It’s still cheaper to use canned than buy prepared hummus.

        While the rest of the chickpeas were cooking I made the “cakes” using Mark Bittman’s Baked Falafel recipe.   I didn’t have fresh parsley or cilantro, so I used some dried.   (The were definitely missing the nice green color and some of the flavor.)  Instead of making them into patties..

        scooped

        Falafel mixture scooped into a greased mini muffin pan…

        falafel

        After baking for 20 minutes at 375 degrees…

        To make the hummus,  I combined the following in the food processor:

        • 3 cups cooked chickpeas (about 2 cans if using canned…drained)
        • 1/3 cup tahini (sesame seed paste)
        • 2 1/2 teaspoonfuls TruLemon (this is equal to 5 tablespoons lemon juice)
        • 2 teaspoons garlic powder (or 2 cloves, minced)
        • 1 teaspoon salt
        • a splash of olive oil

        I pureed this until smooth, adding a little water at a time to achieve the right consistency, which I kept a little thicker than usual so I could pipe it like icing.

         

        P1010130

        Falafel cake topped with hummus and garnished with a sun-dried tomato and a pita chip

        P1010132

        and for variety…with a grape tomato and a carrot curl

        These will not be going to work.  I’m sure no one there is all that disappointed.   The falafel was a little dry on it’s own, perhaps because of the missing fresh herbs for moisture or due to over cooking.  With the tahini sauce, they were fine.  It was a nice addition to our frequent dinner of hummus and vegetables.

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations | Tagged chickpeas, falafel, hummus, tahini
      • Um = Umbrella Drink

        Posted at 9:23 pm by MLea
        Sep 26th

        The next letter in Dr Seuss’ book, On Beyond Zebra is “UM”.

        The first flavor that came to my mind, was umeboshi plum, which I just used in “WUM”.  I decided on “Umbrella Drink” and my favorite umbrella drink…Pina Colada.

        pina-colada-290x290

        The above photo is how I’ve always seen a Pina Colada presented, so I thought the 3 garnishes (paper umbrella, pineapple and maraschino cherry) were important details.  There are only 3 ingredients, so it seemed a simple flavor to replicate.

        For my first attempt at this letter, I thought I’d try making this recipe PALEO.  The main reason is that my friend, Mrs Chen, is currently eating PALEO and her birthday was last week, so I thought I’d kill two birds and make a cake that she could eat.  While she did like the cake, Mr Shuck spit it out.  It tasted a lot like pineapple quiche: not a great taste.  It contained: pineapple, almond flour, coconut milk, eggs and baking soda.  It needed sugar.  Lots of sugar.  And less eggs.  I didn’t attempt an icing since it was so horrible.

        It took a week for me to get another chance to try again.  My first stop was to the party store to pick up the umbrellas…$5 for 175!  If anyone who knows me needs paper umbrellas…

        I followed a recipe for pineapple cake that I found at Tidymom.net.   I substituted a splash of rum instead of vanilla extract and ended up adding more pineapple because the batter didn’t have a lot of flavor.   I ended up with 48 mini cupcakes, (which I baked for about 14 minutes) and 6 regular size (which I baked for 22 minutes).  The cakes browned nicely, but rose a little “lumpily”…

        DSC_0091

         

        DSC_0092

        I guess the lumps add character.

        For the icing…I used whipped coconut cream.  I originally found the idea for this when I was searching for a PALEO friendly icing.   I used a conglomeration of suggestions from a couple of websites.   I started with 2 cans of coconut cream from Trader Joe’s.

        DSC_0090

         I put the coconut cream in the refrigerator overnight so the fats would solidify.  I turned the cans upside down before opening them and drained off the coconut water that was on top of the cream (really on the bottom of the cans).  I wanted to make sure that the icing stayed stable all day, so I added some WhipIt, which is essentially just corn starch and dextrose.

        DSC_0091

        I also added about 4 tablespoonfuls of evaporated cane juice (sugar) and 1-2 tablespoonfuls of vanilla bean paste (I didn’t measure, I just dumped some in.)  Then, I whipped the heck out of it until it was nice and fluffy.  It turned out to be thick enough to pipe.  I did end up with a couple of solid lumps of coconut, which clogged up the icing tip, but were easily picked out with a toothpick.

        I was a little hesitant to use maraschino cherries since they are usually artificially colored, but fortunately, I came across some at the grocery store that didn’t contain dye.

        cherries

        For the pineapple slices, I used dried pineapple rings from Trader Joes that I cut into sections with pointed ends and shoved into the cake.

        The end result…

        DSC_0096

        DSC_0099

        DSC_0103

        Now…what to do for “HUMPF”?!?!?!

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations | Tagged coconut, pina colada, pineapple
      • Wum= Wasabi Plum

        Posted at 9:04 pm by MLea
        Sep 18th

        So…the 2nd letter of Dr Seuss’ alphabet from On Beyond Zebra.  Finally.  It took 2 attempts.

        The “Um” wasn’t difficult for me.  I always have umeboshi plum paste in my frig.  Finding a compatible W flavor was hard.  Watermelon doesn’t have any flavor beyond “sweet” when it’s cooked, so that wouldn’t work.  White Chocolate.   Wasn’t feeling it.  I decided to go with wasabi since it was also an Asian flavor.  The umeboshi plum is sour and salty and I thought the sharp earthy taste of wasabi would complement it.

        wasplum

        The cake turned out quite good.  I used a puree of plums and prunes (for color).

        P1010113

        After mixing all the other ingredients together, I added umeboshi plum paste until it was a little overly salted.

        umepasteThe saltiness wasn’t as pronounced after the cakes were baked.  The plum puree made them very moist and not overly sweet.

        I didn’t want a sweet icing so thought I’d go with a mascarpone frosting.  1st mistake.  I also added too much wasabi.  2nd mistake.  Wasabi powder seems to take awhile to develop it’s flavor.  I couldn’t taste the wasabi at all then suddenly it was overpowering.  It also curdled the mascarpone.  Gross.

        It took a couple of weeks, but I tried again.  This time, I used white chocolate ganache and added a very small amount of wasabi powder.

        The ganache is incredibly sweet due to the sugar content of the white chocolate I used and I think it has a little bit of a throat itch quality from the wasabi.  If the wasabi isn’t pronounced enough, I can call them White Chocolate Plum instead.

        Wasabi Plum

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        Posted in Mrs Shuck's Creations | Tagged umeboshi plum, wasabi
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