Kitchen Adventures: June 7, 2010 - Chocolate Buttermilk Pudding Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

Cupcakes are generally wonderful, and these are no exception.

These cupcakes were the first thing that I really made up here, and I ended up making them twice in one week because they were so delicious. This was also my first experiment with piping; I just cut off the corner of a ziploc, which while only mildly successful, felt very impressive.

I was looking for a chocolate cupcake recipe to make with ingredients I had on hand. I found this recipe from Martha Stewart and though it looked okay, but the comments seemed to indicate that it was somehow 'light' or 'diet'. Well, that certainly wasn't what I wanted. Another comment suggested adding dry pudding mix and oil to the recipe to make it especially rich and delicious. That sounded better! It didn't specify how much pudding mix, so I just decided to experiment and added in the whole box.

The dough was a surprising texture - it totally stuck to itself. See how clean the side of the bowl is? That's because the dough stayed in a giant ball. It made me nervous at first because I thought it was a sign my experimentation was leading to failure. I ended up adding some extra buttermilk because I thought it was too thick; I thought maybe the pudding mix needed some extra liquid.  It did get a little bit more liquidy, but the texture actually was awesome because it made the dough super easy to spoon into the cupcake tins (especially for mini ones - those things are usually really annoying to fill so this batter was great for that).

After adding in all these extra ingredients, I wasn't sure how the cupcakes were going to turn out, so I decided to make a tray of mini-cupcakes first as an experiment. When they turned out okay (I had to taste test of course), I continued on with the regular sized cupcakes.

They did sink a little bit in the middle. At the time I figured it was from all the extra stirring I was doing with my experimental added ingredients, but when I made them later in the week they had the same problem. The ratio of the baking ingredients probably needs to be adjusted so they rise properly, but I don't know enough chemistry to figure that out. Anyways, that's easily covered with frosting!

Yum! They tasted delicious - and they looked delicious on my new Hello Kitty serving tray (my score from Chinatown; the tag said 18.00 but the store sold it for $10!).

For the cupcakes:

Ingredients (Makes 12)

-3/4 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)

-3/4 cup sugar

-1 teaspoon baking powder

-1/2 teaspoon baking soda

-1/4 teaspoon salt

-6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (the recipe says Dutch-process is ideal, but I just used regular)

-3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

-9 tablespoons buttermilk

-1 large egg

-1 large egg white

-1 packet of dry chocolate pudding mix (4 oz)

-4 tablespoons vegetable oil

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard 12-cup muffin tin (or two 6-cup muffin tins) with paper liners. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
2. With an electric mixer, combine cocoa and 3 tablespoons hot water until a thick paste forms (the recipe claims this process intensifies the chocolate flavor - my cocoa wouldn't paste and just kind of clumped up but then it created deposits of chocolate in the cupcakes so I didn't mind). Add butter, oil, buttermilk, egg, and egg white; beat until combined. Add dry pudding mix and beat until combined. Whisk in flour mixture until smooth.
3. Scoop (or spoon) batter into prepared tin(s). Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely. 
4. Frost and decorate as desired.

For the frosting:

Ingredients

-4 sticks (1 pound) unsalted butter, softened

-6 cups sifted confectioners' sugar

-1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

-Pinch of salt

Directions

1. Put butter in bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on medium-high speed until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes. Reduce speed to medium; add sugar 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well, about 5 minutes total. Add vanilla and salt. Raise speed to medium-high; beat until smooth, about 1 minute more.

Cupcakes improvised from Martha Stewart, frosting straight from Martha Stewart

Weekend in San Francisco, Part 1

A few weeks ago Nick and I went up to San Francisco. The city is close enough that you could drive up for the day (it's about an hour to downtown from our apartment, more depending on traffic), but we found a good hotel deal on Hotwire so we decided to stay for the weekend.

Our hotel (like pretty much all city hotels, I'm sure), only offered valet parking for like $40 a day - way too expensive. They did offer a discount for hybrid vehicles (woo-hoo Prius!) but it still would've been like $60 for the weekend. Meanwhile, parking at BART stations on weekends is free! So on Friday night we drove to the nearest BART station and then took the train into the city. The hotel was only a few blocks from the BART stop so we just walked from there.

We stayed at Hotel Triton, which was a funky boutique hotel right across the street from the Chinatown gates. It was also near the BART line (totally utilized), Union Square, one of the Cable Car turnarounds, and the Embarcadero.  So much good stuff!

By the time we had gotten in and dropped off our bags, it was already 8:30, so we ended up having a late dinner and not doing much else. We meandered through Chinatown to get to Caffe Sport, recommended by a cousin of a friend of mine. I had the pesto pasta and it was delicious! Nick had pasta with seafood in it; I don't even remember what kind because I was really not interested. The best part was the Tiramisu dessert though - yum. After dinner we headed back, taking advantage of MUNI to conserve energy for Saturday's explorations.