Pumpkin Maple Yogurt Cake

I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that Thanksgiving is THIS week. It's the earliest it can possibly be, seeing how November 1 was a Thursday and....well, you can do the math from there. I am guessing that retailers are excited because it starts the holiday shopping a bit earlier than usual.

I was feeling the pumpkin love, and had a container of vanilla maple yogurt from Klein Farms in Easton in my fridge, and I wanted to come up with pumpkin cake that was moist, slightly tangy, and not too sweet. And which involved yogurt. You may not have the same yogurt, but never fear. You can substitute vanilla or plain yogurt rather easily--just please use regular stuff. If you use low-fat yogurt you're going to get low-fat taste. I am a very healthy eater, but when it comes to baked goods, my personal philosophy is that you gotta go big or go home. Low-fat, no-fat, no-sugar stuff (unless you have real health issues--i.e, diabetes or insulin resistance) just isn't generally worth the time or the illusion of health. You know how Michael Pollan talks about how people eat more processed food that's marked "low fat" and then wind up binging on carbohydrate-based snacks? The same applies to homemade low-fat stuff. It's more satisfying to just eat the real thing. And it's much easier to stop. And you need much less of it. Right? Are you with me? Ok!

Because I used a yogurt with maple in it, I only used 1 Tbsp of maple syrup and 1 teaspoon of maple flavor because I am a full believer in full flavor. If you have neither maple-based yogurt or fancy maple extracts/flavor, I'd suggest swapping out 1/4 of the brown sugar for maple syrup; use 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup maple syrup. But seriously, folks. If you do any kind of baking on any kind of regular basis, I can't recommend high quality extracts and flavors enough, such as this maple one. They really boost a flavor profile tremendously, and they tend to last for ages. Think about this when you're stocking up for holiday baking projects.

(Before you get all righteous with me about that not being PURE maple extract, I do believe the fine folks at either America's Test Kitchen and/or King Arthur have tested baked goods with pure maple extract and maple flavor and prefer maple flavor. I tend to agree. Maple flavor is more concentrated and therefore more assertive. It also means you need to use a LOT less, and organic maple syrup, which is what I typically buy, is not cheap and you need more of it. Ok. I feel better now.)

As for the frosting, I had some leftover maple frosting in my fridge (a fact that tickles John to no end--he says, "I love that I'm married to someone who just has frosting lying around...") and slathered it on top as best I could, and adorned the rim of the cake with walnuts. I didn't even toast them, but you should, because it tastes way better. You can also skip the frosting altogether and just opt for a plain cake, or a lovely dusting of confectioner's sugar, just before serving (otherwise the cake quickly sucks it up, slurp, like a sponge).

Pumpkin Maple Yogurt Cake
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. Boyajian's natural maple flavor
1 Tbsp. organic maple syrup (do NOT use pancake syrup!)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup dark brown sugar  (or 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup maple syrup if there is no maple-related flavor/extract or yogurt in your arsenal.)
2 large eggs
1 cup vanilla maple yogurt (Stonyfield makes one but it is not full-fat)
1 cup pumpkin puree, preferrably organic

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Whisk together flours through nutmeg in a small bowl and set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and brown sugar on medium-high speed until lightened in color and fluffy, 3-4 minutes.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating on medium-low speed, waiting for the first to be completely incorporated before adding the second. Add the maple flavor and 1 Tbsp. syrup; or, if you aren't using either a maple yogurt or maple extract, 1/4 cup of maple syrup.
5. Add the yogurt; mix on low speed to combine, and then add the pumpkin. Mix on low speed to combine. Do NOT overmix.
6. Spray with nonstick baking spray or butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan. Pour the batter into the pan.
7. Bake for about 30 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean in the middle--this is a moist, damp cake, but I would check it around 26-28 minutes to insure you don't overbake it.
8. Let it cool for about 1/2 hour in the pan and then remove the springform. Let it cool completely before frosting (if desired) or slicing.

FROSTING:
This is totally optional, but I'd suggest the following:
8 ounces of cream cheese, room temperature (take it out of the fridge when the cake goes in the oven)
3-4 cups of confectioner's sugar, sifted
2-3 Tbsp. maple syrup OR 1 tsp. maple flavor
2-3 Tbsp. of milk

1. In the now magically clean bowl of your stand mixer, fitted with the also now magically clean paddle attachment, cream the cream cheese (that sounds weird) on medium speed until it's fluffy, about two minutes.
2. Add the maple syrup or flavor and mix to combine.
3. Gradually add the confectioner's sugar and mix on medium speed to combine. Alternate with the tablespoons of milk as necessary to ensure a creamy consistency; it needs to be spreadable and fluffy, not spreadable and paste-like.
4. When the cake has cooled, spread across the top in a thin layer with an offset spatula.  Adorn the rim of the cake with walnut halves. You can toast them in a dry frying pan over medium heat until they become fragrant but keep an eye on them because you don't want them to burn. When you can smell them, it's time to stop.
 
Admittedly, frosting is one of those things I eyeball, so you may find that you need more or less milk or sugar depending on your preferences. If you want it really sweet, add more sugar and less milk, but the milk tends to help cut the sweetness. Taste as you go! Yeah, that's right!

I made this cake several days ago and it's STILL good, so I would say that it keeps for 3-5 days covered and in the fridge. 

Strawberry Rhubarb Experiment

I'm doing a quick post just so you can see something pretty and baking related on a Wednesday morning. It's strawberry rhubarb pie made with a hybrid crust of spelt flour and regular old AP flour. I also used tapioca for the first time. The recipe is one I'm testing for the Lehigh Valley Farmers Market Cookbook, which is officially seeking recipes now. I'll also be blogging about it too, hopefully more regularly than this one, but we shall see.

I've not used tapioca before in a pie filling, but strawberries are notoriously juicy and the last thing you want is all that hard work to go oozing all over the inside of your oven. So here are a few pics.....

If you know me, you know I have a fondness for crumb tops. I almost always make pies this way. It's kind of a long story as to why.

You can see the tapioca here--it looks kind of gritty.

And here's the pie, uncovered, before it gets sprinkled with a crumb topping.

And then here's the pie, just out of the oven. It's still cooling and I'm waiting for the whole thing to set so there aren't little pools of liquid floating on top to make me nervous anymore before I cut it.

I'll report back and let you know this tastes. I'm hoping the crust stays together (it was breaking up a bit when I was transferring to the pie dish) and the filling doesn't go crazy on me.

Spent Grain Rugelach: Or, a Totally Hacked Recipe

A few months ago, I started working with spent grain. It started with this recipe for spent grain sourdough bread. Someone shared a recipe for spent grain rugelach with me, but it had a few major problems. First, the original version, from a section on spent grain baking from the Brooklyn Brew Shop's web site, has some serious inconsistencies and oversights. I can't keep working from an incorrect recipe, so my motivation is equal parts sharing and equal parts sanity preservation.

This recipe's keys are the dried cranberries and the egg white. The dried cranberries make for a filling I've not seen before in either schnecken or rugelach, which typically consists of walnuts and brown sugar and lots of cinnamon.

Oh, and you may have heard me talk about the differences between rugelach and schnecken before. You may know that I make a schnecken with nutella. And thank goodness for that, because the original version of this recipe directs you to roll the dough out into a rectangle, but does not tell you what size it should be, how thick the dough should be, nor how many pieces you should get when you slice up the rolled-up rectangle. So I hacked the recipe, and turned it into a schnecken recipe. So that means the dough is divided into six equal pieces and rolled into circles, and then split up like a pizza. The original recipe also called for much more sugar and more of the filling, and it was just too much all around--I had leftover filling and it was too sweet to have so much sugar in the middle.

For the Dough:

• 8 ounces of cream cheese, at room temperature
• 8 ounces of unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup spent grain

For the Filling:

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg white
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon

For the Top:

• 1 egg  yolk
• 1-2 Tbsp. water
• Sparkling sugar

Directions
1. In the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and cream cheese and salt until it starts to look fluffy and it's well incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the 1/4 cup granulated sugar.
2.  Add in the flour slowly, followed by the spent grain. Once it has come together, remove it from the bowl and wrap it in wax paper and put it in the fridge for a least an hour, longer if possible, and up to overnight. (I would not let this sit for more than 24 hours because when you roll the dough out it will be a bit dry.)
3. While the dough chills, combine the filling ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. I find it easiest to combine all the dry ingredients first, and add the egg white last. Make sure the egg white is fully integrated; the mixture should look evenly wet.
4. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
5. Wait until it's time to take dough out of fridge......
6. Remove dough from the fridge and weigh it. Divide the dough in half with a chef's knife or pastry scraper. Divide each half into thirds of equal weight. Wrap up three of the dough chunks and leave three out. You will notice that this dough is sticky, stickier than your typical rugelach dough.
7. Flour a pastry board and start by rolling out the first chunk of dough into a circle that measures about 8-10 inches in diameter. Scoop about 2 Tbsp. of the cranberry-sugar-nut mixture onto the circle of dough, and spread it out so that none of it clumps together in the middle.
8. Using a pizza cutter, divide the dough into eight equal pie-shaped portions. Roll each pie slice up, starting with the fat end closest to you. The filling will want to spooge out. If it does this, try to concentrate it everywhere but the skinny part, which you reach last when you're rolling. Repeat this process until you have 12 on a baking sheet.
9. Whisk together the egg yolk and water. Brush the tops of the rugelach with this mixture and sprinkle the tops with the coarse sugar (I've used raw sugar in a pinch but it doesn't hold up as well as coarse white sparkling sugar.)
10. Baking for about 20 minutes, until the ends are starting to brown and the tops are starting to brown a bit. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
11. Repeat steps 7-10 until you're out of dough.
12. Yield: 4 dozen

I am still calling it rugelach even though my other recipe is almost the same in its methodology and execution, and that one's called schnecken. Tomato, tom-ah-to. You know where this is going, I imagine. This little treat is sweet, freezes well, and travels well. They will keep for several days (probably five at most) in a tightly covered container at room temperature.

Friday's Five Favorites: Secret Ingredients

I realized something recently that I already innately knew, but it bears repeating. It took reading a post from Will Write For Food followed by a note from my friend Jaime K: You don't always have to post a recipe.

Of course not. (Slaps forehead with palm of hand.)

I have been on a recipe treadmill over here, because I want to master things. So what I have decided to do is start a regular feature on Fridays where I share with you five of my favorite things. They may be things that help me make kitchen magic. They may be five favorite people, places, or things that I love that are food-centric. We're making this up as we go, people. The sky's the limit.

Let's talk about ingredients, because those make a big difference. I learned something about myself as a cook/baker years ago. I almost always up the spice/herb/citrus zest quotient when I look at a recipe. Most of the time you can do this with pepper, but not always. (You cannot, however, do this with salt in baking. But most people undersalt their food. That's another story.)  Nowadays, I just add these elements without much measuring, but based on tasting, tasting, tasting, as I go along. (Yes, I even do this with cake batter. Who says baking and cooking are such terribly different animals? You think I'm crazy? I wash my hands, don't worry.) I honestly don't see the point in eating something that has a weak flavor. It's gotta be assertive, stand up and announce itself. "Hi. I'm lemon. Nice to meet the tastebuds on the sides of your tongue." You get the idea. Otherwise, what's the point?

So when I bake, I layer the flavors at different stages of the game, which is not too different from cooking. Here are some of my favorite secret ingredients. 

1. Powdered lemon peel. You can certainly use this instead of zest or juice or extract or oil. I get mine from the fine folks at Penzeys. But why not use it in conjunction with those items, like in lemon cupcakes (wish I had a URL to insert here)? It's all the outer peel, so you get no bitter pith. Add it to the dry ingredients, when whisking or sifting, and you have an instant citrus hit. I usually use about 1/2 tsp. to 1 tsp. per cup of dry ingredients. Or more if I'm feeling sassy or making a large batch of something.

2. Black cocoa powder. This one is a new addition to the team. The instructions on the package are not to be disregarded. The smart people at King Arthur Flour (I promise I'm no shill for them; they just make stellar stuff) warn you to use this sparingly. This is one of those cases where I pay attention, because they know what they're doing when it comes to baking. It makes things darker and more intensely chocolatey. You may find that when you add in a tablespoon or so at a time, substituting for regular cocoa powder, you may need to add a little more sugar (a tablespoon or so at a time), to balance it out. This is what I did with the Black and White Overdrive cupcakes.

3. Boyajian lime oil. These things are concentrated, and you only need a little bit; 1/2 tsp. per cup of dry measuring and 1/4 tsp. per cup of liquid measuring I usually add this to almost everything I make in the spring and summer that contains citrus, but especially margarita cupcakes. Boyajian sells lemon, orange, and tangerine oils, too. They last quite a while provided you take care of them by keeping them refrigerated.

4. Espresso powder. You can get this online pretty easily. I add it, automatically, to anything that's strictly chocolate-based. It also rocks in Joy the Baker's Cappuccino Cookies with Espresso and White Chocolate. Add 1/2 tsp. to 1 tsp. per cup of flour, depending on how pronounced you want the flavor to be. I also add it to my whoopie pie recipe, which I don't believe I've yet published here. Must. Get. Bizzay!

5. Vanilla soy milk instead of regular milk. In general, this a pretty safe swap in any case that calls for milk. I do this in frosting pretty regularly, because it adds a little sweetness without the cloying sweetness that you sometimes get from confectioner's sugar. Or go crazy and use chocolate soy milk in a chocolate cake instead of regular milk. You can experiment in baking. Don't let those savory people tell you otherwise.

What are some of your favorite secret ingredients in cooking and baking? Inquiring minds wanna know! 

Black and White Overdrive: Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

I can't believe it's been so long. People, I am so sorry. This month has been a whirlwind of writing and baking and planning and scheming and, oh.  I don't even know where to start. There are so many projects swirling around, all of them replete with promise and good intentions and ideas and excitements. We are so switched on around here, we don't have much "off" time. I've been just about keeping up.

I have been baking all along, of course, but here's one I can share with you. It's an adapted recipe from Bakerella. It involves submerging an Oreo cookie (or its ilk) in the actual cupcake batter, which is really liquidy, or breaking up a cookie so it becomes more of a chunky cupcake kind of experience: you decide which you prefer, but I just plum submerged the cookie itself, intact. You then top said cupcake with frosting, naturally, and another cookie. In my case, I was down to only six cookies, so I had to break them and half to make them go twice as far. So they became little half moons. And I didn't use Oreos, because the film they leave in my mouth is so gross. So I bought the Newmans O's which don't have partially hydrogenated anything. I know it's still a processed cookie; bugger off. This is hard work, people. Heh-heh.

Ms. Bakerella says you should get at least 12 cupcakes, but any recipe with 1 1/2 cups flour and then another 1/2 cup of cocoa is pushing way past a dozen. but I got way more than 12 cupcakes. I got more like almost two dozen. I suppose that means I got about 20.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder
2 Tbsp. black cocoa powder (Note: If you don't have it, don't sweat it. But damn, this stuff is intense and really amps up the flavor.)
1 1/3 cup sugar
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. espresso powder
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. coffee extract
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup hot water
18 Oreos (or 24 if you have a fresh, unopened package, which I clearly did not.)

Frosting
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
4 Tbsp. shortening
1 tsp. vanilla
3-4 cups sifted confectioner's sugar
3-4 Tbsp. milk
2 tsp. or more of Oreo cookie crumbs
Note: You know how to make crumbs, right? In my case, I used almost an entire jar of Duff Cookies and Cream Sprinkles, because I spotted them at Michaels the week before and nabbed them, knowing this project was in my future.)

Directions
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and line one and a half muffin trays with cupcake liners. Alternately, you can always coat it with a baking spray or hit it with some good old-fashioned butter smeared into pan.
2. Either break apart about 12 cookies and place the crumbs in each cup, or place one entire cookie on the bottom of each cup. (The whole cookie will likely float to the top during baking. Wish I'd taken a photo of that but these cupcakes went too quickly for that.)
3. Combine the dry ingredients--the flour through espresso powder--in a medium-sized bowl.
4. Combine the eggs, oil, vanilla, coffee extract, and milk in a separate bowl and whisk together for a few seconds.
5. Dump eggy-oil mix into the dry ingredients. Combine.
Note: I like to start off cakes and cupcakes that come together this way by folding in the dry ingredients, but then finish it up with a small whisk to make sure all the lumps are gone, gone, gone.
6. Add the hot water and mix well until thoroughly incorporated.
7. You can then do one of two things. If you're lucky, you've got mixing bowls with little spouts on them like I do, and you can slowly pour this pretty aqueous batter into the cupcake pan, filling it about 3/4 full. Or you can transfer it to one of those large Pyrex glass measuring cups, and pour along that way. I normally recommend using a 1/4 cup cookie/ ice cream scoop, but that got messy. Halfway through I switched back to the bowl itself and just made sure my hand was steady. I still spilled.
8. Keep going until you have no more batter. You'll likely get 1 1/2 dozen cupcakes.
9. Bake for about 18 minutes until the tops spring back lightly when you touch them or a cake tester comes out fairly clean (you don't want any goop.)
10. Take them out of the oven, put them on a cooling rack and wait ten minutes. Then, transfer them out of the pan to the rack to cool completely. (If you forget this step you may get gummy cupcakes.)

The frosting is pretty straightforward. The original recipe called for all shortening (gulp), but I don't really care for an all-shortening frosting because of the desire to create a white, white base against which the crumbs could be contrasted. To me, no matter what you flavor you put with it, you can always taste shortening in shortening-based frostings; there's this greasy mouthfeel you get. (I know, it goes back to that icky film-in-the-mouth-thing again, doesn't it?)  Even when I do vegan baking, I always use a combination of shortening and Earth Balance. It just tastes better. Trust me on this.

Frosting directions
1. Cream together the butter and shortening in the bowl of a stand mixer.
2. Add your vanilla. Combine.
3. Add the powdered sugar in several increments. I usually do this in 4-5 increments because that stuff makes an unholy mess all over the kitchen if you add too much at once.
4. Add tablespoons of milk as necessary, when things start getting too thick and gunky.
5. If you're adding cookie crumbs, now's your chance. Turn off the mixer and mix in by hand. (I just like doing this kind of stuff by hand.)
6. Frosting! There are a number of ways you can apply the frosting. You can mess around with tips and pastry bags if you want something all sweet and fluffy. I planned to roll the tops in the cookie bits so I didn't see any point in making the frosting a work of art. I used a palette knife and made it as smooth a surface as possible. And then I rolled the Duff crumbs. (That sounds weird.)
7. If you're using an entire cookie, you can carefully ensconce it among the fluffy waves of frosting. Or if like me you have limited resources, you carefully slice them in half with a chef's knife and marvel at how cleanly they break, and put the cut side on top of the cupcake. And then eat one.

These will keep for days. I kept them covered in a cake dome. They were good even 4-5 days later.

Cracker Jack Cupcakes: Take Me Out to the Ball Game

It's that time, people.

Baseball!

I have been brainstorming a special cupcake to herald the onset of baseball season. It's serious business in our house and pretty much the only thing on television between now and November, with brief interruptions of Curious George. It means also, though, that the season for Iron Pigs widowhood has kicked in, but no worries. I have plans for that. This cupcake came out of a conversation with John about baseball, loosely, in which he said the words "Cracker Jacks." I can't remember the context, but it does not matter. I then said, "Cracker Jack cupcakes."

I brainstormed this recipe for a while, thinking of a peanut butter base versus a caramel base, and toyed briefly with the idea of adding cornmeal but then decided against it. Yesterday, I finally decided on a browned butter dulce de leche base with a salted peanut buttercream frosting. The whole thing's topped, of course, with real live Cracker Jacks, which sadly seem to come with fewer peanuts these days. So I ameliorated what was there with chopped roasted, unsalted ones. I doubled this recipe because half were for sale and I could not go through all this work and then be banned from tasting the result. No, that would not be right. And that would mean no sharing, either, which totally isn't cool. So this recipe yields 24 cupcakes, but it can easily be halved.

My palette is also indebted to Jason Hook, whose peanut butter miso ice cream loosely informed this cupcake's genesis.

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup of butter, divided (you'll cream one stick and turn the other into browned butter!)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 14-ounce can dulce de leche, or 1 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk (more on that in a minute).
4 large eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup whole milk
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract (please use the real stuff)
1 box of Cracker Jacks
1/2 cup roasted, chopped peanuts

Frosting:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup peanut butter, or more to taste
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt or coarse sea salt (Do NOT use regular table salt because it will be too salty; you won't have the random delicious taste of salt crystals in the frosting.)
2-3 cups sifted confectioner's sugar (or more, to taste.)
2-3 Tbsp. milk

For the dulce de leche:
1. Set your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Pour the contents of a can of sweetened condensed milk into a pie plate. Set that pie plate into a shallow, larger pan which you will then fill with hot water. Cover the plate with aluminum foil.
3. Bake (is that even the right word here? Cook?) the milk for about an hour until it's thickened and darkened in color.
4. Remove from the oven to cool. You can put this in the fridge after it's cooled and do this step a day ahead if you like, which is what I did. You'll need to mix it with the whisk attachment of your stand mixer (or the whisk attachment on your immersion blender, which is what I did), to break up any clumps.

Notes: You can also do the same thing in the microwave, but the instructions are more fussy and require you to pay more attention to it. You can also reputedly put an entire unopened can of the milk into a pot of simmering water, making sure that the water covers the can at all times. Simmer for a couple of hours and then let the can cool. When you open it up, voila. Dulce de leche. I did not do this, though. I wanted a hands-off approach, and the oven came to the rescue.

For the browned butter, or beurre noisette:
This couldn't be easier. If you want more information about this and why it's lovely to do in cooking and baking, see Michael Ruhlman.
1. Take the stick of butter and melt it in a small saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. Let it cook until it starts to turn brown; you'll know this is happening because the kitchen will smell like nutty, caramel-y butter and there will be a fine, bitty layer of sediment on the bottom of your pan.
3. Turn it off the heat immediately; the butter will continue to cook even if it's off, so you may want to transfer the butter to a separate bowl to cool completely. 

For the cupcakes:
1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Cream the sugars and 1/2 cup of butter in the bowl of your stand mixer for 3-4 minutes until light and fluffy.
3. Add the browned butter, now cooled to room temperature. You may see streaky bits. Don't panic.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla, beating well to combine for about five minutes.
5. Add the flour, salt and baking powder, alternating with the milk, starting and ending with the flour. Mix only until no streaks of flour remain.
6. Scoop out by 1/4 cup into lined cupcake pans (whoops, sorry to miss that step, but you knew what to do, right?) and bake for 18-20 minutes.
7. Remove to cool in the pans for a few minutes, and then transfer to cool completely on wire racks.

For the frosting:
1. Cream the butter on medium speed in your stand mixer, fitted with the paddle.
2. Add the peanut butter and continue to mix.
3. When it's incorporated, start adding the sugar, slowly. When you see it getting too thick and clumpy (peanut butter and butter do this, thanks to the fat), add milk. Repeat process as necessary until the sugar is gone.


For the assembly:
1. Once the cupcakes have cooled, cut a small hole in the top of each cupcake. I used the smallest of my biscuit cutters. Don't press it all the way through; you only want to score the top of it.
2. Take a small serrated knife and pop off each top of the cupcake and set aside.
3. Fill each hole with about 1 Tbsp. of dulce de leche. Put the top back on each cupcake. Don't worry if it's bumpy. Frosting hides a multitude of sins.
4. Frost each cupcake, giving yourself a relatively smooth workspace.
5. Place about a teaspoon worth of peanuts on top of each cupcake.
6. Place 4-5 Cracker Jacks among the peanuts.
7. Eat them!

Apologies!

I have been a slacker!

Things have been busy and/or difficult in the past couple of weeks. I have been baking and writing a lot but just there have not been enough hours in the day.

Also, I am working on a lot of projects--most of them in my mind and/or in the discussion phase, so that's occupying a lot of my energy.

I'm writing to tell you, mostly, that a new recipe will be posted soon. And I promise it will be worth the wait. And I also promise it will be in honor of baseball season starting. That's all I'll say.

Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here's some brioche I made this morning.....