Pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and the blog turns 1!

Wow... it happened... this blog turned a year old! Happy bloggiversary to me! It's amazing to see how much this blog has changed my life and how much my life has changed in a year. 

A year ago I was in Boston, now I'm in Portland. I was working at a company, praying to get admitted in a PhD program. Today, I'm a PhD student, with a lab, a project and a fantastic boss. (For real, no ass kissing). I've made tons of new friends, I've said see you later to the old ones, I've cried, laughed and got my heart broken.

 

This is my 94th post. Crazy huh? 94 recipes shared with all of you. 94 recipes that have allowed me to share my sorrows, my happiness, my struggles in the kitchen and outside of it. And most importantly, to meet amazing people in the blogging world. Like Maria, who's become one of my closest friends, even if she's all the way back in Spain.  

There's also all those blogs that inspire me, because of their recipes, their photos and the people who write them. Megan, Steph , Ellie, Carmen, 'the reds' and Mercè are great examples.

The pictures have also gotten better, even if they could still improve a lot! I have to thank Foodgawker and Tastespotting for accepting my pictures and for making me really mad when they didn't. Because that made me put even more effort into taking 'good enough' food porn. I can't forget 'Baking is Hot' either. Specially Patty for being such a nice gal and always willing to post my recipes.

And last but not at all least. I have to say thank you to all my testers. To all the friends, roommates, labmates and coworkers who've eaten everything that's been baked in my kitchen. Thanks for your smiles, for your hunger, for your complaints about gaining weight and for your praise over this blog. I wouldn't bake if I didn't have amazing eaters around me.

 

And now for the recipe!

Pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. ground cinnamon (or as much as you like)
¼ tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp. salt
1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin puree
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs

For the frosting:

1 package (8 oz) cream cheese

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar (or more depending on how sweet you want it)

Preheat your oven to 350 F

In a bowl, mix the oil, brown sugar and pumpkin. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until incorporated. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and baking soda and the spices. Add the dry mix to the wet mix in increments. Do not overmix or your cupcakes will be heavy.

Pour the batter into lined muffin tins. They should be about 3/4 full. I used mini muffin liners to have 'bite size' cupcakes but you can use whatever size you'd like. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Make sure to check them at the 15 min mark. 

For the frosting. Beat together the cream cheese, sugar and maple syrup until the consistency is right. If the frosting is too runny add more sugar. It should be 'hard' enough that you can frost the cupcakes with a spatula or pipe them with a bag. 

Once the cupcakes are baked, let them cool and then frost. While they are cooling, make sure to keep your frosting cold or it will become too soft. 

And because it's my blogiversary, I'm gonna allow myself the license of posting a picture of me. Frosting a cupcake. Because it's ok to do so once a year! (and yes, it was cold and I was wearing a hat inside the house...)

 

Boston cream pie cupcakes and farewells

My two best buddies, A and T, who I had the pleasure to work with for a year in my ex-lab at MIT, are leaving. They are both gonna be professors next year. Professors, can you believe it? My buddy buddies. The ones who I used to drink scotch every Thursday in the lab. Breaking you don't wanna know how many rules. The same ones who gave me the nickname of  'The Spaniard'. These two people who have been pretty much my family ever since I moved to Boston. They are gonna be professors in top universities next year.

I am leaving too, and for those who asked,  I'm moving to Portland, OR, to pursue a PhD. I cannot put into words how much I'm gonna miss them. For their farewell party in the lab, I wanted to make something special. Something that would remind them that Boston will always be a place where we spent a great time together.

If there's a dessert that speaks Boston, that's our famous cream pie. I knew that had to be my dessert. The problem? Carrying a creme filled, chocolate covered cake in this heat and humidity, sounded like a nightmare to me.  Filled cupcakes are an easier option and reduce the risk of arriving to the party covered in chocolate and pastry cream.

These cupcakes are soft, vanilla flavored, not exactly the traditional genoise that belongs to the Boston Cream Pie, but certainly pretty close. If you read often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of pastry cream and ever since I made it for the first time, I haven't been able to stop. It certainly is my favorite part of this cupcakes. To top them, some cute piped ganache. All in all, really good cupcakes that didn't last too long. 

Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes


Printable version

Vanilla cupcakes adapted from Amy Sedaris

Makes 24

6 tbsp unsalted butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 large egg

2 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup milk (I used soy milk)

Preheat your oven to 350 F

In a bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder and set aside. In another bowl cream butter and sugar. Add the vanilla extract and the egg and mix until combined. Alternatively with the milk, start adding the flour mix 1/3 cup at a time. Starting and finishing with the flour. Fill the baking cups half way (believe me, they get pretty and big) and bake the cupcakes for 15-20 min until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Pastry cream

Better if made a day in advance, makes enough for the 24 cupcakes

3 egg yolks

2 tablespoons corn starch

1 cup of milk

1 1/2 cups light cream

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Bring milk, cream and sugar to a boil in a saucepan. In the meantime, whisk together the egg yolks, the cornstarch until the mixture turns pale and forms ribbons. Once the milk mixture boils, turn off the heat. Take a tablespoon of the milk mix and add it slowly to the egg mixture while whisking it. This will help temper the eggs, that is, bring them to the right temperature so they don't curdle when you add the rest of the milk. Now start whisking the egg mixture and add, all at once, the milk and cream. Keep mixing until you have a homogeneous mixture and then return the liquid to the saucepan. Heat the mixture until it comes to a boil. I kept cooking for about 3 minutes after that. Keep in mind, the longer you cook it, the thicker the cream. Just remember to keep whisking the cream during the whole process. You can flavor the cream by adding a couple teaspoons of vanilla extract. If you do so, add it always at the end, with the heat off.

Ganache

6 oz unsweetened chocolate

1 cup light cream

Chop the chocolate in small chunks. Heat up the light cream until right before it comes to a boil. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir until dissolved. Let it sit in the fridge until the texture allows you to spoon it.

To assemble

Using the cone method, fill the cupcakes with cream. Then decorate the tops with the ganache, using a star tip. Keep in the fridge until about 15 minutes before serving

One last thing! A few days ago I got another award for the blog, this one from Carmen at Dulces Bocados, check her out, she makes beautiful concoctions of all kinds. This award is to demonstrate appreciation for those bloggers who try to pass on cultural values and to promote relationships between them.

I'm gonna pass the award to a few blogs... The award goes to Maduixa, Maria, Merce, Dolores and Kike and Txell. I highly recommend you visit their blogs.

Mocha birthday cupcakes

You might have guessed from the title that I made these beauties for a birthday. My friend Laura was turning... whatever... it was her birthday. Laura is Italian and if there's one thing we both miss from home is good old real coffee. (Sorry, american coffee is not the real deal for us, don't get offended).

So come her birthday, I knew there had to be coffee in whatever I baked for her.  She requested chocolate as part of whatever I made. Chocolate + coffee? Mocha cupcakes!

No better start than brewing some caffeine with my italian coffee maker and having a cup while I put some in the cake batter...

Chocolate-coffee cupcakes

Makes 12 cupcakes (fat topped ones)

1 1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup good strong coffee
1 stick of butter, softened
1 egg
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350 F

Cream the butter with the sugars. Mix in the egg. Add the coffee and milk. Don't panic, the mixture looks very liquid at this stage but it'll work just fine. In a bowl combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the dry mixture to the liquid one slowly mixing with a spatula. Pour batter into baking cups and bake for about 15-20 min. Let them cool in a rack before frosting.

Mocha frosting

Makes enough for the 12 cupcakes (I had no leftovers)

1 stick of butter, softened
1/4 cup strong coffee
2 teaspoons instant coffee
3 cups confectioners sugar (I know, it's painful)

Cream together butter and coffees. Add sugar cup by cup until frosting has the desired consistency.

We enjoyed them along with the strawberry shortbread cake Laura's roommate brought... sugar coma!

Me in boston, you in California

Let me tell you something. The world is small, very small. The probability of randomly finding someone on the internet that is somehow linked with you is much bigger than you would think.

Now let me explain this story. Turns out I was, as usual, doing some wanderings in various food blogs. Somehow I came across 'Cuina per a llaminers', a blog written by Merce, a catalan girl who lives in California. The blog was love at first sight and I immediately checked the 'about' section. I was pleased to find out she's in cali doing a PhD in Chemical Engineering, which is exactly what I hope to be doing next year. So I posted a comment on her blog and told her about me, chemist, living in the US, catalan as well... and about how much I like her blog.

Merce replied and told me she had also lived in Boston for a year, while she was doing her final undergrad project at MIT... which is exactly what I was doing last year. It seemed too much of a coincidence so I asked her if she happened to have graduated from IQS, my college, which has an extensive exchange program with MIT. Which is exactly how she ended up there. At this point I was laughing at how ridiculously small the world is.

I found the whole thing very curious and amusing, so I told Merce we could post the story in our blogs. The story would be paired with a recipe that both of us would make and write about, me in English, she in Catalan. For the occasion, we chose 'black bottom cupcakes' from Lovin in the oven.

The cupcakes were very moist and chocolatey. My cream cheese part didn't sunk in to the chocolate part as Kim's did (Merce had the same issue), nor did it really taste so cheesy. But anyway, they were definitely good and even better when warmed up and spread with some blackberry jam (yes, we have an obsession at home with this out of this world jam).

My adapted recipe follows and you can find out about Merce's adaptation here.

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 egg
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350  F

Line muffin tins with paper cups.
In a bowl, mix cream cheese, sugar and egg until homogeneous.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, 1 cup sugar, cocoa, baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add the water, oil and vanilla. Mix until blended. Fill about half of the muffin liners with this mixture (ice cream scoop is ideal for this). On top of it, drop a tablespoonful of the cream cheese mixture. Bake for 25 to 30 min until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Now, if you're not yet tired of reading and you're still wondering about the weird post title...
Remember that twin girls movie called 'the parent trap', in which one of the twins lives in Boston and the other one in California? In Spain, the translated title of the movie was something like 'You to Boston, me to California'. which describes perfectly Merce's location and mine. Thus the title adaptation and the post name.

Happy baking!

It's peanut butter-jelly time!

There's a bunch of foods that I've discovered ever since I moved to the US, of them, cranberries and peanut butter won my heart at first bite...

Our roommate left to the west coast leaving 3!!! jars of peanut butter and an amazing jar of blackberry jam for the rest of roomies to enjoy... so... it's peanut butter jelly time!

What better for our gathering at my coworker's place than PB and jelly cupcakes? The idea for the recipe came from sugar plum. I omitted the frosting because of the transportation issues and I made my babies on mini cupcake cups.

Don't they look delicious? they were a little more on the pie than on the cupcake side, but the taste was definitely amazing...

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter, softened
2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup milk

1/2 cup blackberry jam

Preheat the oven at 350 F.

In a bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt.  In another bowl mix together softened butter, peanut butter and brown sugar. Believe it or not, I didn't even use the hand mixer, I mixed it with a whisk. Add eggs, previously beaten, and vanilla. Mix until combined. Slowly alternate adding 1/3 cup milk and 1/2 cup of flour.

Place a tablespoon of the batter on the bottom of each cupcake tin. Add a tablespoon of jam/jelly on top. Cover the jelly with another tablespoon of batter. Be careful not to overfill, my first batch was on the 'too full' side and the cupcakes looked not so pretty.

Bake for about 12 minutes, until golden.

As I said, the top was a little on the pie side, but the middle was moist, fluffy and delicious

Brownie mini-cupcakes

Yesterday my coworker organized a wine + appetizers party at her house and as soon as she invited me, I offered to put my hands on baking once again. I was looking for a fancy schmancy good looking dessert that I could carry around no problem from home to yoga class to her place...

I found this 'brownie pops' recipe and I thought... let's give it a shot, who doesn't like brownies? In the process of making them though, I realized I didn't have enough cocoa powder, so I decided to add a little bit more chocolate flavor by melting two tablespoons of chocolate chips and adding them to the dough. Then I changed the sugar for brown sugar... oh well, I just adapted the recipe...

This is the result...

Are they cute or what? Well, the best part is... they taste like heaven!!!

½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
½ cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa (or a little bit less)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons chocolate chips

For the decor:
3 tablespoons chocolate chips
1 tablespoon butter
Sprinkles

Preheat oven to 350˚F.
In a bowl, stir together the butter, sugar, and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time and keep beating. Melt the 2 tablespoons of chocolate chips in the microwave and once melted let them cool down. Add the melted chocolate to the liquid mixture.

In a separate bowl mix flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Add dry mixture to the wet mixture slowly and mixing well.

At this point you'll have a wonderful smelling chocolate mixture, that is gonna look way to liquid to handle with spoons. That's why I used a piping bag to pipe the dough into the mini cupcake cups.

 This is how it looked, yes, like doggy poop

Bake the mini-cupcakes for 11 min. They will rise and get to be a spongy, soft, chocolatey cuteness. To decorate them, melt the 3 tablespoons of chocolate with the tablespoon of butter. Spread over the top of each cupcake and sprinkle.

Thanksgiving goodness

This was my second thanksgiving in the US and while last year I enjoyed the yummy stuff made by my roomates. This year though, I got to bake my first turkey, make cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. But! I got to celebrate thanksgiving twice thanks to Kim's party, so it was time to make pumpkin cupcakes! Here are the recipes!


PUMPKIN CUPCAKES WITH CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder + 1/2 baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
2 large eggs
7.5 ounces canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

Important note! As you see, the amount of spices in this recipe is pretty low... Pumpkin doesn't really have much of a taste and needs to be spiced very well. I kept adding spices until the taste seemed about right. Around 2 teaspoons of each one of the spices plus a pinch of cloves.

Preheat oven to 350 F

Wisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In another bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time and keep on mixing. Add the pumpkin and mix. Start adding the dry ingredient mix slowly while mixing. Place cupcake liners in a muffin pan and fill them almost to the top. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the tops spring back.

Cream cheese frosting

1 pound cream cheese
2 sticks of butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 cups sifted confectioners sugar

Beat cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Add vanilla and confectioners sugar and mix well. If you want you can add food coloring to it. If using a piping bag is useful to put the frosting in the bag and cool it in the fridge for about half an hour.



PUMPKIN PIE

This was it before baking. I used Paula Deen's recipe and it turned out gorgeous, soft and yummy.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/pumpkin-pie-recipe/index.html