cupcakes like you’ve never seen them before…

I’ve seen quite a few cupcakes in my day.  None of them, however, come close to any of the cupcakes I saw at Ruthie’s Bakery at Chelsea Market…

A burger and fries?! Now, that’s clever.

OK, enough sitting around and staring at cupcakes.  Let’s bake some! How does a carrot cupcake with cream cheese frosting sound?…

What you’ll need

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/3 cup lightly toasted and chopped walnuts
• 1 3/4 cup shredded carrots
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut

What you’ll do

• Mix together the first 5 ingredients
• In a large bowl, combine the oil, sugar and vanilla mixing til well incorporated

• Add in the carrots, coconut and walnuts

• Add flour mixture and mix everything together until you get a thick batter
• Fill muffin tins 3/4 of the way (I use an ice cream scoop to keep my portions consistent)

• Bake at 350 for about 18 minutes

To make some really easy cream cheese frosting, combine one packed (8 oz) of cream cheese, 5 tbsp softened butter, 2 tsp vanilla, 2 cups confection’s sugar and mix, mix, mix!

Wait until the carrot cupcakes are cool then ice and enjoy!

it’s not over til…

the fat lady sings

At this rate, that fat lady is going to be me!

Confused? OK, I’m talking about the cupcake trend, fad, phenomenon, whatever you’d like to call it.  At the rate I’ve been eating them, I’d better start thinking about a gym membership – fast!

New York City (and for all I know, the world) has been taken over by the cupcake.  Big, small, stuffed, iced, the city is overrun with cupcakeries.

But despite this saturation, I still love the darned things.

I recently made it out to the Gifted Brooklyn Flea holiday market and found a girl named Keavy selling tiny cupcakes (yay, minis!), also known as kumquat cupcakes.  They were beautiful to look at but even more beautiful to eat!

Check it out…

The first cupcake is a lemon cake with lavender frosting.  The frosting had a very distinct taste and was a bit shocking at first, but after a few chews with the vanilla, it came together really well.

The second cupcake is a maple-bacon (yes!) vanilla cake.  The bacon was a perfect crunchy/chewy combination – a fantastic savory kick.

And the last picture is the classic red velvet.

All of Keavy’s cupcakes were perfect bite sizes and were moist and balanced.  Not too sweet, not too much frosting, just right.

Keavy has a blog (just like me!) and I even follow her on twitter (@kumquatcupcakes) where she documents her cupcake adventures with some really gorgeous photography…how fun! I hope to run into her soon so I can try some more yummy flavors.

eaten! @spot

I’ve never actually done an eaten! series on dessert and only dessert, but there is a new restaurant in town that has given me just the excuse.

Spot Dessert Bar is a little hidden gem along the chaotic and gastronomically cluttered (but fabulous) street called St Marks.

Spot | Where dessert becomes dinner

Chocolate cupcake with a salty caramel center

With a green tea cupcake with fruit jelly filling

Soft cheesecake with lime foam, graham crakers and fruit

Miso semifreddo (ice cream and olive oil cake) with raspberries

Chocolate banana pudding with caramel

I had to embark on this eaten! adventure over the course of three outings because apparently, Spot doesn’t serve its specialty desserts until after 5pm.

Everything we ordered was simply amazing.  Our dishes were fun to look at, light enough to eat three (!!), and flavorful enough to satisfy my taste buds.

The cheesecake was probably the most intriguing to me, although everything I ate was delicious.  At first it felt like foam, but I learned that the “cheesecake” had just been mixed with a vengance and piped out into a glass.  Then it was topped with a tiny bit of lime-y foam that couple with the graham cracker and fruit made for an unmistakable bite of key lime pie.  Not only was it an enigma to eat, but it looked a little…strange at first too.  Imagine, a toppled over glass with some stuff strewn about.  Who knew that all together, it would taste simply perfect.

The semifreddo was quite tasty as well, although less challenging.  The olive oil cake was dense and complimented the ice cream quite well.  I did get a hint of salt, which I assume was coming from the miso.

And the chocolate banana pudding was also another hit.  I snickered a little when the plate was set down in front of us…come on, it looks a little like you know what, doesn’t it? Well, it tasted like chocolate so have no fear. A nice spoonful with some bananas, caramel and those little crunchy chocolate bits was just the rich chocolate fix I needed to end the night.

For $15 you can get a prixe fixe tasting of three spcialty desserts while the cupcakes are around $3 each.

I give Spot 4.5 out of 5 stars as an ingenious dessert bar!

cupcake: the battle rages on

I’m 0 for 2 in the game I like to call…baking a cupcake.

Last time I wrote a post about cupcakes I had made a mistake with the “wet” and “dry” ingredients.

This past weekend, I was attempting to redeem myself with Ghirardhelli Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Filling.  As a birthday gift, these cupcakes were especially important.  Unfortunately, my attempt was thwarted very, very early on.

You’re probably wondering what exactly I managed to do this time, right?

Well, my recipe (Betty Crocker) called for a very precise quantity of flour.  Absent-mindedly, I placed 2 cups of flour into a bowl.  My recipe called for 3/4 of a cup…I was off by more than twice the amount!!  This teaches me to bake when I am preoccupied with other things.

Too bad I didn't think twice about this picture

I had even purchased a shiny new Cuisinart hand mixer in Butter for this very occasion.  Happily mixing my “wet” ingredients, I was so thrilled about the 7 speed setting and was sure I’d be done in no time!

Isn't she pretty?

I slowly added all of the dry mixture and before long, I could smell a faint burning and it was getting more and more difficult for the mixer to, well, mix.

It's only seconds now

Finally, I pressed the power button and looked down at my clump of chocolate colored flour.  The math suddenly dawned on me.

Fast forward to the next evening and more butter, sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, sour cream (makes the cupcakes moist) and baking powder…I doubled the recipe and saved my batter!

Twice as big, twice as good

It was a mathematical endeavor (thanks, Zack) and quite a workout for my Cuisinart mixer, but we all pulled through.  Piling the batter into paper cups, I prayed that it would turn out OK.

Almost finished!

With a dollop of Nutella on top (later I put the dollop in between two scoops of battter so the cupcakes would be filled and not topped with Nutella).

Chocolate Nutella Filled Cupcakes

I ended up with about 70 cupcakes in the end.  They tasted deliciously chocolate-y, but were a little heavy and dense.  With a glass of milk – perfect.

1..2...3..4...

That’s a lot of cupcakes.  Fortunately, my colleagues were kind enough to take some of them off my hands.  We’ll see what the birthday girl thinks tomorrow!

And next time, I am going to win. I am.

eat me

two for dinner

Of the countless things to do in New York city on a Thursday night, my favorite night out is (and always will be) a dinner reservation for two.

Not one for large groups or crazy parties, I thoroughly enjoy an intimate dinner with someone special.

Great food, real conversations…there’s nothing better than that.

Tonight, dinner was at Cafe Asean -  a small Pan-Asian restaurant nestled in between the West Village and Chelsea.

A quaint little space dotted with brightly colored lanterns and rusting green metal tables – it reminded me of a small shop back home dishing out bowl after bowl of cheap but fragrantly delicious noodles.

After examining the generous menu, here’s what we chose…

Roast duck and basil rice paper rolls

Shrimp and vegetable dumplings

Lemongrass crusted snapper with coconut lime sauce and green beans

Seafood and rice noodles in a spicy lemongrass soup

Flan with mango

All in all, the meal was great.  The flavors were vibrant, and the dishes were unusual.  Despite having the remnants of a stuffy nose (hence a dulled sense of taste), I could taste the lemongrass on my fish and the richness of the coconut sauce was so comforting!

Dessert was a little more simple and the mango wasn’t a perfect match with the flan, but it was still a sweet way to end the meal.

Of course, there’s nothing sweeter than TWO desserts (yes, two).  On the way to the train, we happened to run into a darling little cupcake bakery with its cakes lined up so perfectly, I had to go in and take a peak.

Cupcakes from Royale

We sampled the vanilla with whipped hazelnut buttercream (far right) and the chocolate with salted caramel centers (third from the right).  I must say the chocolate with salted caramel was by far the most satisfying cupcake I’ve ever eaten.

The light cake with an equally airy buttercream to top it off was the perfect ending to the perfect evening.

this baking thing…

…is harder than I thought!

So I made a quick trip to the market for some baking ingredients to make some tasty cupcakes for Zack’s aunty who is cooking up a mean BBQ for our visit tomorrow.

On the menu:

Choco chip cupcakes by Martha Stewart

2 minutes in I realize I added the sugar into the “dry” ingredients by accident (ok, is sugar not dry!?).  But it’s OK – I recovered and my batter is looking delicious.

yummy!

While my lovelies are in the oven getting delicious, I thought I’d share a little cupcake history.  Cupcakes used to be called “1-2-3-4″ cakes because of the recipe used to make them: 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of flour and 4 eggs (plus 1 cup of milk and some baking soda).

Now that we’re all hungry for cupcakes, let’s see how they turned out!

Choco chip cupcakes by Mahira Sheikh

Yumm….hope she likes ‘em!