iVamanos! Cake Mix Tweak #2

Hola! Tomorrow morning, my husband and I are taking off for the sunny shores of Mexico--which means, of course, that I won't be posting for a week or so.

However, in honor of the destination, I'm posting Cake Mix Tweak #2--Chocolate Chipotle Cinnamon Cupcakes, aka Sassy 3C Cupcakes, or Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes. 


These cupcakes are sassy, and because I loathe it when people/bakeries/restaurants say that something is spicy when it's really not, this tweak is actually spicy. If you can't take the heat, either don't make the cupcakes or tone it down. You can't take spice away, but you can add it slowly until you get to your desired level of sassy heat. When it comes to flavor, I don't go halfway.

Chipotle, pronounced chee-poht-lay (another pet peeve is people who call it cheepohltay), is a smoked, dried jalapeño pepper. Its spice is somewhat milder than other chilis, but not by much. When it's paired with cinnamon, the resulting impact is almost a spicy mint. If you don't want the quasi-mintiness, leave out the cinnamon. And if you can't handle the spice of the chipotle but want the smokiness, go for smoked paprika.

Start with a chocolate cake mix. The darker the chocolate mix, the better. Replace the water with strong, freshly brewed coffee. Add a (slightly heaping) tablespoon of chipotle and a tablespoon of cinnamon. For the true Mexican flavor, add a generous amount of freshly grated nutmeg. As in, nearly a whole nut. Mix and bake according to directions.

The ones above are topped with a Mexican-spiced dark chocolate ganache. Ganache is ridiculously simple to make. This ganache is thicker than some of the other recipes out there. Finely chop 1 C of a mix of dark chocolate and bittersweet chocolate (Mexican chocolates tend to be on the bitter side. If you don't want that, use whatever chocolate you DO want, or add some sugar to the cream) and put it in a heat-safe bowl. Toss the chocolate with 1 to 1-1/2 tsp chipotle, 1 to 1-1/2 tsp cinnamon, and some grated nutmeg. Heat 1/2 C of heavy cream over low heat until it's nearly boiling, but not scalded. Pour it over the chopped chocolate and let sit for a couple minutes, then stir until everything is melted and the mixture is smooth. If it's not melting, put it in the microwave in 10-second increments. Ganache is not an exact science. You can add more cream or less cream or more chocolate or less chocolate, or put the whole thing over the double boiler. Some people even heat the cream in the microwave. The thing is, this is your tweak. Do what you want.

Holding the cupcakes upside down by the liners, dip them into the ganache, and give them a gentle twist while you lift them up to cover the top fully. Once all the cupcakes are dipped, sprinkle some kosher or sea salt on top. It looks pretty, and it helps cut the bitterness.

Next time you get together with your friends for taco night, volunteer to bring dessert! And then you can point and laugh when your friend who doesn't like spice gives it a double-take and goes for his beer. Ole!

The Pudding Can Suck It

Hello, everyone! This is going to be one of those posts that's not necessarily cupcake-related. Sometimes something just happens to me and I have to share it, because I think SOMEBODY out there will find it amusing, even if you just stumble onto my blog by accident from somewhere else (I know that happens to some of you people. I see the stats on my webpage. Welcome! Please come back!).

And yes, once more this photo has nothing to do with anything, but I need to put SOMETHING up there, and since I took it, I have the rights to it. No copyright infringing here!


So, to get to the point: All my life I have struggled with my weight. Up and down, up and down, up and down. For a while, I was really, really down, and I was so happy! And now I'm right back up. Not so happy. And finally discovering that the creative outlet that makes me the most happy is baking... well, not a recipe for success (hard-dee-har-har).

I made a bunch of cookies and sent them out to moms and grandmas and sisters and friends this last weekend, and then I made more for my heart-friend whose birthday I had missed, because let's face it--I'm a really lousy heart friend. So I made her some more of the brownies that she loved, and these old-fashioned toffee bars. As soon as she opened the box, she did a little happy dance (even though I wasn't there, I know she did a happy dance, because she told me--and my heart-friend doesn't lie) and started texting me.

This, my friends, is a true, uncensored text string:


Her: The toffee bars are super good!

Me: Thanks! My sister came up with that recipe based off one of my grandma's. (She forgot to add a cup of flour.) The mistake stuck! It's super duper easy, if you want to make them yourself.

Her: I love your food!

Me: I love my food, too. That's why I'm back to my heaviest weight. :-(

Her: Have you ever met a "good" skinny chef?

Me: No. So I take it as a compliment. I tell people, "you can't trust a skinny baker!"

Her: So true. The proof is in the waist line. The pudding can suck it!


That, wonderful readers, is what qualifies this woman to be my heart friend. Sheer awesomeness.


And yes. Both of us text without shortcuts, cutesy lingo, or ridiculous number substitutions where only letters should be. We're old school. And we're rather attached to our grammar, thank you very much!

Matcha Backatcha, baby! Cake mix tweak #1

So, I realize that this picture is NOT of a cupcake. I do. It's just that the cupcake I want to write about... well, I don't have a picture of it. Because I ate it. "But surely you didn't make just one?" I can hear you asking. It's true, I didn't. I made about 18 of that particular flavor. But it's a long story.

Since I didn't have a picture of the cupcake, I thought about putting a different cupcake picture up. But what would the good of that be? Then I texted my husband, asking if the extra cupcake he took into work was still intact.  No luck. It had mysteriously disappeared. I thought about writing a post without a picture, but can you say bo-ring?

So, I defaulted to what I normally do when meeting someone new and conversation creeps to an awkward halt.  I say something like, "Oh, did you know we have a dog? I think he's the cutest thing in the world, want to see?" (I am NOT a dog person, believe it or not, but I'm sure that story will get told later.) So then I whip out my phone and scroll through the photos until I come to one that's suitably cute. Like this one. What you can't tell is that he's dragged his bed to be vertically leaning up against a cabinet, so he's laying on the bottom... which is actually the side. Confused? Suppose it's not that important really. Either way, he's curled up into a little 5-pound ball of cuteness.

Anyway, that's my dog. What was I talking about? Oh, that's right. Cupcakes. Duh.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I use cake mixes. A lot. Not always. There are some recipes that are sacred. And I never, ever, ever, ever use frosting from a can (anymore). And I never use a cake mix without some significant tweaking. Ever. But it never ceases to amaze me when I just whip something up on the fly and someone comes back to me and says, "Ohmygoshthatwasfantastic. How did you make it?"

And I have to sit there and blush and stammer and say something really inane like, "Oh, you know. I experiment a lot," because the last thing I want to say was that it came from a red and yellow box and I just messed around with it.

But then I got to thinking--I normally use a cake mix because I'm short on time or it's convenient or I don't have other ingredients on hand. And who isn't short on time or needs convenience or runs out of ingredients from time to time? Then someone who is a very talented cook told me that he doesn't bake because he dislikes all the measuring, and the one time he made cupcakes from a mix, they tasted like cardboard. And part of me doesn't want to give away these secrets because there goes my business. But I won't give away all my secrets, I suppose, and who really cares? A good friend of mine once told me that good recipes are meant to be shared. When someone shares your recipe, they're sharing you, and before you know it, you're touching more people than you could on your own. So here goes. Here's one of my "recipes." This is me, reaching out and touching you. In a totally not-creepy way.

I made some jasmine green tea cupcakes with matcha frosting. I can hear some of the "Whaaaaa?" going on in the background. After all that build-up, I give you something fru-fru like green tea cupcakes? Just give me time, folks. I just made a big decision to share any secrets at all, so just let me take my little baby-steps and I'll work up to something a little less fru-fru soon.

I realize that green tea, and especially matcha--the powdered green tea that turns smoothies minty-green and originates in Japan as a frothy, grassy tea--can be an acquired taste. So if you don't like green tea, that's ok. Go ahead and tune out. I'll catch you next time. But if you do like green tea, stick around.

I picked jasmine green tea because green tea itself has nearly no flavor that can translate into cake. Jasmine is aromatic enough that it should work. The problem is, I couldn't just brew a cup of tea and put it in. No flavor, right? So, I took about a cup of loose leaf jasmine tea, put it in a mug, and put about 10 oz of hot water--not boiling--over it, let it cool, and then put it in the fridge overnight. When I was ready the next day, I took a sip of it and had to spit it out because it was sooooo strong. Perfect.

So you know what I did? I took a yellow cake mix (not butter recipe. That would have overwhelmed the tea. You could use white cake, too) and replaced the water with the (strained) tea. I added a smidge of vanilla extract. I used extra-large eggs instead of large (for more body in the cake. You can just add an extra egg, if you want).

While they were baking, I made the frosting. I made my usual American buttercream frosting (not Swiss, French, or Italian, which basically means it was a lot easier to make)--which, unfortunately, I'm not ready to share just yet. But these same tweaks will work with whatever frosting you choose, even (uuuuugh, it pains me to say it) store-bought frosting in a jar. If you DO go the store-bought route, just try to pick a mild flavor, like "white" or vanilla.

Instead of adding my traditional splash of flavor via extract, I added some of the super-concentrated tea, and then I added quite of bit of matcha green tea powder. I wanted the tea to actually be tasted, not just hinted at. And then I frosted all the cupcakes with a large star tip, boxed them up, and went on to frost the other three flavors of cupcakes I had to deliver today.

This is why I have no picture. I was tired, it was late, I was still doing my "day job" on top of this, and I figured, "oh, who cares?" I didn't even eat one of the finished cupcakes until this morning, and then, as I ate it with my coffee (I know, great breakfast, huh?), I had one of those moments that I always hope for and never get as often as I want--I looked at my own cupcake and thought, "ohmygoshthatwasfantastic!" It was subtle and floral, yet somehow still full of flavor...and I could imagine myself at my favorite bakery inside the JR Train Station in Sannomiya, Kobe, Japan, ordering one of these and walking down the street with it. Or the little hole-in-the-wall in China Town in New York City where you have to climb up a narrow set of stairs and wonder if you're going to run into a Chinese mafia scene right out of a Jackie Chan movie before you get up there and realize that it's run by one of the most talented, young, unsung bakers you've never heard of. Maybe other people won't like this cupcake as much. But man, I sure did.

If any of you want to try something like this but don't know where to find the tea, most Asian markets or organic, health-food,  or co-op stores will sell both versions (maybe even your supermarket). You can get them online through any number of purveyors. Market Spice (from Pikes Place Market in Seattle) normally has an astonishing array of teas, but like I said, both of these tea varieties are crazy popular in Asia, so I've never had any trouble finding them at my local Asian market. Also, if you want to try this with a different tea, you can. Just be sure to put three or four teabags into the same amount of water (approx 10 oz) and, if possible, let steep overnight. Black tea cupcakes with lemon frosting? This has potential.

For my next cake mix tweak, I'll try to do something a little more universally appealing, ok?

Happy baking! Mac says, "Whatcha gonna make?"