Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes with a Chocolate Frosting (here we go, bakery repertoire!)
Recipe: A chocolate cupcake with a peanut butter filling and a chocolate frosting.
I feel like every baker’s cupcake repertoire requires certain types of cupcakes, lest pretend customers at future bakeries will be unhappy (although I should say that I know a carrot cupcake with cream cheese frosting is one of these cupcakes, and I’m not happy about that. Boring. And not really a cupcake – it’s a MUFFIN. But I’ll do it for you, pretend future customers). But some sort of peanut butter and chocolate cupcake is absolutely one of those as well and YUM. With that in mind, I’ve been contemplating a variation of said cupcake and finally got around to testing my experimental recipe.
Almond Cupcake with a Whipped Riesling Pear Creme Fraiche Frosting – the experiments continue
Recipe: An almond cupcake topped with a whipped Riesling pear creme fraiche frosting.
I was recently inspired by a cookbook my friend Janet loaned me, which was written by her friend who owns a bakery in LA called Kiss My Bundt (most amazing name ever). She makes bundt cakes and I’ve heard they’re fantastic! So I was really excited to flip through her cookbook and check out her recipes. I was inspired by a recipe for a Riesling, apricot and honey aphrodisiac cake where she soaks apricots in Riesling, purees the apricots, and incorporates both the apricot puree and soaking wine into the bundt cake. I decided to go with the same concept but use pears instead of apricots, because I love pears. A lot. They’re the best fruit ever and they make me think of spring and general happiness.
Chocolate angel food cake with a pomegranate whipped cream frosting (go go experimental baking!)
Recipe: A layered chocolate angel food cake with a pomegranate whipped cream frosting.
I think in my entire life I’ve had angel food cake… twice? Maybe three times? It’s fine. It’s largely guilt free. I don’t recall it ever blowing my socks off though. But it’s been a long winter (read: working out has been sporadic at best) and I’ve been enjoying far too many desserts far too often, so I wanted to try my hand at something slightly less fattening. But, I wanted to do something interesting. So after pursuing the internet for various options I came up with a chocolate angel food cake. The only problem was that both times I had angel food cake it was with whipped cream and strawberries. Unfortunately, it is entirely the wrong time of year to buy just about any fresh fruit – enter pomegranate whipped cream frosting.
Exercises in Glucose Replenishment: My weekly experiments in baking 