Lemon-Almond Cupcakes (or, How I Sabotaged My Gym Class)

Aren't sugar stars cheerful?
I've been taking a weekly functional training class at the gym with a couple of my friends for a while now, and we love our trainer for many reasons, not least of which is that he likes to dance and plays us cheese-tastic music (this past week we were subjected to Color Me Badd, of all things!). Anyway, it was his birthday and, although I know it sounds extremely counterproductive, we had to bring some kind of treat to class.

This ended up being a fridge-clearing kind of cupcake. I needed a recipe that would use up some buttermilk (leftover from the hot cross buns) and some of my huge stash of ground almonds (apparently I went on a buying binge at the Baker's Catalogue right around Christmas). I had initially thought of making an orange-almond cake, but...we had none, and I was feeling too lazy to go out and buy some. So, lemon almond buttermilk cake it was, thanks to epicurious.com!



The original recipe finishes the cupcakes with a soaking of lemon syrup. I opted for a lemon glaze instead so it would look more festive. And you know...at least we probably worked off some of the calories!

Lemon-Almond Cupcakes
adapted from epicurious.com
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 stick + 2 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
3 large eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup ground almonds
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
2/3 cup confectioner's sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 2 muffin pans with paper liners (I got 20 cupcakes out of this recipe.) Whisk the flour, salt, and baking soda together in a medium bowl. Set aside. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes with an electric mixer. Beat the eggs in, one at a time, making sure each is incorporated before adding the next. Add the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternately with the buttermilk in 2 additions (so, flour-buttermilk-flour-buttermilk-flour). With the mixer on low speed, beat in the almonds and lemon peel. Fill the prepared muffin pans with the batter, which will be fairly thick; don't overfill, you should be aiming for somewhere between half and 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the cakes are risen, nicely browned, and a skewer inserted in the center of a cake comes out clean.

If you want to go with the lemon syrup instead of the glaze, combine the juice of two lemons with 1/3 cup of sugar and stir until dissolved. As soon as the cakes come out of the oven, poke them thoroughly with a skewer and spoon the syrup slowly over the top.

If you are going to go my route and go with the glaze, place the sifted confectioner's sugar in a small bowl and add lemon juice, a tablespoon at a time until the desired consistency is reached. You shouldn't need more than 2 tablespoons, but if you thin it out too much, just add a bit more sugar. Spoon over the cupcakes when they are cool. Decorate with sprinkles as desired.

Hot Cross Buns!

I am just about to die of shock that I am making a timely post. After all, according to Wikipedia, hot cross buns are traditionally eaten on Good Friday. Woohoo, I'm on time! Now, I don't really celebrate Easter but I can totally get behind any holiday's food traditions. I don't remember making hot cross buns as a kid, but I think we did buy some at the grocer occasionally. But actually I don't remember eating them until college, when one of my dormmates' parents sent her some in the mail, and even then, the only really memorable thing about them was how intensely sweet and sticky the icing crosses were. Tooth-achingly sweet! So when it came time to looking for a recipe, I focused mostly on the more traditional, British style recipes which contained a lot less sugar and had baked on crosses of a flour/water mixture. The one I came up with is cobbled together from a bunch of different sources, including the Joy of Cooking and epicurious.com.


Please excuse the terrible lighting in my kitchen. I have fiddled and fiddled with the settings on my camera, and this is about as good as it gets. I find kneading dough to be very soothing so I thought this was pretty easy to make; the most time of course goes into waiting for the dough to rise. After the buns have risen for the second time, you pipe on the crosses (my mixture was a bit loose and kept running off the top of the buns) and then consign them to the oven.


Post-baking, the buns are glazed twice with honey. The buns themselves are certainly not sweet (except for the fruit) so the glaze adds just a hint. I wish I had been a bit more heavy handed with the spices, but overall, not bad! They are best fresh out of the oven, but the slight staleness of the buns is easily fixed with some toasting and copious application of butter. In fact, I think I will go have another one right now....

Hot Cross Buns
Buns
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 large egg, slightly beaten
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg (preferably freshly grated)
1/4 cup butter, room temperature, in tablespoons
1 cup mixed raisins and dried cranberries, roughly chopped

Crosses
1/2 cup flour
2 tbsp sugar
1/3 cup water

Glaze
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp sugar

In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients for the dough, except for the fruit. Mix either with a stand mixer or your hands until it comes together in a rough ball of dough. Turn out and knead on a floured surface until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Knead in the fruit, taking care to distribute it evenly. Place in a lightly greased bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled (approximately 2 hours).

Turn dough out onto a floured surface, deflate gently, and form into 16 round buns. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment, about an inch apart. Snip a cross into the top of each bun with scissors. Cover, and let rise again, until the buns are 1.5 times larger (about an hour). Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine the cross ingredients and stir until smooth. Place in a plastic baggie, and cut a tiny bit of the corner off. Pipe crosses (following the snip marks in your buns) on each bun. Bake until golden brown and firm, about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, combine water, sugar, and honey in a cup. Microwave on high for a minute, then stir. If the honey and sugar aren't melted yet, give it another minute. Stir until smooth. As soon as the buns come out of the oven, brush each with glaze. If you can wait, let stand until warm, and the glaze has set a bit. Otherwise, eat immediately and lick your fingers clean!

Cottage Cheese Pufflets

Have I mentioned that I love Dorie Greenspan? Oh, I have? And so has everyone else in the world? Oh well, one more time won't hurt. My latest project from her fabulous Baking book is the Cottage Cheese Pufflets. From googling I found that some people had had issues with the dough being too soft, but I found it to be fairly easy to handle once it had been chilled. (You can also find the recipe online so I won't reproduce it here; besides, you NEED a copy of this book.)


The dough is super quick to whip up in a food processor; then it's off to the fridge for a couple of hours (during which time you can eat the leftover cottage cheese and remind yourself that cottage cheese is actually kind of tasty). Shaping is also easy, and if you find assembly line work soothing like I do, pretty relaxing! I used 2" round cutters which gave me pufflets that were exactly one bite large and filled them with raspberry jam.


Moisten the edges, fold over, and seal! I'm only showing you this picture to prove that I did in fact actually seal my pufflets, because after baking....


...this is what I got. I don't know why I didn't expect it (they are called PUFFlets, right?) but I really didn't think they would puff up this much! It's almost like puff pastry (which gives me all kinds of ideas for using this dough).


These are best eaten the day they are made, but that should be no problem because they are totally addictive. And since this one looks like a mouth...you better eat it before it eats you!

Breaktime in DC

Orang utans at the National Zoo
No, I haven't abandoned this blog again; we just got back from spending a few days visiting friends in Washington DC. I love road trips! The last one we took was to South Carolina, so driving to DC seemed like a piece of cake. We stayed at the Normandy Hotel, which was very reasonably priced and kind of swanky (rainfall shower!)--I had only two gripes, one of which is that they have the tiniest garage with the tiniest parking spaces ever. I had to be guided into the spot and it took like 7 tries. My other gripe is that, although the room came with one of those fancy Nespresso Cube coffeemakers, they only provided one coffee pod at a time. Very odd, considering that there were two of us. Anyway, minor gripes.


Turtles sunbathing
In going through my photos, it seems like we did nothing but go to the fantastic (and free) National Zoo. Well, I guess that's not entirely inaccurate! But what kind of a food blogger am I that I didn't take a single picture of any of the food we ate? Well, nevermind. I can still TALK about the food, right? Although we were thwarted in our attempts to go get a cupcake at Cakelove, we did have a very nice meal at The Heights (right by the Columbia Heights Metro station) where I discovered one of the Greatest Things Ever--pineapple infused vodka. Guess what I'll be doing in the near future? My other favorite place was Brickskeller, where they claim to stock over 1000 kinds of beer. Their beer list is a bit overwhelming, so I went with my usual dorky instinct and picked a Monty Python Holy Grail Ale ("Tempered over burning witches"!). A pretty ordinary beer, but the label was fun.

In conclusion, here is one more zoo photo, although you can see the rest of the set here. Next time we go, I will endeavor to remember to document the food. Okay, maybe the food the animals are eating...

Mini Taiyaki

Just a quickie post today, although I do want to point out that it is the first official day of spring (hurray!) and of course it is snowing (WHAT). Darn it, winter, go away already!


I went home to visit the folks last week and discovered by way of my mother an awesome product--frozen mini taiyaki! Taiyaki are fish-shaped Japanese cakes, usually filled with red bean paste and baked in cast iron fish-shaped molds (taiyaki literally means baked sea bream). I love them and can't get enough of them when I manage to get over to Mitsuwa, where they have a stand that makes them fresh.


They come in a pack of 20, and you can see the approximate size of each fish; I'd say it's about 1/3 the size of a standard one that I get at Mitsuwa, which is probably good since I eat entirely too many of these. To prepare, simply microwave or toast briefly (or both). It's not quite the same as getting them hot off the grill, but it's a great option when I can't get to Edgewater. And besides, they're MINI taiyaki, and we all know mini=cute. The other thing I really like about these is that the red bean filling isn't totally smooth and has lots of whole red beans in it.


And finally...since this sudden snowstorm is depressing me (after the last few days of relatively warm weather!), here is a photo of my newest office plant. I think it needs a name. Suggestions welcome!

Working Lunches

Drat! I just realized it is Pi Day, and I have forgotten again. Sigh.

You know what I hate more than almost anything else? Eating lunch at my desk. Bleagh! First of all, I am very accident prone (I once spilled the same cup of tea twice within 2 minutes) and anyone who's looked at my files has probably come across one or two that has been baptized by coffee. More importantly, it means that I don't get a real break, except for the 10 minutes or so that it takes to go out and pick up a sandwich or whatever. I really, really don't like that. I need that lunch hour to calm down (I get umm....a little worked up frequently) and to relax and complain and generally unwind.

Anyway, thanks to my workload it's been hard to get out and eat proper lunches lately. Normally this means terribly unhealthy delivery or takeout but fortunately a new(ish) Japanese grocery/deli, Dainobu opened up around the corner. (Its current location used to be a Burger King and the exterior is still recognizable as such.) It's not a bad choice for a fast, relatively healthy lunch, with a good choice of pre-packed bentos, sushi, onigiri, etc. There is also the option of made on the spot udon and curry dishes, not to mention a good selection of frozen and packaged convenience foods and basic grocery items...and desserts! Here are some lunches I've had from there recently.


Chirashi sushi, with multi-grain rice. Not bad quality for around 8 bucks, even if I am not a big fan of fake crab. I'm pretty sure this is made from the scraps of fish left after the nigiri sushi is made, but eh! Beats the same old deli sandwiches! Also please to note my Yakult and the healing power of 8 billion lactobacilli. Here's a close up:


I should check to see if they have just an ikuradon. I love the way salmon roe pops when you bite it.


Here's a much sadder lunch at my desk, also purchased at Dainobu. Shin Ramyun spicy instant ramen (my favorite!), a small portion of chicken karaage, and a tempura shrimp riceball. I think I will pass on the karaage next time; it's a bit too greasy for me.


And the same day, for an afternoon snack, I had a steamed Japanese cheesecake (a cheese mushi pan) which was lovely and very, very light. And of course, another Yakult. I'm not sure I believe that it's actually got any health benefits, but with the way colds travel around our office, I need all the help I can get.

Dainobu
129 E. 47th St. between Lexington and 3rd
212-755-7380

Maple Kuchen

I love maple syrup. I eat it on oatmeal, yogurt, with granola, occasionally on fruit, not to mention the traditional pancakes and waffles. And I also have a (fairly rude, I admit!) bad habit of asking people who are traveling to bring me souvenirs! (Sometimes this backfires, as I have now acquired an ungodly number of mini snowglobes.) Anyway! A few weeks ago my co-worker went to Vermont and of course, I, with my usual thick skin, asked if he would bring me back some maple syrup. I didn't know this until a few years ago, but maple syrup comes in different grades. I had read that grade B was great for baking with, as it has a more intense maple flavor, so that's what I asked for, and that's what I got, and now, I have maple kuchen.


Maple Kuchen is basically a yeast-risen cake with a maple syrup and butter topping baked onto it. This recipe comes from the Baking Sheet, put out by the awesome folks at King Arthur. I've been subscribing for probably 5 years now and have made lots of the recipes. The first time I made maple kuchen was for a summer barbecue at my friend Cynthia's place (her mom makes the best ribs in the world, by the way) and despite the fact that we were all stuffed (with ribs, naturally), the entire cake disappeared in about 20 minutes. If that's not the sign of a recipe that's a keeper, I don't know what is.

This time, since I am lacking in a barbecue to attend, I halved the recipe and baked it in an 8" round cake pan. Try it warm with a little lightly sweetened whipped cream, or do what I do, and put a scoop of Greek yogurt drizzled with more maple syrup on top of it.

Maple Kuchen, from The Baking Sheet Vol. XVI, No. 2
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 tablespoon instant yeast

Topping:
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

The original recipe gives instructions for making this with a bread machine, which I don't have. So here is the method I used: Combine all ingredients except for the topping ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix with an electric mixer on medium speed until well combined, about 3 minutes. The dough will be very wet, sticky and batter like. Spread in a 13x9" buttered pan and leave in a warm area to rise for 45 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl. Mix together and pour evenly over the risen dough. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the top is golden, bubbling, and syrupy. Yields 16 servings.