Earl Grey & Murcott Cupcakes

I am swamped with schoolwork, so yes, another cupcake archive post. Sorries, I promise a real post will go up soon when I have time to sit down and really write something.

I love this cupcake; its very essence is strange and exotic, yet highly refined. It really does give a taste that can only be described through images of a British colony in India. I totally heart them, and would definitely make them again. However, these are cupcakes that will really shine based on what they are paired with. With tea, coffee, or after a light brunch these will dazzle the senses. After a heavy meal? I don't know. Maybe. It's quiddities might be overcome by stronger flavors. They also go great (I kid you not) with a Fetzer '05 Riesling. That's right, I'm pairing wine with cupcakes now.

Would I bring these to a potluck again? No. Would I bring them to a fine brunch or a fete? Yes. The rogue play of muted citrus and the bold mannerisms of the black tea create a truly sophisticated dessert.

Overall, these were very well recepted by everyone at the potluck (of which the next post will address) and many were even taken home for seconds or for loved ones who couldn't come. Yayness indeed.

Eary Grey & Murcott Cupcakes
Makes about 24 cupcakes

What You'll Need...
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 bags double bergamot early grey tea
1 teaspoon Murcott Orange zest (not navel or juice orange zest!)

What You'll Do...
1) Beat butter on high until soft for 30 seconds.

2) Add sugar. Beat on medium-high until light and fluffy.

3) Add eggs one at a time, beat for 30 seconds between each.

4) Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and tea (bags ripped open and emptied) in a bowl.

5) Measure out milk and zest in another glass.

6) Mix in the flour mixture then the milk mixture, alternating between the two and ending with the flour.

7) Scoop into cupcake papers about 3/4 full.

8) Bake for 22-25 minutes at 350F or until a toothpick comes out clean.


Earl Grey Buttercream
What You'll Need...
1 cup butter, room temperature
4 cups of powdered sugar
1/4 cup of milk
1 bag of earl grey tea (contents emptied)

What You'll Do...
1) Cream the butter until soft.

2) Add the sugar and then the milk and tea. Cream till soft. Spread on cool cupcakes.

Breadmaking Study Break

Breadmaking, it seems, has become a lost art. I don't mean banana bread or pumpkin bread or the kind you just blend together and pour into a bowl. I mean real rising, yeasty, sweet smelling bread. The kind that has they crunchy, crackley outside, and the sweet gluten laden inside. Toasted with a pat of melted butter. My god, it's a perfect breakfast or snack!

Nowadays I just don't have the time to sit and make bread. It's time consuming, laborious, and often somewhat messy. It's an affair that I long to keep but have to stay away from, as cheating myself out of time for the necessities of life never brings anything but lamentable consequences. Still, yes, there are bread machines, but those take the fun out of it. They have their uses I admit - I enjoy coming down in the morning to freshly baked bread, but I miss the hands on experience.

Still, yesterday I found a moment, I was stuck inside all day doing homework, reading Lord Jim (Conrad has redeemed himself with this one, as I was about ready to kick over his gravestone for Heart of Darkness, still it's a long and tedious read when doing it on a schedule). I figured that as a simple study break I would take the time to make some fresh bread.

I had some leftover molasses and some raisins that needed to be used and a scant amount of whole wheat pastry flour. I laid everything out and began to make some cinnamon raisin bread. Healthy from the whole wheat, sweetened and smoothed by the molasses, it's a simple and easy to prepare bread.

It is a bit frustrating to work with as the initial dough for kneading has a tendency to get everywhere and stick to everything. Still, there is something therapeutic about squeezing, and fluffing, and pounding a defenseless ball of dough.

After kneading, I let it rise for an hour or so, wherein my entire apartment began to fill with the sweet, spicy, and yeasty aromas. These near tangible perfumes only increased in their potency once the baking began.

The best part is during a homework day in fall or winter, this is a simple way for me to prepare food and enjoy a study break. Slow food such as chili, bread, stocks, or slow braising are perfect homework food (or clean the house food or whatever will be keeping you indoors all day). By the time you finish your tasks, a homemade delight is awaiting your consumption.

Enjoy the recipe. Now I must go back to homework, as writing this post was my study break. =PCinnamon Raisin Bread
Recipe adapted from Gourmet.com

Makes 2 loaves

• Active time:30 min
• Start to finish:3 hrs (includes cooling)

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional for kneading
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of ground ginger
  
• 1 (1/4-oz) package fast-acting yeast such as Fleischmann's Rapid Rise yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 1/2 cup warm milk
• 1/4 cup molasses (not robust or blackstrap)
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups of raisins
  

• Whisk together flours, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and yeast in a bowl. Whisk together water, milk, molasses, and butter in another bowl until combined well, then stir into flour mixture until a wet dough forms. Stir in raisins. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead, working in just enough additional flour to prevent dough from sticking, until smooth and elastic, 7 to 10 minutes. Form dough into a ball and put in an oiled bowl, turning to coat, then let rest in bowl, uncovered, in a draft-free place at warm room temperature 10 minutes.
• Divide dough in half and form into 2 balls. Arrange about 4 inches apart on a large baking sheet. Loosely cover with oiled plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and let rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled, about 1 hour.
• Preheat oven to 425°F with rack in lowest position.
• Lightly sprinkle dough with some flour and bake until golden brown and bottoms sound hollow when tapped, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool.

Cooks’ note: Bread keeps, wrapped well, at room temperature 2 days or frozen 1 month.

Original Recipe by Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez

Christmas Cookies in September

So over at Simply Recipes, we're already starting to gear up for the big food months of November and December. My kitchen has become a veritable Santa's workshop for assorted Christmas cookies, cakes, and so on. I have resorted to butter in bulk. I have been going to the gym as much as possible to discourage pastry fat from being absorbed into my body, through my skin, through sheer osmosis.

The reason I'm doing all this now is because by the time December rolls around, I have to start working on my final papers for class. These 20 page theoretical colossusses lumber into my life with foreboding dominion, jarring into dark, forlorn shadow any possibility of outside activities. Indeed they are, in and of particular effect, a hovering death to extracurricular baking.

Due to this apparent and dreaded lacuna in my future scheduling, I start baking for the holidays now. In September.

The looks I get from people when I inform them I have been baking Christmas cookies is akin to if I told them I caught their beloved pet listening to Bob Dylan and snorting coke in an alley - utter perplexion. I'm the culinary version of Wal-Mart, Christmas already in full swing, 4 months early.

The first of such recipes is already up, early I might add due to it's total shibby yumtasticness. I highly encourage you to try them out. I have now dozens (I think 30+) recipes there now that I always welcome feedback about.

Still, with the holidays barreling towards us, as it always is for once you look away then BAM you're up to your ass in gift wrap and candy canes and dreidels, I come to you all with a question and request. Are there any holiday cookies or treats you look forward to each year? Peppermint cake, macarons, rum balls? Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, Ramadan, Solstice, or what have you. I'm curious and eager to hear!

Habanero Night -or- Why My Roommate Now Wears Glasses

"That'll be 45 cents."

"Here ya' go!" handing the change to the lady behind the table. The huge box of bright orange crumples, which blocked most of her small, mountain-hermit frame, reflected the light in my eyes. I squinted in order to see and reached over for the double bagged package of scotch bonnet peppers, otherwise known as habaneros.

Over the last few weeks I had been experimenting with various chilies; pickling jalapenos, making chili oil for stir frys, chopping up birds eye chilies for curries. Each chili I tried was a new experience, it was interesting noting some of the flavors behind the heat. The vegetal, slight apple-like flavors of the poblanos and the heady scent of the rocotillo all intrigued the senses and scalded my mouth with fiery punishment.

My roommate, Danielle, is far more adept at chili eating than me. While many times I have to race for milk and bread, she simply chomps away and gives me a queer look and responds, "It's not that hot."

So, I decided to pick her up some habaneros to see if she could handle them and to see if I could as well.

As I walked in from the market I called her out, "Bitch! I got you some hot peppers for tonight! Let's see if you can handle these!"

"Oooo! Fun! Can't wait! I'll use them in a spicy turkey ragu!" she beamed. She has a mean healthy streak that inspires odd, but surprisingly tasty dishes. A noble culinary endeavor that keeps me from resorting to fast food some nights (I work full time and go to school full time, get off my case!).

Fast forward to the taste test.,,

"I made sure to choped them up real fine so it should be pretty spicy."

"Um... okay. Well, bottoms up," I said with trepedation, my brain already reconsidering just how smart an idea this was. You could smell the heat, the dish radiated a musky spice whose scent itself caused me to begin to sweat and my nose to run.

We took a bite.

It. Was. Incindiary.

We both chugged out milk down and raced for bread. Our cheeks puffed with dairy soaked bits of corn muffins as we prayed for it to soak up the capsaicin laden oil searing every nook and cranny of our moths and throats.

I choked down the bread and milk, "Didn't you seed and devein it!?"

"No, I just chopped it all up and added it!" Danielle sluged down another gulp of milk. She put it down and began to wipe the sweat from her eyes. I used the back of my sleeve. We were both perspiring as if we had run a marathon.

"Ow."

"What?"

"OW! Oh, it's in my eye! It's behind my contact lens!!! OH GOD! OH DEAR GOD!!!" and she screamed up the stairs like greased lighting and threw her face into the sink and turned it on full blast. The humorous part was she didn't wash her hands before trying to get the contacts out, making a bad problem only far, far worse.

The lessons here are twofold: 1) use gloves for chili pepers, 2) seed and devein your chilies, and 3) if you get habanero oil on your contact lenses you won't get it off and you will be ordering a new pair.

Hawks Fundraiser & Anniversary

As part of the Hawks' One Year Anniversary, they held a little soiree that doubled as a fundraiser. As Mike and Molly Hawks are ardent supporters of local growers, the party was hosted in conjunction with the nonprofit Foothill Farmers Market Association. This was reflected in the evening’s guest list, which represented twelve regional farms, listed below. With attendance peaking around 200 guests, Hawks was able to raise $4000 in donations, all of which went to benefit the Placer Ag Future Project Scholarship fund for Beginning Farmers.

Personally, I find it just awesome that they took the time to really give back to the community in a way that would allow everyone to participate. See, unlike a Slow Food event, the tickets cost only (if I recall) $10 to come and socialize and eat at one of the top restaurants in the area. That, my friends, is shibby and 10 kinds of awesome in my book. It meant that anyone and everyone could join the fun and help out. So special props go out to the people who all set this up, the cooks, the publicists, and the farmers.

Participating Farms:

Blossom Hill farm, Auburn

Brennar Ranch, Newcastle

Coffee Pot Ranch, Sheridan

Four c-sons, Auburn

Hillcrest Farms, Newcastle

Otow Orchards, Granite Bay

Pierce Family Farms, Loomis

Pine Hill Orchards, Loomis

Rodriguez Ranch, Watsonville

Saeng’s strawberries, Granite Bay

Tong Moua Farm,Sacramento

Ueki Gardens, Auburn

I also want to thank Taylor and Keelin for inviting me to the event. It was great fun to mingle and meet so many local farmers and producers, hang out with other local bloggers, and meet Mike and Molly Hawks who are two of the kindest and talented chefs I have ever gotten to meet.