Pretty Much the Only Cupcake Post Ever Featured on Second Dinner

Or, my cousin gets married!

That was really the important part. But, as we waited eagerly for that to happen, my mother, Matt, and I spent two full days on a dream team cupcake production line, and turned out, if I do say so myself, an extremely impressive dessert extravaganza.

Here is the story of Wedding Summer '09, Preakness edition: Wedding Cupcakes.

So much to tell. So many pictures and thoughts. Good thing I'm almost a librarian. That means I can select and order--or censor if you prefer (I don't). Or, I could just be lazy and free-associate. I choose that.

First, a small meditation on the wedding cupcake. Surprisingly, it's actually more difficult to produce 250 cupcakes than one 90-person wedding cake (at least if the wedding cake is allowed to be a little rustic). Of course, it's hard to compare the two, especially when they were created in two entirely different kitchens and the cupcakes had to be transported to the venue, which the cake did not. The other major factor involved here was the recipe variety. The wedding cake required several batter mixings, but used only one base recipe for cake and for frosting. When it came to cupcakes, I overcomplicated it bit.

In the end, the great cupcake caper included four varieties of cake and three varieties of frosting:
  
Coconut Cake with Seven Minute Frosting
         
Rose Levy Berenbaum's White Velvet Cake with Wineberry Buttercream
              
Barts' Chocolate Cake with Mocha Buttercream

Lemon Cake with Lemon Buttercream (Sugar Sweet Sunshine Recipe)

For both the mocha buttercream and the wineberry I improvised using this Martha Stewart recipe for Strawberry Meringue Buttercream, and was very satisfied with the results, although heat and time constraints worked against it.

The wineberry version was slightly easier to work with than the chocolate, and held a firmer peak, possibly because of the added pectin from the wineberry jam.







My mother, who did the largest share of the frosting (this, she says is how she 'gets [her] ya-yas), became expert with the oversized tip pictured above, using one large squeeze and topping it off with a smaller one for the frilly design at right.


We used the same method for the mocha cupcakes, and sprinkled them with shaved chocolate. Later on, Matt also improvised a swirl adaptation of the frill. 

Although the process was certainly not  at peak efficiency, it was a lot of fun, and it would have been impossible without the complete and selfless support of my parents, who donated their kitchen to the messy, buttery, overheated, outlet-blowing enterprise, and then helped withevery facet of it from groceries to delivery, of Matt, who separated eggs, frosted, put up with me, took me swimming, and took most if not all of these beautiful pictures, of Nicki, who researched and procured six unique cakestands, and of Ellen, Hayat, Drew, and all the others who dropped by and pitched in.

Next time, I would streamline a bit, possibly making more of the cupcakes from the same cake recipe and then just varying the icings. Even the icings could have been restricted to those that used one frosting mode, but the overwhelmingly positive response to the Seven Minute Frosting, which can't be piped,  suggests that it was worth the trouble. The coconut cake recipe (to which I added coconut, it actually contains none) was better than the White Velvet cake, which staled quickly, but the advantage of making both of them was that one uses all yolks and one all whites. However, since all the frostings except the lemon buttercream used egg whites as well, the problem could have been better solved by not making any cake that involved egg whites, as we wound up with a large leftover jar of yolks, and I had to make challah a few days later.

Oh. And there was a wedding. I wore red lipstick. There was a tropical storm. And a photo booth. I picked out the weirdest horah ever (sorry Michelle). It was simple and friendly and ever so slightly awkward. It was sweeter than sweet.

It was just like Becky and Michelle, who are many things but above all good good people, and happy in one another. I was so lucky to be there, and equally lucky to get to hang out with the brides all week, and have swimming and questionable Chinese food. Lucky to have my sister home for a moment. Lucky in family and friends and swimming in lakes and swimming in butter. It was a good week. 

Thanksgiving Mystery Confection, Part II

Ladies and gentlemen...the Princessetarte!Genoise brushed with a sugar syrup, layered with jam, whipped cream, and pastry cream, and topped with a thin layer of marzipan. It's apparently big in Sweden and parts of the midwest, and they sell a frozen version at IKEA. I've made this twice before (actually twice in the same weekend) and it was a big hit, but this version, via Martha Stewart Living, wasn't quite on the ball. It might have just been me, I was doing bits and pieces of it at odd hours, but the cake was tough and eggy, the pastry cream a touch lumpy, and nothing was quite as it should have been. It was still delicious, though, and so much fun to play with.
This is a terrible picture, but I wanted to give some idea of the interior. It just wasn't that popular--a little wet, a little weird, a little green, and the cake a little too tough. Quite frankly, even I, who loves every component of this cake and have loved previous versions, wasn't too impressed. People ate it, though, even as they muttered about all that cream. The next day we nibbled leftovers but mostly stole the whipped cream out for our pumpkin pie. And it wasn't like we were hurting for desserts. Below is just a small sampling, including chocolate layer cake, meringues by Dottie, and brown butter spoon cookies.The star of the show, though, and probably the only thing we needed, was my mother's glamorous fruit platter.

Thanksgiving Mystery Confection, Part I

Thin eggy genoise...

Bubbling cornstarch and egg yolk goo...What am I?

L'Shanah Tovah

I'm going with h's this year. Next year, in Jerusalem, it may be spelt L'shana Tova. Or I might have a Hebrew keyboard. If I were in Jerusalem, where the felafel may or may not be made by Jews.

While I'm here in Brooklyn, though, my plan is to stop with the spelling and just have a lot of people over to dinner to eat sweet things and round things and start 5759 together. So that's what we did.

The dinner menu was a little unorthodox, but there were plenty of sweet things and plenty of round, for a sweet year come full circle. For those wondering why certain foods are traditional on Rosh Hashanah, and even those who think they know, there's a great post about holiday foods usual and unusual here.

Appetizers:
Stuffed Mushrooms (Bittman)
Olive Tapanade (Bittman)
Lupini Beans
Cornichons
Brightly colored olives
Cucumbers and Radish and Tomato, sliced by the lovely Nicola
Meal:
Amanda Hesser's grandmother's macaroni and cheese, with tomato, from Cooking for Mr. Latte
Portuguese Fisherman's Stew, from Jasper White's Summer Shack book
Challah and Pane Genzanese
Desert:
Aunt Ida's Honeycake, by Jessica
Haagen-Daz Honeybee Ice Cream, which is delicious and may save all fruit on earth
Apples and Pears and honey

For the first time, I managed to invite more people than the table can hold, so it was a spread out affair. I loved that everyone was gleefully comfortable and made themselves very very at home, but next time I'd like to make sure that everyone can eat at the table together, it feels nicer. So if somehow you don't get invited to the next dinner party and you find out and feel left out, know that you'll be coming over soon, or just invite yourself the next day. We will make you sweet and round. And Matt's been muttering about tapenade-filled grilled squid, so don't miss out.

Adaptable Crackers

This is my new party trick, adapted from a recipe by Martha Stewart, who calls them Parmesan Rosemary Crackers in her Baking Handbook. They're stupidly easy, keep for a while (when it's not too humid), look very impressive, and can be customized to include all kinds of flavors--just change up the toppings and the cheese. Click through for the recipe.

Crackers
adapted from The Martha Stewart Baking Handbook
makes a very variable amount, depending on how you roll them

1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon yeast (I highly recommend switching to instant-active dry is for people who like yeast to be more work than it should be)
3 Tblsp olive oil
approx. 3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons honey
1/4 cup freshly grated hard cheese
1 large egg, lightly beaten
more salt, fresh pepper, rosemary, cheese, poppyseeds, etc..., for sprinkling.

If using, active dry yeast, proof the yeast in the warm water. If using instant, just mix the yeast into the water and add the olive oil, flour, salt, honey. By hand or using a mixer (I really hate recipes that only give mixer instructions-not everyone has one, and everyone has hands), mix until the dough is soft and not tacky. Mix in cheese (right here is about where you'll throw out the wooden spoon and get your hands into it). Knead a bit until the dough is soft and supple, not too much. Form it into a ball, and let rest, covered, for ten minutes.

Put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover, refrigerate until well chilled (an hour or overnight). When chilled, preheat the oven to 350 and turn out dough onto a lightly floured countertop and divide into however many pieces you'd like. Roll out as thin as possible and transfer pieces to a baking sheet with parchment.

Brush the crackers with the egg wash and sprinkle on the toppings of your choice. Bake the crackers for about 15-20 minutes, until crisp and golden.