NBM, Day 4: Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

For Day Four of National Baking Month, I went with a classic, certainly my most-baked chocolate cupcake: Magnolia’s Chocolate Cupcakes with their lovely Chocolate Buttercream. These beauties will be going to a kind of sad event, so I hope they put the sweet in the bittersweet for everyone there.

Birthday at the Lake

I'm behind on blogging, as usual, but a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated a birthday after a Sunday-morning run at the lake. After breakfast, I broke out this beauty. It's from the More From Magnolia cookbook by Allysa Torey: chocolate cake and chocolate frosting. I know I've made this cake before and liked it a lot because I have made notes about it in my copy of the book, the most important note indicating that it should be baked in three 9-in.-dia. pans instead of two.

Thanks for not ordering the pancake this year, John.

Hospitality No. 1

Last month, I was elected to the board of the local skating club. I'm now the hospitality chair. I can't imagine how my name became associated with the idea of hospitality (read: food); it's really something of a shocker.

Last Friday, I had to do my first big hospitality gig: providing food for a group of judges who were coming to work at a test session at the rink. Judges do these testing gigs on a volunteer basis, so it's a big deal to provide them with something good (and warm) to eat. For the menu, I took a cue from the previous hospitality chair: soup, sandwiches, fruit, dessert. For the sandwiches and fruit, I relied on prepared items. I made the soup, though: for this session, a batch of black bean soup that turned out really well. (I know it was good; there was some leftover.)

Then, of course, there was an opportunity to make dessert. My first dessert choice was the ever-reliable, ever-popular Blueberry-Lime Pound Cake from Fine Cooking, only this time I tried it with lemon. This is simply a recipe that can do no wrong. The cake was a big hit. (I'm extremely excited that Nicole Rees, who created this recipe, has a cookbook coming out later this year.)

Because no dessert tray is complete without a chocolate option, I made a batch of the chocolate cupcakes from More From Magnolia by Allysa Torey, frosted with a chocolate buttercream from the same cookbook. Definitely a tried-and-true pair of recipes for me, and also a hit.

I think we have another test session coming up at the end of August. It's going to seem like a cliche, but I think I'll be making another pound cake featuring blueberries again.

Morale Booster

Things have been a little hectic at Karen's work, so she asked me to make a work birthday cake for Ben, one of her colleagues. As it turned out, September 11 is also the birthday of another colleague, Robin. For their celebration and evening pick-me-up, I made them the ever-reliable Magnolia's Vanilla Cupcakes, only I made the batter as a three-layer cake. It's finished off with Magnolia's Chocolate Buttercream. Yes, I left the Hello, Kitty! water bottle in the photo on purpose. Does that qualify as food styling? Also, the three things sticking out of the cake are skewers. I inserted them to assist with the structural integrity of the cake. Our weather has been so disgustingly muggy the past week or so that nothing is setting up within normal parameters.

Magnolia Doubleheader

Yesterday was just another one of those days where I figured I had too much on my plate. After I got home from work, I not only had to get Claire to a Girl Scout meeting (which I also thought I needed to stick around for in an effort to gather information for an upcoming weekend event); but I also had to bake for a work birthday and for a PLTI alumni meeting the next day.

Not knowing how much time I realistically had to work with, I decided to make cupcakes for the work birthday. I needed a recipe that worked and made a lot of cupcakes. Thus, I turned to the tried-and-true Vanilla Cupcakes from More From Magnolia. (This same recipe also appears in The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook and The Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook.) The published recipe yield is two dozen, but I always end up with 30 cupcakes from a batch of this batter. That would more than accommodate the work crew. I went with the Magnolia chocolate buttercream for the frosting, then sprinkled a little praline crumble on top of each cupcake for a garnish.

Then, after discovering that I didn't need to linger at the Girl Scout meeting, I zipped home and made peanut caramel brownie bars, also from More From Magnolia. I've also made these bars before. They're a layered concoction, with brownie at the top, with a layer of peanut-butter-chip and toasted-pecan-studded caramel below, all atop a graham cracker crust. I spent a few minutes racking my brain to remember what exactly it was that I thought I should do to the recipe after the first time I'd made it. I'm pretty sure it was to bake the graham-cracker crust before adding the toppings, so I did that. The bars are time-consuming to assemble, but I think they're worth the effort.

I managed to get all this baked, and the cupcakes decorated, and myself to bed nearly on time. Imagine my surprise, then, when I extended birthday wishes to my colleague this morning and she replied that her birthday is actually Friday, not today. Good grief. I've been late before, but never early.

Catching Up and Some Old Favorites

I can't believe it has been ten days since my last post. (That sounds very much like the start of a trip to the confessional.) I ran into a bit of technical difficulty with my digital camera, which froze up with cupcake photos on it and a consequent inability to take new photos. I'm happy to report, however, that the camera is functional again.

In the meantime, I made an apple pie last week for Lost Lunch Thursday. Apples: very out of season, but the pie was delicious.

Today, I made a couple of things that I've made before for two different work-based events. From time to time, we have potluck lunches at work, for those who are interested in participating, and today, we had one. The theme was appetizers, and perhaps not too surprisingly, we managed to make a pretty good meal of hors d'oeuvres. I made hot spinach and artichoke dip, which has a lot more to do with various cheeses than it does with vegetables. Among the other tasty offerings: chicken satay, shrimp dip and vegetable crudite, crab-stuffed deviled eggs, ceviche, gently seared tuna, crab rangoons, and more. It was all very tasty. We lucked out with two desserts, too. My colleague Krysta brought some very nice, simple brownies, and I brought a batch of my new favorite blondies.

Over the weekend, my colleague Chuck celebrated his birthday. Usually for work birthdays, we gather in the breakroom for some sort of cake or dessert. Today was slightly overrun with meetings, though, so I had to slice and deliver pieces of Milky Way Cake. It was fun making people guess what was in the cake. But what was even more fun was actually tasting the cake. Despite having made this cake several times, I'd never tasted it before today, and it's absolutely amazing. Incredibly moist, and not at all as sweet as I was afraid it was going to be.

I'm not sure what went slightly awry here, but the cake was reluctant to leave the Bundt pan after baking. So I decided to slather the cake with icing. Taking a shot in the dark, I opted for a Caramel Frosting from Allysa Torey's More from Magnolia, thinking that would be a good complement for the caramel-and-nougat Milky Way Cake. In fact, I'd have to say it was perfect.

I also have to confess to one other small thing. While suffering from both being overtired and overconfident when baking this cake yesterday, I muddled up the baking instructions. I was supposed to melt one stick of butter with four chopped-up candy bars, then save a second stick to cream with granulated sugar. I melted all the butter with the candy bars. To make up for that error, I beat the eggs with the sugar until it was thick and creamy-yellow, dropping from the beater in a nice, thick ribbon. Then I continued on with the recipe, incorporating the butter-candy mixture at the end. I don't know what sort of difference that made from the regular directions, but it certainly didn't make the cake inedible.