cupcakes

Wafer Paper Flower Cupcakes

| Featured, Weddings

A couple weekends ago, I made wafer paper flower cupcakes for a Sonoma wine country bachelorette party.

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If Pinterest is any indicator, wafer paper flowers are becoming a trendy choice for weddings and events, and I can certainly see their popularity whenever I post a photo of them on Facebook. I’m happy to have the opportunity to gain more experience working with the medium, and I personally love the rustic and light feel of wafer paper flowers as well.

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For this party, I made red velvet cupcakes filled with lemon curd and topped with cream cheese frosting, chocolate ganache cupcakes with buttercream, and white cupcakes with passion fruit curd filling and strawberry buttercream frosting.

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A dozen of the cupcakes were topped with mix of standard and rolled roses, while half a dozen were simply frosted. The flowers sit a little tall on the cupcakes, so I might explore other sizes and positioning in the future, but otherwise I was pleased with the result. Happy bachelorette and congrats to the bride-to-be!

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Photo credit: Sonia Nagala Chang

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Wedding | Congrats Tiffany & Jon!

| Featured, Recipe, Weddings

A very belated post, but . . . This past July, Milo’s Bonbons had the honor of appearing on my cousin’s wedding menu! It was a whirlwind of a preparation for the wedding, but such a pleasure to cater desserts for Tiffany’s and Jon’s celebration.

My cousin asked for salted caramel chocolate cupcakes and lemon bars. Believe it or not, it was my first time making lemon bars! I probably should have experimented with that a little more, as I wasn’t perfectly happy with my crust to filling ratio, but it’s hard to go wrong with the flavor. I made both lemon and and lemon-cherry swirl bars as a nod to the wedding colors.

To give the desserts a little something extra, I decided to present the cupcakes and lemon bars on a display stand. I didn’t have enough chocolate on hand to make a chocolate stand and thought nougatine would be a better vehicle for my cousins’s wedding themes of red + gold and succulents. However, in retrospect, nougatine wasn’t the best choice for an outdoor wedding. The display held up, but it sure got shiny and sticky! Next time I’m sticking with using isomalt instead of sugar, or just using something material.

Here is the making of the nougatine, from toasting the nuts, to cooking the sugar and rolling out / cutting the pieces:

 
Nougatine
Makes about a half sheet pan

Ingredients:
  • 600g granulated sugar
  • 250g sliced almonds, lightly toasted and warm

Directions:

  1. Make a dry caramel (or wet, if you don’t want too dark a nougatine) with the sugar in a saucepan.
  2. Stir in the warm, sliced almonds.
  3. Immediately pour mixture onto a nonstick silicone mat and spread as thinly as possible.
  4. Place a second map on top of the caramel and roll out as thin and even as possible. Begin this step as soon as your can handle the heat.
  5. Remove the top map, carefully life the nougatine sheet and place on cutting board or oiled parchment paper. If mat sticks, then caramel is still too hot.
  6. Using a knife or cutting mold, cut desired shape, working quickly. If nougatine is too cold to cut or shape, place back on silicone mat and into a 350 degree oven for just long enough to soften.

I was quite limited by the size of my oven at that time, which couldn’t fit a full sheet pan, and thus limited the size of my cylinders and ovals. But, I’d like to think there was something “organic” or “artistic” about the pieces I built with 🙂 I added succulent trimmings to my nougatine leaves/petals to tie everything together:

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Sesame Caramel Rice Fritters & Tres Leches Cupcakes – Belated Cinco de Mayo

| Uncategorized

I didn’t get a chance to make these for Cinco de Mayo like I had planned to, but I made them happen anyway over the past week.

Rice Fritters with Sesame Caramel
(see recipe from Food Network)

If you search for Cinco de Mayo desserts, churros, or variations of fried dough dipped in sugar, are likely to turn up. I thought these rice fritters would be slightly more interesting and challenging, so I decided to give them a try. Delicious, and well-worth the effort! But perhaps no healthier than churros (they are deep-fried afterall) . . .

Tres Leches Cupcakes with Dulce de Leche
(adapted from Saveur Magazine, see also theurbanbaker.com)

Ingredients
Makes 24 cupcakes

  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 ½ teaspoons salt
  • 6 eggs, separated
  • 1 ¼ cups sugar
  • ½ cup whole milk
  • 1 ½ tablespoons dark rum
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1 12-oz. can evaported milk
  • 1 cup heavy cream

Directions

  1. Heat ¾ cup of the heavy cream in a saucepan until it boils/simmers. Pour over white chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Let sit for a couple minutes before stirring with a spatula until the white chocolate is melted and smooth.
  2. Preheat oven to 350°. Line cupcake pans with paper liners.
  3. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl and set aside.
  4. Beat the egg whites with a whisk attachment until soft peaks form. Continue beating while adding the sugar.
  5. Separately beat the egg yolks until fluffy. Using the paddle attachment, add the flour mixture and whole milk, alternating between the two and ending with the flour.
  6. Add the rum and vanilla and beat briefly until smooth.
  7. Folk in the egg whites.
  8. Scoop batter into cupcake liners, and bake for 16-18 minutes until slightly golden. Be careful not to overbake. Since the cake will be soaked in tres leches, it will ultimately be “moist” in any event, but the cake texture is spongy and can get stiff.
  9. After baking, let cool slightly (~30 minutes), and then poke holes in the top of the cupcakes with a knife, making sure to penetrate to the base.
  10. Peel off the paper liners. Whisk together the sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream, and spoon the mixture over the warm cupcakes (3-5 tablespoons should do the trick, with the excess sitting in the cupcake pan to ensure that the bottom of the cupcakes are moistened). I wouldn’t worry about oversoaking.
  11. Cover the cupcakes with plastic wrap and refrigerate until well-chilled and the liquid is absorbed (at least 4 hours).
  12. Spread/drizzle dulce de leche on top of the cupcakes, and top with whipped cream.

Home-made dulce de leche is quite easy. It is essentially caramelized condensed milk. Some recipes prepare it directly in the can by placing the can in a boiling pot of water. I decided to go with the oven method (see, e.g. David Lebovitz’s recipe):

Pour a can of sweetened condensed milk into a shallow pie pan or baking pan. Place that pan in a larger roasting dish / baking pan that has a lid. Fill the outer pan with water until near the top of the inner pan. Cover with lid and baking at 425° F for 75-90 minutes. Check occasionally in case you need to add more water. A darker crust/layer will form on the top of the condensed milk / dulce de leche. Whisk the dulce de leche until it is smooth (you may need to strain out pieces of crust). Voila!

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