baking

Caramel-filled cappuccino cupcakes with Kahlua frosting

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cappuccino cupcakes with Kahlua frosting

cappuccino cupcakes with Kahlua frosting

Another cupcake experiment. I basically used a brown sugar cupcake recipe, which I normally use for brown sugar cupcakes with maple frosting and candied bacon, and dumped in some Starbucks Italian roast VIA instant espresso powder (some stuff I had on hand and needed to use up). I might have added too much but no one bothered to tell me after taste-testing.

Once baked and cooled, I used a handy-dandy “cupcake holer” tool to make uniform holes, which I filled with dulce de leche/caramel (made by mixing a can of prepared dulce de leche with about a half tablespoon of milk, just to make the filling slightly less thick).

Then I made some Swiss meringue buttercream and flavored it with vanilla bean powder and two tablespoons of Kahlua.

Decorated with sprinkles I had had for too long (don’t like to keep stuff like that just sitting around).

filled cupcakes

Filling process for filled cupcakes

Cappuccino cupcakes
1 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tablespoon vanilla
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder (two or three packets of Starbucks VIA instant espresso powder)

Preheat oven to 175C. Mix all ingredients together. Put into cupcake papers in a cupcake pan. Bake 16 to 19 minutes until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Turn the pan around once in the middle of baking for a more even bake.

When done, remove from oven, place on a rack and cool for a few minutes before removing the cupcakes from the pan onto their own cooling rack to cool completely.

Caramel/dulce de leche filling
Use a prepared can of dulce de leche and put it in a bowl, mix together with a half tablespoon of milk to achieve a slightly less thick consistency.

When cupcakes are fully cooled, use a knife or a cupcake holer tool to remove the middle of the cupcake and fill each hole with caramel. Reserve the very top of the cupcake when you cut the middle out. Place the tops back onto the filled cupcakes.

Kahlua Swiss meringue frosting
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter
3 to 4 tablespoons Kahlua
(vanilla bean powder, if desired)

Over a double boiler, whisk egg whites and sugar. When sugar is dissolved, transfer the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer – beat with the whip attachment until soft to medium peaks form. Switch to paddle attachment, start beating and adding in the butter a few tablespoons at a time. Once you have a frosting-like texture (which can take a long while – the mixture will possibly look curdled, like it cannot possibly come together, at some point, but it will come together – just keep beating), add the vanilla powder. When nearly ready, add the Kahlua and mix until well-combined.

Frost the cupcakes with the prepared frosting.

Gluten-free banana cream cheesecake

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gluten-free banana cheesecake

gluten-free banana cheesecake

I’ve said it before and will say it again: gluten-free baking is best when you are making recipes that were created gluten-free from the outset. In this case, cheesecake filling is gluten-free on its own. And crust choice is really flexible enough to choose what you want.

Recently I decided to make some banana cream cheesecake and made an almond-flour and cocoa-based crust. (I had a lot of leftover filling and made a separate cheesecake using a graham cracker and cinnamon crust.)

Knowing that this was highly appreciated, I will – as usual – share my recipe:

gluten-free banana cheesecake

gluten-free banana cheesecake

Gluten-free almond meal and cocoa crust
1 ¼ cups almond meal or finely ground almonds
3 tablespoons sugar
¼ cup cocoa
¼ cup melted butter

Mix all ingredients together and press into a springform pan (a 10-inch pan would be suitable; I used two miniature springforms). Wrap the springform in foil to prevent leakage.

Refrigerate while preparing the filling.

Cream cheese and banana filling
680 grams softened cream cheese
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 eggs
¾ cup mashed banana (3 to 4 well-ripened or overripe bananas)
½ cup whipping cream
2 teaspoons vanilla

Beat cream cheese for a few minutes until creamy. Beat in sugar and cornstarch. Add in eggs, one at a time. Beat in the mashed bananas, whipping cream and vanilla.

Pour filling mixture into the prepared crust. Put the pan on a cookie/baking sheet and bake in a 350F/175C oven for 15 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 200F/93C and bake for 75 minutes, until center is almost set.

Allow the cake to cool completely in its pan before removing the springform rim. Before removing the pan, run hot water over a knife and slide the hot knife around the edge of the cake to separate the cake from the pan cleanly.

Refrigerate the cake, uncovered, for at least 7 hours, although overnight is most effective.

gluten-free banana cheesecake

gluten-free banana cheesecake

Getting on the gluten-free merry-go-round: Gluten-free brownies and coconut chocolate bites

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We never really think about our blind spots until we are confronted by them. We believe we are thinking holistically but are blinded by our own limitations and experiences.

I think I know a lot about music but then there are blind spots – whole genres I don’t care about. Or just periods in time when I did not pay attention. S. mentioned a one-hit wonder “Would I Lie to You?” by Charles & Eddie. I had never heard of it, but it was apparently a big hit at the time.

My blind spot in that time period was my relentless race through university and almost academic focus on listening to Russian and Eastern European folk music, meaning that while I did listen to other things, I was not listening to the radio, was not listening to new things unless introduced to me by friends.

Not a big deal but these small details are a bit like doors opening onto whole blind spot areas. And one such blind spot is gluten-free fun.

I have never thought a lot about baking gluten-free goods, but then a gluten-free person became a part of my team at work. It created a whole new set of considerations. I have been experimenting ever since. So far I only have about two recipes that are foolproof.

One is coconut macaroon and dark chocolate bites, which is naturally gluten-free. Clearly there are better results when something that was always gluten-free without adaptations is made. It is not just for gluten-free lifestyles/diets but is just made this way. No flours of any time. Just coconut, egg, chocolate and cream.

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coconut macaroon chocolate ganache tarts

coconut macaroon chocolate ganache tarts

The gluten-free brownies (and also paleo) are getting better each time I make them – or at least their consistency is. The latest was a little bit more moist than previous attempts. It uses coconut flour and maple syrup and a lot of eggs so should be similar to a normal brownie. It’s not quite the same but at least gluten-free folks can get some kind of sweet chocolaty treat to gobble up like everyone else can.

I have a gluten-free Kahlua cheesecake bite recipe I want to try – so next time around that will be on the menu.

Experimental gluten-free brownies

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My gluten-free baking efforts are a bit hit or miss, but it does not stop me from trying. Up today – gluten-free brownies made with coconut flour. I am skeptical but I guess on Tuesday when I feed these to people, I will find out for sure.

Gluten-free, paleo brownies

Gluten-free, paleo brownies

Here’s what to do for your own gluten-free coconut flour brownies:
1/2 cup minus 1 tablespoon coconut flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons melted butter
3 eggs
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla

  1. Preheat oven to 300F/150C; grease a small square glass baking dish.
  2. Mix together all ingredients. I beat the eggs a bit first, added the butter and vanilla and then added the other ingredients and ended up with a thick, paste-like batter
  3. Pour into the baking dish and bake for 30-35 minutes.
  4. Cool for 30 minutes before cutting or removing from the pan. Cut, serve (or store for up to a few days in an airtight container).

Kiwi Invasion: Music for Baking – The Chills and Flight of the Conchords

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Swedish holiday, American baking – Kiwi music! The Chills and Flight of the Conchords for the win.

Filled butternut squash cupcakes

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It’s baking experimentation time!

I have a recipe for pumpkin cupcakes but… I had a butternut squash sitting here for a while that I was going to use for some savory meal that I never got around to cooking. Having substituted butternut squash in other pumpkin recipes (soup and pie), I figured a cupcake or muffin could not be too challenging a substitution.

I baked the squash, scooped out the baked “innards” and will now puree. After that I will mix it all up into a spicy cake batter and put that on top of a pepparkakor crust in cupcake papers. And, to be a whole lot like the maven of Bake It in A Cupcake, I will pop a Rolo candy (or actually in this case another substitution – these are turning into an imitation/substitution fiesta – a Norwegian copy of said caramel-filled chocolate candy, Smil) in the batter. And BAKE!

I have not quite decided on how to frost these little monsters, but we’ll see how the cupcakes turn out before plotting the finale.

Gluten-free pistachio cake

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I am not normally interested in recipes that make use of pre-made mixes. But in my urgency to find gluten-free recipes, I read this one on the Daily Hiit blog.

I plan to give it a try in my next bake near the end of June.

Gluten-free pistachio cake
1 box of gluten-free vanilla cake mix
1 box pistachio pudding mix
1/2 cup coconut oil (microwave solid oil for 15 seconds)
1 cup ginger ale
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup chopped pistachio nuts
powdered sugar for dusting on top

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a bundt cake pan with coconut oil. (Dust with a little bit of cake mix and/or gluten free flour if you prefer).

Mix the cake and pudding mixes in a bowl. Add coconut oil and ginger ale. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add almond extract and chopped pistachios. Blend thoroughly.

Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 45-55 minutes. Toothpick test the cake when it has been in the oven 45 minutes. It should be moist, not overcooked. Cake will spring back from pan when done.

Remove from oven and cool completely. Once cool, dust top with powdered sugar. Store in refrigerator.

Gluten-free carrot sandwich cookie: FAIL

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I have a great recipe for carrot sandwich cookies. People love them.

Because a colleague in my team at work eats gluten-free, I attempted to adapt these by substituting the flour with almond flour. I am not sure whether that was just not “flour-like” enough or, quite possibly, the carrot was just too wet – I tried to dry the grated carrot, but it produced what seemed like liters of carrot juice… and that may well have been the culprit. Or a disastrous mix of both!

The consistency of the dough/batter was right – that is, it was the same as when I have made these with regular wheat flour. But that means very little in the big scheme. These still just *did*not*work*. No two ways about it.

Auspicious beginnings for failed gluten-free carrot cookies

Auspicious beginnings for failed gluten-free carrot cookies

And my state of mind otherwise, with a mini-marathon bake and little private life worries… another week.

“Built my world around certain things you say,
I think of nothing else at the close of day
except for maybe how I ended up this way
another drink before you go…”

Stat Explosion and Data Overload

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May 18 skewed my blog statistics in a big way. As someone who manages a very niche, limited-reach blog for a corporation in my professional life (obviously not THIS blog), this sudden and brief explosion was an interesting look at what immediately drives traffic (a retweet from a famous person). Or rather what won’t. The corporate blog gets readers, and the number of readers and subscribers grows slowly but steadily. It is such a specialized area that it is not as though it would ever get the kind of readership that even my personal blog gets – and my personal blog is all over the place – personal, lacking in a theme or point and not actively trying to drive anything. It started as a baking/recipe blog when my colleagues (whom I had stuffed to near-death with cookies and cupcakes) demanded recipes. It evolved into a dumping ground for my thoughts and commentary on television, news/current events and all manner of other nonsense. Even if my personal blog had a steadier stream of traffic than my work blog (makes sense because the randomness of my personal blog means that all kinds of Google searches, from Mobutu Sese Seko to white chocolate macadamia cookies, from the benefits of telecommuting, to pictures of brown sugar cupcakes piled high with mounds of maple Swiss meringue buttercream and candied bacon. might lead someone to my blog), I never achieved any great reach.

on the bacon bandwagon

on the bacon bandwagon

Until today, my personal blog’s best stats never reached more than 250 visitors – and that was when I was baking a lot and posting recipes and pictures of cakes. In the absence of that, I maybe get 30 or 40 visitors. I am not that concerned with the statistics on my personal blog – I write it for my own sake and if someone else gets there and likes it, or even doesn’t like it, that’s fine with me.

But this morning, which has felt like a neverending night now that Swedish near-endless light nights are here, I posted an article about how I finally watched the witty and insightful Inside Amy Schumer, despite the misleading, one-dimensional Comedy Central ads for it that had so long turned me off. I posted about the blog via Twitter, which was retweeted from Schumer’s own account, which then led to what is for me an unprecedented avalanche of activity. Suddenly my phone was chiming: ding ding ding ding ding ding because, thanks to Schumer’s devotees (a more pleasant word than “followers”), people were retweeting and favoriting my original tweet. (Yes, I am perfectly aware of how asinine this sounds. A non-Millennial person describing the tweet and retweet process like it’s really serious business just sounds funny – even if it does have its own importance. It’s just not the be-all, end-all.)

But more than that, the link to the blog in which I wrote about changing my mind about Amy Schumer’s show made the blog statistics skyrocket. In a couple of hours, there were well over 1,000 visitors. The downside is that this opens the door to a lot of unprovoked criticism from complete strangers. But then yeah, the world’s full of haters, and that is completely fine. I hate a lot of stuff too. It is also easy to have a knee-jerk reaction (no emphasis on “jerk” or anything) – as I did to the ads, and as the commenter had to my post. But I am sure we are both cool enough people in our real lives.

The only comment on the Amy Schumer blog entry, in fact, was a negative one, basically laying into me for my “judgmental, accusatorial” observations about an ad. But, as I commented back (and I think we’re cool now), most of our judgments and decisions are kind of “split second” in nature – especially to ads. They are meant to appeal to us on some level, get our attention and in 30 seconds to make us want to do something, consume something, watch something or buy something (I won’t even use as strong a word as “persuade” since it’s more like advertisers tease and tempt with an elevator speech – so shouldn’t it be a bit more tempting, somehow?). Of course, I don’t know who the target audience was with the Schumer ads, but it’s not me – and that’s fine. But I still had to see them, and I made a judgment that watching the show might not be the best use of my time. Or that it would be as crass and shallow as the ads made it seem. That is no judgment of the show itself or Amy Schumer. And my writing about it was more like, “Hey, I was completely wrong about this – and the two people who read this blog and generally trust my opinions on these matters should know it. Watch Inside Amy Schumer!”

With a fleeting moment of greater reach, you simultaneously become a lightning strike (gone in a flash) and a lightning rod.

I suppose a celeb retweet or starting/being part of a trending topic is the sort of thing that one has to get to gain some traction. Even if, for example, in this case, it is a bunch of clicks – not “traction”. We all know it but there’s no way to predict whether any social media activity will lead to anything. Visitors to my personal blog are nice – but much like in the corporate blog environment, it’s not like they stuck around and read other things. And for personal writing, it doesn’t matter. I write what I write, I post it online and to a limited extent in social channels, but I am not writing for an audience or to achieve something.

But for the corporate writing, you sort of want to extend the reach – establish yourself as a thought leader – but you cannot do anything to damage your credibility or try to somehow get that reach artificially. It doesn’t work and won’t hold anyone’s interest. For instance I could try to steer the corporate blog in a direction where “celebrity surgeons” (is there such a thing other than the odd Dr Oz and some plastic surgeons who show up on makeover shows??) somehow feel compelled to retweet the content, but while that might extend reach for a day, it is not delivering quality or longevity or even the target audience we’d want to reach.

In a kind of related area…

“Data data data – you cannot make bricks without clay…” –Sherlock Holmes in TV show Elementary

All this discussion of statistics should lead to an action plan on how to take advantage of statistics and visitor data to guide future blog content – “give the readers what they want”. At least this is true for the corporate blog – consumer/user/customer responsiveness and centricity is really the only way to ensure continued growth for something like this.

I have been participating in a Coursera/Wharton School online class about marketing, and this week was all about customer-centricity. Since I work a lot with the ideas underpinning “taming Big Data” to gain customer insights in my freelance work, the whole idea of customer focus as one of the only real ways to differentiate makes a lot of sense – and customer data (overload) is the key to giving users what they want.

Never mind that I am totally distracted listening to the professor, Peter Fader, deliver his lectures, because he sounds too much like Bob Odenkirk – so I am supposed to be looking at a PowerPoint slide describing a couple of case studies of companies that have put customer data to good use, but it’s like I am hearing Saul Goodman explaining customer centricity to me. (And Saul Goodman arguably did put his customers first, sometimes to his own detriment and at his own peril.)

This customer-centric, data-driven approach is finally taking root in all kinds of business segments and industries. As Fader pointed out, direct marketing has always used data to target customers – but now, in the digital age, this data is readily available to almost everyone (I won’t get into the ethics of data collection, privacy, etc. except to say that while it’s great for businesses, it’s creepy for customers – see a recent article about a pregnant woman and Princeton professor who had to go to insane lengths to hide her pregnancy from advertisers, retailers and the Big Data machine.) At first companies like Google and Amazon tapped into user data because it’s in their DNA – I have spent a lot of time looking at how old-style, traditional publishers who lost both revenue and subscribers in the big digital shift are now taking back control their data (they had ceded a lot of it to third parties who started taking an ever-larger share of the pie from them) to target their website visitors, readers, subscribers with content and advertising that is highly personalized. And just today I saw a news report about a museum in London that has begun to use all kinds of data collection (traditional and digital) to continue to attract visitors. As the report stated, “Research is a key part of the museum’s arsenal.”

The application of data and personalization is the next logical step, but I wonder about the quality and longevity of this too. Collecting, analyzing and applying user data can only go so far before people feel as though someone is always looking over their shoulder. I cannot help but wonder if that sense of Big Data infiltrating one’s life will start to feel too much like Big Brother and begin to change and influence consumer behavior?

(As advertised – I rambled aimlessly!)

Baking Builds Community

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If I ever needed evidence of how cool and community-building Twitter can be, the last couple of days are a case in point. I exchanged a couple of not terribly meaningful Tweets with thinkspace (a company in the Seattle area that is a kind of office space/tech accelerator). I had heard of them but had no real reason to interact. But yesterday having crossed paths on Twitter thanks to the Mink 3D printer story making headlines in the tech world, I checked out thinkspace (awfully cool the work they’re doing in my old stomping grounds – western Washington).

But one of the coolest finds was an article in the thinkspace blog about how “baking builds community” – and this is something I can attest to – having started this blog back in 2009 or so because of my own baking obsessions and inclinations. Earlier parts of the blog are all about baking, recipes and pictures of cookies – 2014 has been almost bake-less, but somehow seeing the mention of baking mania on the thinkspace site makes me think it might be time to come out of hibernation.

Bear with me a minute – I am going to reach a point but before that will discuss a bit about the operational side of my weekly commuting life, a very impersonal and faceless grind. Each week, I spend one night and two days in Gothenburg, Sweden (where I work). Almost every week now, I stay in the same spare, no-frills hotel on the edge of the city. I don’t mind it; it is one of the least expensive options and the staff is pretty friendly. I would never go so far as to say that most Swedish companies, even those squarely in competitive consumer markets, are particularly friendly or service-oriented, but this low-end place has actually been friendlier and offered better service than I got at a lot of the city’s more upscale places.

Generally, in the year+ that I have been doing this “commute”, I have stayed in at least half of Gothenburg’s 90-ish hotels and in all parts of the city. In many cases, I have stayed in the handful of places that are actually whole apartments, which is always more comfortable for slightly longer-than-overnight stays – but they are generally expensive and impersonal, if you can actually book a flat (they are often sold out, as is almost always the case with one specific place in the city center).

This week I got an apartment that is a tiny bit off the beaten path but is nevertheless quite central – a really beautiful flat with the most personal and attentive service possible. The people running the flats (there are, I think, four or five flats there for rent) are personable and really strive to make the stay at their place fantastic. And it was. I fell in love with the apartment I stayed in (it is not one of the more spa-oriented flats that they have fashioned on the lower floor) – it was compact enough that it was not a huge amount of space but had high ceilings and skylight windows and a small loft just for sitting in natural light. It made me feel almost sad that I never found a flat just like it when I was looking to buy a flat in Gothenburg (not that I would have managed to win a bid in the cutthroat real estate market here).

The whole reason I digress and go off into this story was because I had a long conversation with the proprietress of the place – a gregarious Australian woman, and we got onto the subject of baking – my industrial-level baking habit/hobby and how I give all of it away. How it builds bridges, opens doors and of course (as she noted) probably gave me away as an American like nothing else does. Haha. I commented that Australia Day had just passed and I felt bad that I had not made any Anzac biscuits for the first time in years – and she lamented that she had not even had an Anzac biccie in 20+ years.This exchange – discussing baking – yes, just discussing, opened the door to further conversation and personalization. That really made a big difference – a human connection. And it makes me want to fire up the oven and make some cookies right now. Peanut-butter-cup-stuffed chocolate chip cookies anyone?

Baking really does build community – whether you are offering up 20 different kinds of cookies and cupcakes to the office or whether you are just discussing what you like to bake with the people you happen to meet in your daily life. Suddenly I feel inspired to get back in the kitchen.

“Here’s another little piece of advice…”