Swiss and Italian Meringue Buttercream. No difference to me here.

I get this question a lot:  Why do I do Swiss meringue over Italian meringue?

First, what’s the difference?  Swiss meringue is made by cooking egg whites and sugar to 160 degrees, whipping it into a meringue, then adding butter.

Italian meringue is made by cooking sugar and water to 240 degrees, then slowly pouring it into raw, soft peak egg whites, letting it whip into a stiff meringue, then adding butter.

I do Swiss.  The short answer is:  I think it’s easier.  The sugar and eggs cook together, they whip at one time, then you add butter.  Easy.  The only way you can do it wrong is to overcook your eggs, but that only happens if you don’t keep your mixture moving in the bowl or if your mixing bowl is sitting in the boiling water and not on the boiling water.  It is a rare day that I mess up a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream.

I’ve done my fair share of messing up Italian meringue.  Not overcooking your sugar syrup requires a good thermometer and for you to babysit your pot.  It also takes a while.  Then, once it gets to temperature you need to get it into your whipping egg whites as fast as possible.  But if you pour it in too fast, or the syrup hits the whirling whisk, or you take too long, that hot sugar cools and crystallizes, so you get a buttercream with bits of sugar crystals.  I don’t know how others pull it off, but every time I’ve ever made it I get cooled sugar syrup all over my whisk, bowl, and counter, making clean-up a pain.  Stuff like that just does not happen when you make Swiss.

I’ve seen lots of people say, “I use Italian Meringue Buttercream because it’s more stable”.  ”It pipes better”.  ”It lasts longer”.  ”It’s more firm”.  ”It’s different”.  Huh.

As I get busier and busier, I am making larger and larger quantities of buttercream.  I actually don’t know how large of a bowl I use (does 20 quart sound right?), but the largest batch of buttercream I’ve made at one time was about 25 pounds.  I do this by cooking my eggs and sugar in a large metal mixing bowl then transferring it to the huge Hobart bowl to whip away.    But I though, how easy would this be if I just had a little 6 or 8 quart saucepan of sugar syrup I had to run across the kitchen instead of this massive mixing bowl with about 10 pounds of HOT eggs and sugar?  That is when I decided that I might need to switch from my world famous Swiss meringue recipe over to an Italian meringue recipe.  I’m all about easy.

I want to mention that Ben Ron-Isreal uses Swiss Meringue Buttercream exclusively at his cake studio.  That says something to me.

Anyway, I had some left-over cake that I I thought would be perfect to practice on.  I decided to make Warren Brown’s Italian Meringue recipe, which lots of people claim is the best.  It has simple enough ratios:  5 oz. egg whites, 10 ounces sugar, 1/4 cup water, 1 lb butter.  But I wondered, if I did the exact same ratios but prepared them in the Swiss method (omitting the water), would I get the same buttercream?

Quick answer:  YES.  I’m going to melt some people’s minds right now.  I saw, felt and tasted absolutely zero difference between Swiss and Italian meringue buttercream made with the same ratios.  None.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  It was identical in flavor and texture.  I have a super refined palate at this point and I could detect nothing making one different from the other, so I don’t believe for a second that anyone in a billion years would be able to tell some difference between the two that I missed.  I piped with it.  I smoothed it.  I spackeled it.  I chilled it.  I brought it back to room temperature.  I let that cake sit on my counter for 5 days and nothing changed.  It is the Exact.  Same.  Buttercream.  I even had a control, a batch of  Swiss buttercream that I made using my ratios (6.25 oz egg whites, 7 oz. sugar, 1 lb butter).  My Swiss buttercream was a little more fluffy, lighter in color and not as sweet (makes sense, I have more eggs which make it more fluffy and lighter, and I use less sugar).  Mine piped the same, smoothed the same, and overall performed exactly the same as Warren Brown’s ratios.

Maybe there is some science making Italian “more stable”,  ”pipe better”, “last longer”,  be “more firm”,  or make it “different”,  but I couldn’t find it in practice.  Interesting, huh?

No Difference to me!

Shameless Begging Here…

OK Interwebs, I’ve come to you to grovel. I’ve come to you to beg. I’m on my knees here. Hat in hand.

Will you vote for me??????

I never win anything. I take that back – one time I was at a real estate conference in 2003 or 2004 and I happened to win a big gift basket randomly. I was so excited! It was huge and shiny and waaaaaaaaay at the front of the room, I was supposed to collect it after the key note speech. When they called my name I jumped up and down! I did the running man! I squeed with excitement! I was so giddy I had another glass of wine to celebrate! And another glass while waiting to go get it, then I had another glass because someone poured it for me, then I don’t remember too much after that. But next thing I knew my boss was dropping my drunken butt off at the hotel and I had no basket. I forgot it at conference center! I ddin’t even get to look at the stupid thing up close – it was at the very front of a huge room filled with overdressed real estate douche bags (I can say that now as I am A., no longer in the business and B., I used to be a real estate douche bag) so it could have been a bunch of smelly soap, a bunch of chocolates, gift cards… to this day it haunts me what could have been. I hope the lucky janitor that took that monstrosity home got a rash or anaphylactic shock or something.  But I digress.

I’m also lying a little bit – I do win baking competitions. Whatevs, this is different. This is a shameless popularity contest, and I have never in my life won a popularity contest.  I didn’t even win “Most Outrageous Dresser” in high school despite being the only chick punk rocker in the whole school.   Know who won?  The cheerleader that outrageously! wore combat boots to school one day.  Yeah, 20 years ago and I’m not over it.  Don’t judge.

So look, some extremely kind person nominated me to be on ABC7′s Bay Area A List for Best Wedding Cake. When I found out I almost jumped up and did the running man again. I want to win. Seriously, y’all. Right now I’m in 5th place, which is rad, but I know… I KNOW you will help me, right? All you have to do is clicky on one of these little links, register, and vote for Beyond Buttercream.  I mean, almost all of you have made my buttercream, made my white cake, and seen lots of my pictures, so it’s not really fibbing.  Don’t ya want to help me let others in San Francisco know that I’m awesome?  Er, my cake is awesome?  Whatever.

You have 5 days to vote.  I don’t know what I’ll win, but my joy will somewhat spastically look like this if I did:

Thank you

Candied Nuts (Recipe)

Candied Walnuts

Hot on the heels of my Salted Caramel rant, I thought I’d share another recipe.  This time, for candied nuts.  Because, sometimes the line between a good cake and an extraordinary cake is about 20 minutes worth of effort.  And these are worth that extra 20 minutes.

Candied nuts are easy to make once you know a very basic cooking technique, and that is how to make a proper caramel.  To make these, you basically roast your nuts to bring out their rich flavor, then coat them in homemade caramel to get a nice crunchy, sweetened nut.  I can eat handfuls of these, but they are super tasty on any cake or dessert that would normally call for nuts.  This finished recipe has a very generous coating of caramel on the nuts making them very sweet, but you can double the nut-to-sugar ratio to make them less sweet.  You can also sprinkle toasted sesame seeds, fleur de sel, or a little cayenne for some tasty variations.

Candied Nuts

• 1 C. unsalted, shelled nuts, whole (walnuts, pecans, almonds, cashews etc)
• 1/2 c. sugar

Preheat your oven to 375F.  Put your nuts in a parchment-lined baking sheet and roast for 15 minutes.  Remove them from the oven and keep them handy.

This time, I used organic shelled walnuts.

• WARNING:  When making professional caramel, you are dealing with extreme heat.  You may be tempted to stick your finger in or swipe your finger across the spoon to taste your sugar/caramel but it will burn the hell out of you. Water boils at 212 degrees (F), but sugar starts to become viscous at around 295 degrees (F).  I say starts – by the time you have fully viscous, amber-colored caramel, it will be about 350 degrees (F) or more.  That means inferno hot.  It’s also sticky and gooey, so if it gets on your skin it sticks like tar.
• 2nd WARNING: Making caramel goes from “nothing’s happening” to “it’s on fire!” extremely fast, so do not walk away from you pan.  Keep a close eye on it and be prepared to move fast.  Have your nuts ready to pour in, your silicone spatula out and next to you, and your silpat/lined cookie sheet ready for the finished nuts.

Scared yet?  Don’t be, I just don’t want any trips to the ER on my conscience

In a large frying pan, pour in your sugar and shake the pan to evenly distribute the sugar along the bottom.

Regular (not organic) sugar works best for caramel, but you can also use brown sugar.

The larger the pan and the thinner you can have your sugar, the more evenly it decomposes.  At the bakery, I have a large stainless steel frying pan that I prefer to use on my induction burner, so if you have a stainless pan, use it.  You aren’t using a thermometer here, you are going off the color the sugar is to tell when it’s done.  Obviously that is much easier to gauge when it’s against light colored steel, not to mention stainless cooks more even.  But alas, at home (which is where I took these photos) I only have non-stick pans and a black kitchen (which make for crappy photos.  Oh well, I never claimed to be a photographer).

Crank the heat of your burner on HIGH and leave it alone.  Do not stir your sugar!  If you do, you disrupt the heat distribution, the sugar crystals will clump together taking longer to decompose while the rest of your sugar burns.    After a few minutes (depending on your stove and pan), you will notice it start smoking a little and you should start to see spots where the sugar has started to break down.  Lift the pan and give it a swirl by tilting your wrist in a circular motion to try and quickly move the viscous sugar over the granulated sugar.

The sugar is just starting to decompose. I am lifting the pan and trying to move the viscous sugar by swirling it in the pan. DO NOT STIR!

Still… DO NOT STIR!.  Put the pan back on the flame and let the sugar continue to break down.  If you see spots in your pan that are cooking faster, you need to repeat the swirl step a few times.

Nice and viscous, no clumps of un-decomposed sugar, and I let it cook to a deep amber color. Pay attention to how it smells, if it starts smelling burned then get your nuts in ASAP to cool it down and stop the cooking process.

Eventually, all your sugar will be decomposed and viscous at the bottom of your pan.  You want to continue to cook until it gets a nice, deep amber color.  This part is tricky!  Cook too long and it will burn.  Not long enough and it won’t cool to a nice crack, meaning your caramel will remain sticky.

Take the pan off the heat, immediately toss in the roasted nuts and a pinch of salt (optional) and fold with a heat-proof silicone spatula.  This is the somewhat dangerous part because that caramel is around 350 degrees so again, be careful!

I’m getting hungry looking at these photos

Keep folding and stirring to get that caramel into all the nooks of your nuts.  Pour onto a parchment lined baking sheet or onto a Silpat and let cool completely.  You’ll probably have a big clump so if you have a Silpat, you can fold it over on itself and try and flatten them out a little bit.  Once cool you can break your nuts up or chop them.    I top my cakes with them.

This is a carrot ginger cake with vanilla bean Swiss meringue buttercream topped with candied walnuts.

This is a traditional recipe for making caramel – if you want to make a caramel sauce all you need to do is add heavy cream or butter into your cooked sugar.  Adding the liquid will expand the sugar and make it bubble like crazy, but by swirling the pan with your wrist it should come together.  Gordon Ramsey has a fantastic You Tube video showing how to make a proper caramel, so check it out.  You are doing the same thing, only instead of “butter in”, you are “nuts in”.  Snicker.  That sounds, er, bad.  LOL  Anyway, I’ve seen all kinds of stupid recipes for making caramel that has you adding water, pushing crystals down with a pastry brush, and all kinds of other steps that are completely unnecessary, so skip it and just do it this way!

“Oh NOEZ Jen, I burnt the caramel!!!”  OK, there is overcooked caramel and there is smoking, black, burnt caramel.  If you have the later, you need to toss it and start again.  But if you just slightly overcooked it, that’s OK!  You now have creme brule sauce.  That’s right, creme brule sauce.  It’s delicious on vanilla cake.

Let me know how you all did, or just say “HI!” by leaving a comment!

Rant: “Salted Caramel”

Even the President has gone crazy for Salted Caramels

OK people, we need to have a heart to heart.  There is a trend right now with “Salted Caramel”.  Look!  Salted caramel cake!  Oh boy!  Salted caramel mocha!  Wow!  Salted caramel ice cream! Sigh.

Gross.  Seriously people?  GROSS. This trend has been driving me batshit.

“Salted caramel” is NOT supposed to just be salt-y caramel.  Salted caramel is divine.  Salt-y caramel is disgusting!  What’s the difference?  Well, it seems this all started in France, where a famous candy store started sprinkling fleur de sel on their caramels.  The fad took hold and now every idiot from Starbucks to Wal Mart is adding a ton of salt to their caramel-flavored stuff and is selling to it the masses like it’s some gourmet flavor that has recently been invented.  Ug.    Call it “Salted Caramel” or “Salted Chocolate” and people are snatching it up and handing over fistfulls of cash.

OK, the soap box is out – and here you go… Salted caramel is regular caramel that has rock salt, fleur de sel, or another non-processed salt added at the end either on top as a finishing salt or it is folded in past the stage where the salt can dissolve and incorporate fully into the item.  You have to use specific types of salts that do not melt or dissolve so they remain in large crystals.  You do NOT want it to effect the overall composition of your treat and make it salty.

Why?  When your teeth bite into a crystal of salt while a sweet thing is in your mouth, it gives a jolt to your palate intensifying whatever you are eating.    It’s a trick on your taste buds and pleasure receptors.  This is an experience that does not happen with a big’ole spoonfull of table salt added to super sweet Criscocream icing, table salt added to the fake caramel syrup in your caramel mocha, or the table salt that Wal Mart is throwing in their cheap-ass ice cream.

PS – I’ve always had a salted chocolate cake on my menu, only I called it “Dark Chocolate Fleur De Sel” because I actually spend the money on imported fleur de sel from France.  But as a test, I changed the name of the cake to “Salted Dark Chocolate” and left the cupcakes called “Dark Chocolate Fleur De Sel” in February, just to see if people would respond better to the words.  Same recipe, same cake presentation, same cupcakes.  Guess what my #1 seller was last month?

Fleur De Sel... I mean Salted Dark Chocolate

Yup.  It’s a damn tasty cake, but still, I was very surprised at how many I sold just by changing the name.  So OK, I’m not above riding a fad to sell my cake, so I am permanently changing the name of both the cake and cupcakes.  AND… as an added bonus, introducing…

Salted Caramel Cupcakes - Devil's food cake with a salted caramel Swiss meringue buttercream made with imported fleur de sel.

The Best Ever Molten Chocolate Cake Ever – In Less Then 2 minutes (Recipe)

I’ll get straight to it – it’s Valentines day.  Some if you are going to be adventurous and attempt to make your loved one a fancy dinner at home.  Some of you are going to be spending the evening alone eating take-out and watching porn.  Whatever, chances are the thought of making anything tasty for dessert is frightening, too much work, or not worth it.  Well, have I got a recipe for you!

Molten Chocolate Cake.  From scratch.  Made with crap you probably already have in your house right now.  In under 2 minutes.  In the MICROWAVE.  That’s right, the microwave.  Sounds like a stoner’s delight, but trust me, this cake is restaurant quality, and once you make this you will never need another recipe to get a quick chocolate fix again.

Molten Chocolate Cake (makes 1 serving, only make one at a time)

3 tbsp. flour

3 tbsp. packed brown sugar

3 tbsp. coco powder (unsweetened)

3 tbsp. oil

3 tbsp. water

Pinch of salt

1 piece of chocolate (milk, bittersweet, white, whatever.)

Easy to remember - 3 tablespoons of everything

Throw all ingredients in a bowl except the piece of chocolate and mix with a spoon until smooth.

Pour into a microwave ramekin (or a coffee mug if you don’t have one).  Tap the ramekin on the table to settle the batter and smooth out the top.  Microwave on high for 1 minute 30 seconds.  DO NOT OVER-NUKE.  You’ll know it when you smell it.

1 minute 30 seconds later!

Your ramekin will be HOT so use mitts to take it out.  Break your chocolate into pieces and immediately stuff it in the center of your cake.   The heat of the cake will melt your chocolate.

Melty Chocolate

Then get all fancy schmancy and dust with some powdered sugar and garnish with some whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or some chocolate dipped strawberries (yeah, I really just had these “laying around”).

Nom Nom

Voila!  Happy Valentines Day!

Edited:  Yeah, originally posted with some stupid spelling errors that I hope I fixed.  That’s what I get for rushing

A Funny Thing Happened on a Cake Delivery Today…

(Jen’s note: This one has some naughty and crass words in it in my attempt to use humor and sarcasm relating a stressful situation. It’s how I deal with stuff in real life and pretty close to how I talk.  I hope you forgive me.)

I had this small cake to deliver Saturday at about 5pm.

Devil's Food Cake, dark chocolate buttercream filling, dark chocolate ganache, fleur de sel, sugar lotus flowers

As I’m putting it in my car I realized the floorboard of the passenger side had smutz on the rug because (of course) I forgot to get the van cleaned earlier. Being super picky about making sure nothing nasty gets on my cake, I went against my better judgment and put the cake on the passenger seat. It’s only a little cake, I told myself, it’ll be fine! I mean, I could have put it in the skid-proof cargo area, but that seemed silly, such a small cake in the cargo area. So I decided to take a chance.

Traffic was terrible. Terrible. San Francisco doesn’t have “freeways” to get across town, it’s all surface streets and whoever planned them needs a good flogging. It didn’t help that I was coming from a very heavy tourist area and trying to get to an even heavier tourist area, and although I thought I gave myself time, traffic was not moving and I knew I was running late. I HATE being late.

One thing we DO have going for us here is a very funky web of side streets and alleys that we can sometimes use to bypass horrible intersections and slow streets.

Alley. It starts by going under the San Francisco Chronicle building and takes you straight to one of the worst areas in SF - the 6th Street Corridor.

These allies, although mostly lined with apartments and businesses, can be sketchy. But whatever, I’m a city girl, and I had a cake to deliver, so I weaved thru oncoming traffic and managed to hook a left onto Minna to get to the 6th Street corridor. If you don’t know the area, it’s heavy drugs, lots of homeless, and seriously crazy people hanging out in front of half-way houses, needle exchanges, SROs, liquor stores and porn shops. You know, totally normal.

I notice on my left is a crazy-looking middle aged white dude riding a very janky bicycle on the sidewalk next to me, but he is holding onto a very nice, very shiny bike, peddling like crazy and constantly looking over his shoulder. I also noticed the bolt cutters he had strapped to his very janky bike so I knew he just stole the very shiny bike… and I was observing his get-a-way.

And because karma’s a bitch, I hit him. Actually, he hit me.

Replay it in my head: he was riding on the “sidewalk”, which in this alley is not much of a sidewalk, and he was riding as fast as he could, trying to also hold onto a 2nd bike. I am not sure what he hit to eat shit, if he was attempting to dodge and weave thru all the garbage and junkies on the ground, or if he was just completely drugged-out, but he hit something, flew off his bike and bounced off my fender. I, of course, slammed on my brakes and freaked the hell out.

I sat there astonished as this dude immediately jumped back on his bike, grabbed the other bike, told me “sorry” and peddled his butt off fleeing the scene. I’m like, wait, what? I didn’t know what to do. The dude left! Like in a freakin movie! He didn’t seem injured, I was maybe going 10 mph and he was actually going faster then me. Do I call the police? Do I get out of the car? He was gone around a corner before I could even blink. And although there were probably 20 people hanging about and milling around in this very popular drug alley, not a single one was even looking at me or seemed to have noticed that Mr. Bike Thief just bounced off my fender doing 10mph! In fact, the very non-action of the universe after such a thing happened made me second-guess that it happened at all.

Huh. Allrighty then. I took a deep breath, realized I was causing a traffic jam of cars behind me, and went on my way.

That’s when I realized my pretty little cake had gone flying off the passenger seat when I slammed on my breaks. If it had been an all-buttercream cake it would have been completely ruined. But it was ganache, and although it had some cracking, it was fixable. And miracle of miracles, I grabbed a few spare sugar lotus flowers “just in case” on my way out of the shop which saved my butt because the ones on the cake were broken.

Once the cake was safely at the venue I inspected the van and yeah, it totally did happen. There is no damage, but there is a “clean spot” on my otherwise dirty van that Mr. Bike Thief cleaned with his shirt. Or face. Whatever.

So, why do I tell this story besides to share that I totally just hit someone with my car on Saturday? After the shock wore off I realized that I just got LUCKY. L-U-C-K-Y. If he was a normal person, I’d be all kinds of screwed right now. As I sat stunned in my car practically hyperventilating because I could have just killed someone, I couldn’t help but to keep running thru a checklist of all my insurance coverage and wondering if it would have been enough to cover something like that. So lesson #1, I need to call my Farmer’s Agent to make sure I have a ton of insurance and that my van is completely covered… because you never know when the fist of mighty Zeus might smack down another meth-filled junkie in process of stealing a bike making him eat shit and bounce off your fender. This is San Francisco. It could happen, is all I’m sayin.

And my pretty little cake… it would have been completely fine and would have totally survived the abrupt stop if it had been on the floorboard of the passenger seat or in my skid-proofed cargo area. So Lesson #2, never put a cake on the seat, no matter what.

And finally, I never would have put a cake on the seat if my freakin van was clean enough to put a cake on the floorboard in the first place. So lesson #3, make sure the van is washed if I know I have to make a delivery, even if it was just raining.

So yeah, that happened.

Oh, and before you think I’m a really horrible person, I did call the police after I delivered the cake. They were completely NOT interested in the whole I-hit-him-he-hit-me with the car thing after hearing where the incident took place. Apparently it’s not a pedestrian hit-and-run when the pedestrian flees the scene and there were no injuries. Yay, I guess. However, the officer on the phone took the generic description I had of what Mr. Bounce-Off-My-Fender looked like along with the shiny bike he was fleeing with, apparently that was something worthy of reporting, which made me feel a lot better about the entire situation.

So, if you had a baby blue fancy bike jacked from the 5th and Mission area, I’m sorry but you probably are not getting it back. But if it makes you feel better, I totally hit that dick with my car for you.

You’re welcome.

Review: Georgetown Cupcakes (Packaging and Other Stuff)

Georgetown Cupcakes, home of the show “DC Cupcakes”, just broke the world record making the world’s largest cupcake.  TLC aired an hour-long special about it last week.  This is not a review on how I feel about the show, although I rarely watch it because it drives me up the wall (and this special was no exception), but I tuned in about 1/2 way thru because I caught wind that for 24 hours after that episode was aired, there was a promo code to get 40% off  cupcakes, and they ship all over the US.  With the promo code, shipping was practically free.  W00t!  I have no plans of ever being in the vicinity of Georgetown Cupcakes’ storefront and I’m a sucker for sales, so I figured, what the hell? I’ve blown $33 bucks on much stupider stuff, might as well order some.

But honestly, I was major curious how they ship.  I mean yeah, I wanted to taste their cupcakes but I REALLY wanted to see how they do their packaging, because as any professional baker will tell you, figuring out perfect packaging is like searching for the Lost Ark, and just when you think you have it all figured out you see a competitor come up with something way cool.  But also, there is lots of misinformation in the cake world about what you really need in order to ship baked goods.  I’ve read people say you need special kitchens, special permits, special nutritional labels, and pay special interstate taxes.  I’ve never found any documentation to back this up and the owners of my commercial kitchen says you don’t need any of that, but I figured, if there WAS something special, famed Georgetown Cupcakes would most certainly have it.

They ship via Federal Express overnight, and here is breakdown of what I got:

The Outer Box

The main box reminded me of a large folding shoebox made of super heavy cardboard.  It is super-branded, covered in pink with Georgetown Cupcakes’ signature black design pattern covering the entire box.  NO mistake of what’s in it and where it came from.  The only label on this box is the Fedex sticker.

Mylar envelope

Open the box and you see this – a padded Mylar envelope that is mostly sealed.  There is a card (tucked into the top of the envelope) that explains that the cupcakes were baked the prior day, shipped frozen, and to leave them out for 3 hours to defrost.  It had no nutritional info nor did it have an ingredients label, but did have the standard “food allergy” warning.  I don’t think that is a legal requirement, I think it’s done for liability purposes (but I could be wrong).

Inside the Envelope

Another box with this single ice pack.  Not dry ice, but a simple cheap gel coolant pack.  (reusable!)

The Inner Box

A better photo of the inner box, made of the same super-thick cardboard as the outer box.  Other then the logo on top, there is no other label on it.

Finally, cupcakes in sight!

Now we finally see some cupcakes, 12 of them in a super thick, plastic clamshell container.  I ordered a variety pack and pretty much chose at random.

Inside the Clamshell (from top left to right): Strawberry, red velvet, lemon berry, carrot, toasted marshmallow fudge, salted caramel, milk chocolate birthday, chocolate2, chocolate salted caramel, toffee crunch, vanilla, and lemon blossom

As if the packaging wasn’t enough, they have lollypop sticks inserted in each cupcake, I assume to keep them from hitting the top of the clamshell if the box is dropped or something.  I don;t see how that could have effected anything because these girls were frozen solid when I opened this box.

My over-all impression: I know cake is fragile, but it’s not THAT fragile.  The San Francisco hippie in me shakes my head at the waist of paper and resources that went into all this packaging.  Is it necessary?  Could they reduce some of it?  I think so.  I mean, these aren’t Faberge eggs, they’re cupcakes for crying out loud!

Oh, how did we like them, you may be asking?

Um, well...

Just to clarify, I got these to examine the packaging and to taste something that I normally wouldn’t, but the plan never was for my husband and I to actually eat these.  Please understand, I have cake available 24/7, so it’s not very often that we would eat, say, a whole one of MY cupcakes, let alone a whole dozen of Georgetown Cupcakes.  This is a pic of them today right before they go out to the trash to give you an idea of what we liked.  I believe these are the exact cupcakes that people wait in massive lines for and that nothing in flavor or texture was lost due to shipping. Hubbie liked the cream cheese frosting so that’s why you see the frosting missing off one, but honestly this just isn’t our type of cake… it’s too sweet for us.  But comparing these to say, SusieCakes or other cupcakes of the same fame that I’ve had, these are good, and I appreciate their price point (as opposed to SusieCakes, $3.00 for failed scratch cake with fake frosting from a can.  A can!  But hey, I guess it IS pretty genius to fill a failed sunken cupcake with frosting, turn it into a marketing ploy and call them “frosting filled!”).  Anyway, I really felt these Georgetown Cupcakes are priced appropriately and even though we didn’t eat all of them, I felt I got my money’s worth.

Gotta Try:  Toffee Crunch.  I swiped just frosting.  Meh.  I nibbled just cake.  Meh.  I took a bite putting it all together, and it was the tastiest of the bunch.  The flavors really worked well with each other.  2nd runner up was the Carrot cake.  Kind of a mystery to me, it seemed like a butter cake when most carrot cakes are oil-based.  Makes me want to experiment.  And with the cream cheese frosting (that hubbie ate all of), it was good.

Pass on:  Both salted caramels.  I know these are “fad” flavors, but if you are going to call something “salted caramel”, I want to taste salt AND caramel, and the chocolate needs to be rich and dark to work.

Completely gross:  Both lemon flavors.  100% artificial flavor.  They top them with those fake gummy lemons and manage to make the entire cupcake taste like it.  Complete mystery how they do it, but one I’m not willing to try and figure out.  Also, if I would have known they added so much pink food color to the frosting of the lemon berry cupcake, I never would have ordered it.  Bleach.

So there you go!

Have you had Georgetown Cupcakes?  What’s your favorite flavor?  Post a comment!

Dear Gluten-Free Friends,

Let me get straight to the point.  I’m so sorry.  I really am.  I had no idea how disgusting commercial gluten-free cake was until recently.  And now… NOW I understand why I get so many calls asking for gluten-free cake.

You’ve call me, hoping against hope that Beyond Buttercream was the answer to your prayers. You’ve believed that there MUST be a bakery somewhere in this city that makes gluten-free cake that does not taste like ass.  But sadly, due to my ignorance I have turned away your business, sending you down the street to Whole Foods or Rainbow Co-op because I know they sell gluten-free cupcakes.  I’ve seen them.  I’ve never tasted them, but I figured they must be good.

Well, a few weekends ago I was at a get together.  They had some of those gluten-free cupcakes I’ve seen from Whole Foods.  I was really curious – I wondered what they taste like?  They are HELLA expensive, so I was expecting that they would be at least decent.

Bleech.  Ug.  Nasty.  WTF?  THAT’s what you all have been forced to eat???  WTF is that “frosting”?  Holly hell, I get that they are supposed to be vegan and dairy-free also, but there are LOTS of ways to make all of those things happen without slathering what tasted like Santorum on them.  (Er, not that I know what that tastes like, I can just imagine based on this Google search).  Like being sensitive to wheat wasn’t punishment enough.  Like being allergic to wheat wasn’t punishment enough.  Like having Celiac Disease wasn’t freakin punishment enough!  Apparently some bakeries have decided to play one sick, disgusting joke on you and profit heavily from it.

I was downright offended for you.  You’ve been told that THAT crap was “the best” you were going to get, and even worse… you had to pay almost double the price of regular cake just for the privilege of eating it.  The baker in me took it as a personal challenge to take my delicious recipes, take out the wheat, add in some molecular gastronomy, and make a gluten-free cake that had a perfect cake texture, was moist without being a sponge, and most of all, actually tasted like chocolate or vanilla.  It took some work, some trial and error, and some re-learning what I thought I already knew, but I am super pleased to announce…

Gluten Free Devil's Food and Vanilla Bean cake

Devil’s Food and Vanilla Bean cake is now available in gluten-free.  Red Velvet is also, but not shown.

So I’m sorry you’ve had to do without for so long.

Love,

Me

PS – I’m sure there are lots of other bakeries that do Gluten-Free well, I am only going off my experience tasting un-named local company’s shit-in-a-plastic-clamshell disguised and marketed as “cake” purchased at a premium price from my local Whole Foods.

Mine is better.

Comments?  I would like to haz them below!

Uh, Yeah, I Changed My Name.

I changed my business name.  I am now Beyond Buttercream.  Why?  Well, several reasons.

“From Scratch” isn’t that original.  Plain and simple.  If you Google “From Scratch”, tons of different bakeries across the US come up.

“Beyond Buttercream” is completely original.

Answering the phone “From Scratch” or telling someone I’m “From Scratch” made for a strange conversation.

“Beyond Buttercream” just rolls so much easier.

So there you go.  Still me, just a re-branded me.

Oh, and check out my new website, www.beyondbuttercream.com.  I spend a LOT of time making it.

Thanks!

Recipe: The Cookie of a Thousand Names (Mexican Wedding Cake Cookie)

Like most American families, I have a few staple cookie recipes that have been passed down from mom to daughter.  At my house, we had 5 different cookies that my mom made every year, at least until I kicked her out of the kitchen:  Traditional shortbread, chocolate chip, star lite sugar crisps, chocolate peanut butter thumb prints, and butter nut balls.  My mother’s recipe box is one of the earliest memories that I have, and I can still see it plain as day – it was gold, plastic, the lid was broken, and it was stuffed with recipes clipped from Good Housekeeping circa 1970 and the like, warn old index cards filled with my mother’s perfect penmanship and the gems of the box… her mother’s really old cards that she says date back before the 1920′s.  This recipe for butter nut balls was on one of them.

Recently I got to do a small centerpiece cake for a Day of the Dead-themed wedding.  The client asked if I also made Mexican Wedding Cake cookies.  I instantly became nostalgic about my grandmother’s recipe and how good they are.  Only we called them Butter Nut Balls.  Actually, according to the Joy of Baking, these cookies are also called Russian Tea Cakes, Italian Butter Nut, Southern Pecan Butterball, Snowdrops, Viennese Sugar Ball and a Snowball.  They are all basically the same… a nut-based shortbread rolled in powdered sugar. Anyway, MY grandma’s recipe is the best.

Since I recently had the chance to make them and in the spirit of the upcoming holidays, I though I’d share the recipe, because it’s different then all the other nut ball recipes I’ve seen.  This is CRAZY easy, in fact it’s one of the easiest cookies I’ve ever made.

Rafella’s Bolas de la Mantequilla de Nuez (Butter Nut Balls)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

12 oz salted butter

1/2 cup sugar

4 cups all purpose flower

2 cups finely chopped walnuts

1 tsp. vanilla

Powdered sugar

The trick to this recipe is to NOT overbeat your ingredients, it’s like pie dough, the less you handle it the more tender your cookie will be.  First, lightly cream the butter and sugar.  Add the flour 1 cup at a time, slowly mixing until just combined.  Add nuts and vanilla, and mix  It will be thick.

Scoop out smaller then a golf ball but larger then an olive sized bits of dough, roll in your hands to form a ball and place on a cookie sheet.  These don’t rise or spread much.  Bake for 45 minutes.  Remove from oven and let them cool for 10 minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack.  Cookies will be delicate when they come out of the oven but will toughen up.  When cookies are cool, roll them powdered sugar and enjoy.  These cookies keep excellent in an airtight container for 2 weeks or more, making them perfect for gift-giving.

Let me know how they came out for you .