Chocolate coconut cupcakes

One of the food blogs I enjoy is www.loveandoliveoil.com, written by Lindsay and Taylor. They make tasty food and take good photos of it, which I suppose is a useful quality for food blogging. I make experimental food and usually forget the photo. Hmmm.

I used her recipe for the cupcakes I made for Ed's party. I wanted to make car-bomb cupcakes, but I didn't feel like going out to buy Guinness and eggs and sour cream, all things I didn't happen to have on hand. Her cupcakes are vegan, which means I didn't have to go and buy eggs and milk and stuff, and they use coconut milk, which I had on hand. I used the recipe for the chocolate raspberry truffle cupcakes, minus the whole raspberry bit, and they were delicious and dark and moist and not too sweet, which made them perfect for the Bailey's cream cheese frosting, which is good enough to eat on its own, actually.

I've reprinted the recipe below, in my own words for my own records. I'll be making these cupcakes again, as they were pretty simple to make and tasted quite good. They were also strikingly black, thanks to the special dark baking cocoa, and that made a nice contrast to the white-ish frosting, very pretty.

Chocolate coconut cupcakes
Made 11.5 cupcakes

1C coconut milk (shake the can well before opening)
1/3C oil
1 tsp vanilla
3/4C sugar (I used brown because that was what I had)
1C flour
1/3C Hershey's special dark cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix all the wet ingredients together, and in a separate bowl mix all the dry goods. Mix dry into wet. Stir just to combine. Plop large spoonfuls into lined cupcake tins, and bake for 18-22 minutes. Mine took 19 minutes.

Top with Bailey's cream cheese frosting. It makes any bad day immediately better.

Almond lemon cupcakes

I wanted to make some cupcakes, and felt like repeating the lime polenta cake I'd made before, but, I had lemons, instead of limes. And then I thought about using almond flour, because I like almonds. So basically, other than it having cornmeal and being citrus-y, its not a repeat at all. It was delicious though, and very lemony. The syrup helped keep things moist, so that the cupcakes are still good, three days later.

Almond lemon cupcakes
Made 36 mini cupcakes

3/4C flour
1/4C cornmeal - the coarser the better
1/2C almond flour - I took toasted almonds and ground them up
3 eggs
1/2C oil
1/2C yogurt
3/4C sugar
zest of 1 lemon
1/2tsp salt
2tsp baking powder

Syrup:
~1/2C powdered sugar
2 splashes triple sec
Juice of a lemon

Frosting:
~2C powdered sugar
Lemon juice, as needed

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix together the yogurt, oil, eggs, lemon zest, sugar, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, cornmeal, almonds, and baking powder. Add the dry stuff to the wet, and stir just until its combined. Grease three mini muffin tins (or work in batches), fill each one almost to the top, and bake for 15min, until the top bounces back. Don't overbake these little guys, or they'll be dry, although the syrup helps

When they're done baking, pull them out, put them on a cooling rack, and poke the top of each one with a fork a couple times (poke all the way down), then dunk the top of the cupcake into a bowl holding the lemon-y glaze-y syrup. It should be a fairly thin syrup, but you want to dunk the top of each one well - get that syrup into the cake.

Let them cool completely now, and when they're cool, use the same dunk-the-top method with the glaze. To make the glaze, put a whole bunch of powdered sugar in a bowl, and add some lemon juice, then whisk. You want the glaze to drizzle off the end of the whisk, but drizzle slowly, so that is actually far less liquid than you'd think necessary. Luckily, its hard to mess it up, add more sugar or more liquid as needed.

Once you've dunked the top of each one, press on whatever garnish you'd like - the glaze will dry hard, and hold anything on the top.

Then don't eat them all at once, or you'll get a tummyache.

Blackberry cobbler cupcakes

It is definitely blackberry season right now in VT, and I came home from the wedding's festivities with lots of blackberries. I wanted to do something with them, because I don't actually like blackberries as much as other berries for just eating, and I decided on a blackberry cobbler. However, what with Boston being so hot, I didn't want my oven on for as long as a cobbler would take, so I turned it into cupcakes. I think this would have worked better as one cake, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do when its 90 degrees and humid.

I got the recipe from the Pioneer Woman, just googling for the first blackberry cobbler recipe that would come up. It turns out that her recipe is essentially a whitney cake without the eggs, so I didn't look at the recipe much once I'd figured that out. They're not the prettiest cupcakes in the world, but the taste more than made up for the looks. I highly recommend these guys.



Blackberry Cobbler Cupcakes
Makes 12

1C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1C sugar
1/4-1/2C sugar for sprinkling
1/2C (1 stick) butter
1C milk
~2C blackberries (I used fresh, but I'm sure frozen would work too)

Preheat the oven to 350F, and grease a muffin tin. I recommend those little muffin tin liners, because the cupcakes will be fairly gooey when they come out of the oven.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In a 2C measure, melt the butter in the microwave. Add the milk, and stir that around. Dump the wet into the dry, and fold until its combined. A couple lumps are just fine.

Divide the batter evenly among the cupcake molds, trying to not fill them too high - you need to fit blackberries in here too. Drop a bunch of blackberries into each cupcake, enough to bring the batter to the edge of the pan. Sprinkle sugar generously on top of each cupcake, and put them in the oven for about 30 minutes. Check them at 30 minutes, and if they're still too goopy, put them back in for another 5-10. Its hard to go wrong, just don't burn them. And then, try not to eat them all in one sitting, it'll make your stomach hurt.

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Its time for seasonal stuff. Linnea gave me a giant pumpkin, so I turned it into goo, and made cupcakes from that. I tried out King Arthur's pumpkin mini cakes, which were good, but I prefer to call them cupcakes. The recipe made 12 regular-sized cupcakes for me. Then I made it again and it made 32 mini cupcakes. A good recipe, moist, not too pumpkin-y, and just spicy enough to be quite yummy. The only change I made was that the second batch of cupcakes I only used 3/4C sugar instead of 1C, and I thought that was an improvement. They'd been a bit too sweet before. The frosting is an orange-dyed cream cheese frosting.



These were a big hit at work, but Ed wouldn't try one because it has pumpkin in it. Freakn biases... so no Ed rating.


For the swirl, I put a glob of orange frosting in a ziplock bag, then a glob of white, then orange, then white, and squeezed it out the cut corner. I don't have a pastry tip, so to get the ridges, I duct taped the corner I was planning to cut with 3-4 layers of duct tape. Then I cut out a star shape, and it worked well enough to get those pretty ridges.

Lemon Chiffon Cupcakes

The last time I made lemon cupcakes, they were vegan. They were actually quite good, despite my misgivings, but I didn't feel like getting soy milk and margarine and not using eggs, so I decided to use a different lemon cupcake recipe. Chiffon cake sounded about right, I wanted something light and airy, rather than the pound cake type cupcake. I also felt like playing with my electric beater things more. I modified a pretty generic orange chiffon cake recipe, and this is what I ended up with. They were good, but didn't sell as well as the margarita or car bomb cupcakes. Because people like their booze.

Lemon Chiffon Cupcakes
1.5C flour
2 tbs corn starch
1C granulated sugar, divided
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3C vegetable oil
4 large eggs, separated
1/3C water
2 tsp grated lemon zest
1/4C lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extra
1/4tsp cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 325F. Sift together the flour, corn starch, 3/4C of the sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, put the egg yolks, water, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla. In a third bowl, put the egg whites and cream of tartar.

First, beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Add the sugar 1 tablespoon at a time, and continue to beat until stiff peaks form. Once you've beaten your whites, use the egg beater to beat the yolk mixture. Once that is beaten, add it to the flour mixture, and combine. Once that is mixed, add about 1/3 of the egg whites to the flour/yolk mixture, and just stir it to incorporate the whites and lighten up the batter. Then add the rest of the whites and fold them in, using the fewest number of strokes possible. Fill the lined muffin tins 3/4 full, as these cupcakes won't rise that much in the oven without something to cling to. Bake the large ones for ~15-20min, and the small ones for ~8-12 minutes. Keep checking them, these times are approximate...

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

If its not obvious yet, I far prefer cream cheese frosting to buttercream...

1 stick (1/2C) butter
4oz (1/2 package) cream cheese
2-6C confectioner's sugar
1 tsp lemon zest
2-6tbs lemon juice
food coloring as desired

Beat the butter and cream cheese. Add some sugar. Add the lemon zest and juice, and a couple drops of food coloring if you're using it. Add more flour. Beat. Taste. Adjust as necessary.

Allow the cupcakes to completely cool before you frost them.

Car-bomb cupcakes, v.2

The version 1 car-bomb cupcakes were good--really good. But, I noticed after my last bakesale that they got a little gummy after sitting in the fridge all night and then sitting in the hot sun. So, I made some changes, that I felt were worth writing up into a recipe. This time, it was to sell cupcakes at the Amesbury cyclocross race, and I wanted these cupcakes to live up to their internet hype.

They definitely lived up to whatever reputation they might have had. Although the real treat is the frosting, the cakes themselves were delicious--light, slightly bitter to offset the sweet, and deeply, darkly, chocolatey. I also used Young's double chocolate stout instead of Guinness, this time, mostly because I like to drink Young's and I don't like to drink Guinness--I don't know how much this affected the cupcakes, but they seemed to be slightly less beer-y than the last batch. Which is not necessarily a good thing, when you're selling cupcakes to cyclocrossers...



Car Bomb Cupcakes, v.2
(Makes 12 regular cupcakes + 104 mini cupcakes)

2C Guinness (or other tastey stout or porter, like Young's double chocolate stout)
2 sticks (1 cup) butter
1.5C cocoa powder
2 tbs instant coffee powder (or better yet, espresso powder)
4C flour
4C sugar (I used all brown sugar, due to a lack of granulated sugar, but I don't think it matters)
1 tbs baking soda
2 tsp salt
4 eggs
1C sour cream
1/3C vanilla yogurt *
1/2C oil

*If you have more than a cup of sour cream on hand, go ahead and use sour cream instead of vanilla yogurt. I just ran out of sour cream and so had to resort to yogurt.

Preheat your oven to 350F. Bring the Guinness and butter to a simmer in a large saucepan over medium heat. Do not boil. Add the cocoa powder and coffee and whisk until the mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. In a different large bowl, beat the eggs with the sour cream, yogurt, and oil. Add a little of the egg mixture to the beer mixture, whisking, and then add all the beer mixture to the egg mixture, and whisk to combine. Dump the wet stuff into the dry stuff, and mix until it is combined. It should be pretty runny.

Fill lined or greased muffin tins 1/2-3/4 of the way full. This batter rises a lot in the oven (probably due to the beer), so 3/4 full will yield cupcakes that overflow the edges a little bit. Cook the regular sized cupcakes for ~15-20 min (until a tester shows they're done) and the mini ones ~8-12 minutes. Cool them completely before frosting. These cooking times are approximate, so check them regularly.



Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting

2 sticks butter (1C)
8-16oz cream cheese (2 packages)
~3-6C confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
~1/4-1/2C Bailey's Irish Creme

These are pretty approximate numbers. The way I make frosting is pretty approximate and involves a lot of tasting. I use electric beaters, I don't know how to do it without them. First I beat the cream cheese and butter together. You can vary these amounts, but if anything err on the side of less cream cheese and more butter. Add about a cup of powdered sugar. Beat that in. Add the vanilla and 2 tbs of Bailey's. Beat. Add more sugar. Beat. Taste. Add more Baileys (2 tbs at a time), then more sugar, and taste. Keep adding Bailey's and sugar until the frosting tastes as liquor-y as you want, and is a good consistency. More sugar will stiffen up the frosting. You want it a little soft, for more pliable piping or spreading.

Once the cupcakes are cool, frost them however you want. When I pipe the frosting, I use disposable ziplock bags, and cut a hole in one corner. For spreading I just glob frosting on the cupcake and spread it around. If you refrigerate the cupcakes after frosting, the frosting will harden up, and then you can make pretty ganache swirls and stuff on top without worrying about smearing the frosting.

Enjoy! (responsibly?)

Margarita Cupcakes

I think I've found perfection in a cupcake. Margarita cupcakes. Just the name makes my mouth water. The cake part was delicious, I could eat them straight without frosting, but the frosting made the dessert. Oh my. I could eat this stuff with a spoon all day. Anyway, here is the recipe. I was inspired by this recipe, and basically used the same thing, with some additions, such as tequila.

Cupcakes
3C flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 stick butter, room temperature
3/4C sugar
1/2C limeade concentrate
3 eggs
1/4C oil
1/3C tequila
1/2C yogurt
2 tbs triple sec

Glaze
1/4C limeade
1/2C icing sugar
1/4C tequila
2 tbs triple sec

Frosting
8oz butter
8oz cream cheese
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs limeade
2 tbs tequila
1 tbs triple sec
5C icing sugar
(I ended up adding a lot more tequila to the frosting, but I don't remember how much, so I recommend making the frosting, tasting, and adding more booze as needed)

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, oil, booze, limeade, and yogurt. Add the flour, salt, and baking soda, already combined together, and stir it in. Bake in a lined cupcake tin at 350F for 15-20min, until golden brown on top. This recipe made 24 full cupcakes.

Once the cupcakes are done, allow them to cool completely. Using a chopstick or something else that can poke holes (like a fork?), liberally poke holes in the cake and drizzle the glaze over the cupcakes, about a tablespoon of glaze per cake, making sure that it gets down into the holes. Let that dry for 5-10 minutes, and you're ready to frost.

As noted above, I kept adding tequila to the frosting, and occasionally more sugar to balance it, and it turned out wonderfully. Just go by taste. Whip your butter and cream cheese together, and add the powdered sugar one cup at a time. Once the frosting is at a consistency that you like, add the booze and limeade. You'll need to add more sugar after this. I also added 4 drops of yellow food coloring and two drops of green. Frost the cupcakes however you want to, the frosting makes enough for 32 mountains of frosting on top of cupcakes, or it will go much further than that if you just spread it on instead of pipe it. Your call!

Mojito Cupcakes

As I hinted in my last post, we made two batches of cupcakes. Car bomb cupcakes, and mojito cupcakes. The car bomb cupcakes were absolutely amazing, says I, but while the mojito ones were good, they weren't quite as mojito-y as I wanted. I think the first problem was messing up the lime curd that I was filling them with, and the second problem was that the only rum I had was coconut rum, so the frosting just tasted like coconut. Also, they weren't quite minty enough. Probably because the lime curd was overpoweringly lime-y, which, while good, is overpowering. Would I make these again? Definitely! But with changes.

So, we made two different kinds of lime curds. One was overcooked (the full fat version) and the other one (the healthy[er] version) wasn't sweet enough. We tried to do a mint-rum frosting, but, as I said before, it just tasted like coconut. The cake body itself was a mint chiffon cake, and tasted very yummy without all its accoutrements.

Mojito Cupcakes
1C flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mint extract; optional but recommended
5 tbs hot milk
1C granulated sugar
2 eggs, whites and yolks separated
1/2 tsp salt
1C mint leaves, crushed

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Heat half a cup of milk with the crushed lime leaves, bring to a simmer for 5-10 minutes, then remove from heat and drain the leaves. Meanwhile, beat your egg whites to stiff peaks. Put hte yolks, 1/2C of sugar, milk, and vanilla into a big bowl and beat them to combine. Add the rest of the sugar, the flour, salt, and baking powder, and then fold in the egg whites. I did the folding in three steps. First I folded/stirred 1/3 of the egg whites into the batter, to lighten it up. Then I folded in another 1/3 of the egg whites, and then I folded in the last 1/3.

Bake your cupcakes either in cupcake wrappers or in an ungreased pan. The batter gets its lift primarily from the eggs, and needs to be able to climb up the walls of the pan. Only fill the cupcake molds 1/2 way up, as they'll rise a fair bit. Cook them 10-20min, and let them cool completely before frosting.

Lime Curd, V1.0 and V1.1
V1.0:
1/2C sugar
1/3C lime juice
4 large egg yolks
5 tbs butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1-1/2 tsp lime zest

Put all the ingredients into a saucepan, and heat on medium-low for 8-10 minutes. It should look slightly thickened, but it will thicken up more when cooled. Remove from heat and put into a clean bowl, and cover with plastic wrap so that a skin doesn't form. Chill for at least 1hr.

V1.1:
1/3C lime juice
1 tsp lime zest
5 tbs sugar (I suggest using more)
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a small saucepan over medium heat, dissolve the sugar into the lime juice. Add the zest. Lightly beat the egg in a small bowl, then whisking constantly, slowly pour the sugar/lime into the egg. Beat for 2 minutes, then transfer back into the saucepan, and heat over low, stirring constantly, until it just starts to bubble at the edges. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hr.

Each of these recipes makes ~2/3-1C.

Mint-Rum Buttercream Frosting

1 stick butter
3C powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp mint milk (leftover from the same stuff you used in the cake)
1 tsp mint extract
1 tbs lime juice
3 tbs rum

Cream the butter and salt, then add half the sugar and the milk and beat until combined. Add the rest of the sugar, the mint extract, and the lime, and beat for a while. Add the rum, and any more sugar if you think its necessary to stiffen up the frosting. Chill for at least 10 minutes before using.

Assembly
Take a cold cupcake, and cut out a reverse cone, so that part of the middle is missing but you can put the "cap" back on. Put in a dollop of lime curd, then add the top again. Frost either using a plastic bag to pipe the frosting or spread with a knife.

Car Bomb Cupcakes

For those not in the know, a car bomb is an alcoholic drink, where you take a glass of Guinness, and drop a shot-glass full of Jameson and Bailey's into the glass, and then drink it really fast before it curdles. Aside from the whole curdling thing, carbombs taste really good. I had recently stumbled across a recipe for a Guinness chocolate cake, and Bailey's frosting seemed like the perfect companion. After a brief google search, it turns out that many people have made car bomb cupcakes. And here I'm thinking that I was all original. Anyway, Patrice, a friend from highschool, was visiting, and I told her about my plans to make these cupcakes, and she got more excited than even I had been. Since we both had to bring cupcakes to various events later in the weekend (she'd forgotten a birthday, I had a bike team party), we decided to make two batches. One of car bomb cupcakes, and one of mojito cupcakes, with some twists on a recipe I'd used before. I'll post the mojito cupcakes later.

Car-bomb Cupcakes

2C Guinness Extra Stout
2 sticks butter
1-1/2C unsweetened cocoa powder
4C flour
3C sugar
1 tbs baking soda
1-1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
1-1/3C yogurt

Preheat your oven to 350F. Bring the Guinness and butter to a simmer in a large saucepan over medium heat. Do not boil. Add the cocoa powder and whisk until the mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl to blend. In another large bowl, beat the eggs and yogurt to blend. Add the stout-chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add the flour mixture to the wet stuff, and fold the batter until it is combined.

Bake the cupcakes in liners, for 17-22 minutes. Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before frosting. We stuck ours in the freezer...

Bailey's cream cheese frosting

1 stick of butter
4oz cream cheese (1/2 a big block)
1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp milk
1 tbs lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbs Bailey's Irish Creme
3-5C powdered sugar

With an electric mixer, cream the butter and salt for about 30 seconds. Add the cream cheese and beat, and then add about a cup of powdered sugar and the milk and beat until combined. Scrape down the bowl. Add the vanilla and lemon, and another cup of powdered sugar. Add the Bailey's. Then, as you continue to beat, add more powdered sugar until the frosting is as stiff as you'd like it, and fluffy. Be sure to taste...

The frosting can stay in the fridge for up to 4 days if tightly wrapped. Stir the frosting well before using ot get the air bubbled out of it, then put some in a plastic bag and snip off the corner to pipe it onto your completely cooled cupcakes. We found that refrigerating the cupcakes after frosting kept it looking nice.

We had enough batter for 36 cupcakes, and enough frosting for 32 cupcakes, so you might want to add more butter and cream cheese to the frosting to stretch it. Or, bake half the recipe of cupcakes and put on more frosting! These cupcakes got rave reviews from everyone who tried one. Including me.


Patrice packing up her cupcakes to take home in a nifty cupcake carrier. Later that night, I biked over to Somerville balancing a cooler full of cupcakes on my handlebars... genius.

Edit 9/14/08: Check out my version 2 of the car bomb cupcakes here!

Oreo Cuppers

Woohoo first post! Thanks to Alex for letting me write up my crazy cooking on her blog. Ok, so I made these vegan chocolate cupcakes with oreo frosting. For those of you that are kinda wary about vegan food, just chill. There are no weird ingredients in these cuppers, unless you consider soy milk to be weird I guess. They are super yummy and probably really unhealthy for me... whatev!

Lavender Cupcakes

Spring is a time of year when I feel like preparing food. Often this feeling manifests itself as baked goods, but sometimes as cooked stuff too. In this case, I felt like making something fancy. I toyed with the idea of a matcha green tea cake, as seems to be the rage all over the internets, but I don't have match tea powder and I'm too cheap to buy any. Then I remembered that I had a bunch of dried lavender and I'd never really figured out what to do with it. I would turn it into lavender cupcakes! Perfect!

But what kind of cupcake? I knew I needed a recipe that called for some form of liquid, that I could steep lavender in to give the cupcakes a lavender flavor. I started looking up recipes, and most of them were pretty heavy, which is fine, but I worried that the lavender needed a light cake to go with its delicate flavor. Almost like an angel food cake, but angel food cake cupcakes just didn't sound right. And then I stumbled across the solution-- Sponge cake! Similar to an angel food cake, but slightly heavier, I decided this would be the cake I was looking for.

As for frosting, I thought of just doing a lavender buttercream frosting, but stumbled across a recipe for a while chocolate frosting, and that sounded better. It tasted pretty darn good, too...

Ingredients
For the cupcakes:
1C flour (all-purpose flour works here)
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 tbs hot milk
1C granulated sugar
2 eggs, whites and yolks separated
1/2tsp salt
3 tbs dried lavender flowers
1 blackberry herbal tea bag

For the frosting:
6 tbs white chocolate, good quality
4 tbs butter (this is a 1:1.25 ratio, if you want to go with it that way)
2 tsp milk
2-3C icing sugar
4 tbs cream cheese


The method:
The first thing you will do is make the lavender milk. Put ~1/4C of milk into a small saucepan, and add the teabag and the lavender. You can leave out the teabag, but I found it gave the cupcakes a slightly purple tint, which I liked. Heat the milk and stir around the stuff in it for a while, and once it smells very strong and is colored purple, strain all the stuff out of it.

Meanwhile, beat your egg whites to stiff peaks. Put your yolks, 1/2C of sugar, milk, and vanilla into a big bowl, and beat them to combine. Add the rest of the sugar, the flour, salt, and baking powder, and then fold in the egg whites.

They say to bake these in an ungreased pan; maybe this is where turning a cake recipe into a cupcake recipe fell through. I was not able to easily get the cupcakes out of the cupcake tins; I do remember taking the bottom off the angel food cake pan and cutting around the edge last time I made one of those, maybe that is the problem. Anyway, bake these little suckers at 350 degrees for 10-20 minutes, or until they look done. Don't fill up the cupcake molds too far, because the batter needs to be able to climb up the sides of the pan. I filled mine about 1/2-2/3 full. Let them cool completely before frosting.

Frosting
Set a pot of water over a burner and get it boiling. In a large heat-proof bowl, add your chocolate and butter and whisk these together until they are just melted. Remove the bowl from heat and start adding the icing sugar until you reach a texture you're happy with. Add the cream cheese and beat that into the frosting. You may have to add more sugar after the cream cheese. This frosting will harden up a bit as it cools, so work with it while its still a little warm.

Chocolate-beet cupcakes

2 cups beet puree (about 3 large beets)
2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup warm water
1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1Cchocolate chips

Bake the beets until they are cooked. Peel and trim them, and then puree them in a food processor. Or you can be all old fashioned and mash them with a potato masher.

Preheat the oven to 325F.

Combine the melted butter, sugar, eggs and water, and mix until smooth.

Mix the flour, cocoa and baking powder together into a bowl, and then stir in the salt. Then, add the wet ingredients to the dry. When it is smooth, fold in the beet puree.

Scoop the batter into a prepared baking pan. You’ll have to adjust your baking times for the size of your pan. For a small, 4-inch round, bake for about 30 minutes. Cupcakes are about 20-25 minutes. The Budnt cake from the original recipe called for 70 minutes. The cupcakes seem more portable though... Don't overcook the cake, you want it still moist.

I have an idea for a healthy version of this cake (replaces the chocolate chips with walnuts, for one, and replacing some oil with applesauce), but I haven’t tried it yet so I won’t post it. It will very likely be a flop first time round. This version, however, is delicious! I tried it both plain and with some thawed out frozen raspberries, which was delicious, but hid some of the delicate beet flavor.