Dark Chocolate cupcakes with the easiest buttercream ever!

Last night I was working on an order for a late night pick up. An order for cupcakes of the deviously darkness with a letter on the cupcakes to make out a personal message. "Dark chocolate, no seriously dark intense chocolate" is what the aim was.  It was for a group about 20 people so I suggested classic dark chocolate cupcake, it's inspired by devil's food cake but with a dark chocolate cream cheese icing.

The second flavour was a American style chiffon cake, so not as light as what I traditionally bake but still lighter than your typical American Cake. With intense dark cocoa and orange zest and

cointreau(orange liqueur). The icing was a super glossy dark chocolate buttercream with more cointreau.

Those of you who read my blog fairly often are starting to notice a pattern: Irish Cream Brownies, Champagne Buttercream, Cointreau in the cupcakes... I use alcohol frequently in baking. I always discuss that with the customer or whenever I'm baking for a potluck. Honestly it's cheaper than flavour extracts, tons of flavours, and if it doesn't work out in a baking experiment just use it for cocktails. ^_~

But I digress...

The cupcakes were baked then it was time for lettering. I admit that lettering is something that I am working on improving. I do great with chocolate and royal icing on fondant but royal icing doesn't work on buttercream (the fat dissolves the sugar) so I decided on another buttercream for the lettering. I was tempted just to use my plain buttercream recipe but that would have been too fluffy and just too much butter.

I recalled a recipe from my restaurant days that was super simple but it was shortening based. There's a time and a place for shortening and  this was not it. A quick query on Google and I found the perfect recipe! Only 2 ingredients, I'm not even going to tell which two because you should totally visit Cookies and Cups and check it out yourself.

I had a few cupcakes left over and decided to bring them to work.

  CESC is the place where I work everyday, "saving the world" as Mama describes my work. ^-^ I obviously need to work on my lettering with a round tip. But this icing's lovely and I can't wait to have more fun with it this long weekend. I need some mocha cake in my life.

But how are YOU doing?

I realised it's been awhile since I wrote anything about my everyday work, "saving the world" as my mother calls it.  Things at CESC have been busy, I recently started keeping track of ALL the refrigeration projects. It's pretty straight forward work: ASH(Anti-sweat heater controls), ECMs(electrocommutative motors), Strip curtains...things like that. They come more frequently and are sold easier than lighting projects so I definitely have to stay on top of it. Thank goodness for Trello.

Can you believe I'm nearing 1 year at CESC? I've learned so much and I feel super lucky to have a full time job in the field I love. The office environment is good too. I've really been able to find my stride in HVACR while still trying to learn what I can about lighting. Lighting over anything is just something I've learned takes time to really get a knack for.

Lately I've been doing allot in the Whole Building approach to energy efficiency which means: Back to the rooftops!  Been doing more modelling of energy and calculations.  Pretty much in an office full of lighting experts, I'm the mechanical nerd. Or as I like to say "Lone Engineer in the office holding it down"

Between CESC, ESC, and Engineered Cupcake life has been quite busy indeed. 

Wine Class Contribution: "Lo" Bake Peach Goat Cheesecake

Last night I went to my monthly wine class. One of my former coworkers, a construction

supervisor who is also a sommelier and food expert, he also used to work in computers. See? folks like me are more common than you think!  Wine class is a great way to socialize with colleagues, drink great wines and learn something about it too. The class is the evening right after work, so we all usually eat a little something during the class. So it's a great opportunity also to really understand food pairings especially for desserts that are good with and after wine.

  This class was on the wines of Loire Valley in France and we had a special food pairing with fresh oysters from Tomales Bay Oyster Company. So I wanted to make something that would go good with the queue of acidic wines and would be a nice light dessert after a few oysters. Something like a nice cheesecake.

I'll let you in on a secret, cheesecake is a bit of a specialty of mine. Rather convincing folk who claim not to really like cheesecake. Personally traditional New York cheesecake is a little to rich for me after dinner. There are three kinds of cheesecake: chilled(no bake), steamed(popular in Japan), and baked (traditional). For a this setting, a light chilled "lo" bake cheesecake was just the ticket.  Yellow Peaches are ripe and in season and have been tasting amazing. Goat cheese offered the right amount of tang. "Perfect" I thought and it's cheesecake so it'll be gluten free.

...oh wait graham cracker crust -_-

Ah but wait! Almond flour crust, goes well with the cheese and peaches.  And here we have it.
The "lo" bake part is the crust. Technically you could probably get away without it but baking it a bit helps keep it together for better slicing.


Lo Bake Peach Goat Cheesecake

Crust

• 1 cup blanched almond flour
• 2-3 tbsp brown sugar
• 4 tbsp metled butter
• 1/2 tsp ginger

Filling

• 10 oz goat cheese room temperature
• 8 oz cream cheese room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp ginger
• 2 medium peaches thinly slice

Preheat oven to 375

1. Combine the ginger, almond flour, brown sugar and butter in a small bowl and stir to combine. 
2. Press into a pan (springform or other wise, I used a 8" square pan)
3. Bake for 7-10 minutes until toasted brown
4. Allow crust to cool
5. In a bowl mix together goat cheese and cream cheese. 
6. Gradually add sugar and ginger, mixing until well combined
7. Spread evenly into a cooled crust
8. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours
9. Top with sliced peaches before serving

Tips

• I made this a 1 bowl recipe (well I washed the bowl once). Used a large glass mixing bowl. Made crust. Wash. Then softened cheese in microwave on low heat for about 90 seconds. Added sugar and ginger and poured into the cool crust
• If you're going to be travelling with this, Refrigerate for 2 hours than you can keep in the freezer 30 minutes prior to departure

Music Notes

Yep I still scrobble. What's scrobbling? It's when you use a service like last.fm to keep record of the songs you listen to on your digital devices of choice. I listen to music on Pandora and Spotify. Why would you do that? Well it's interesting to see how over a time period what types of musics you listen to. What songs you seem to play allot. If you're a data junky like me it's cool to see what you were listening to oh let's say 6 years ago this time.

So August 2007. What was going on was entering my last year of class before I left for my final internship. In true college drama, this was a few weeks before I got engaged so I had a fight with my bf. School was just starting back.
"Here(In your arms) "is by far the most annoying song I was listening to. I tried to listen to it and only got a minute in. I was young in love and foolish. "Shooting Stars" is def my flashback song. When I was in college I pretty much loved anything produced by the Neptunes.

Infographics

An interesting combo of bluegrass and love songs.  Makes me think I need to find me a date and some bbq.

Till next time,

Jasmine