Crouching Muffin, Drunken Cupcake February 8, 2008

Behold the power of persistence!!!

I will finally surrender submit for your viewing pleasure, the Island Passion Cupcake in all it’s glory!  It took a week of much pondering, hunting and musing… and much failed attempts at making frosting and obtaining cooking supplies.  As my mother just stated just now when she called me to give her review (I’m staying the weekend near campus, but I managed to make and frost 9 cupcakes to send to my hometown via my aunt.  This way my family could taste them and give me their opinions) “I hope you wrote down that recipe, because you’ve got yourself a winner there.”  Allow me to break it down for you…

    Borracho Cupcakes II Makes 16 cupcakes (what an odd number, I know!  But it was supposed to be a dozen since I halved the recipe… but I didn’t want to overfill the cups.  So, 16 was how many I ended up with)

• 1/2 cup butter-flavored shortening
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 tsp orange zest
• 1 teaspoon orange extract
• 1/6 cup + 3 teaspoons Passoa
• 1 cup self-rising flour
• 3/4 cup Passionate cranberries*

1. Cream together shortening, sugar and 3 teaspoons of the liquor until light and fluffy.
2. Mix in one egg at a time; blend in orange extraxt and fresh orange zest.
3. Fold in remaining liquor and sift in flour.  Blend in half the cranberries and sprinkle the remaining cranberries onto each cup when they have been set into molds. 
4. Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of cupcake comes out clean.

* Passionate cranberries are made by placing 3/4 cup of dried cranberries in 1/2 cup Passoa and allowed to reconstitute for at least overnight.  The more days, the better.  I left mine in their alcohol baths for 4 days. 

     Alright, so now they look like muffins.     

But, they didn’t crack on top.  They are also wicked good straight from the oven.

And while an unfrosted cupcake is STILL a cupcake, these puppies needed a little something on top.  I hadn’t spent the week researching frosting for nothing!

Chunky Pineapple Passion Buttercream

• 1/2 stick butter, softened
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons pineapple juice
• 2 tablespoons Passoa
• 1/2 20oz. can crushed pineapple, drained

1. Beat butter until creamy, slowly working in sifted sugar. 
2. Slowly add liquid, one teaspoon or tablespoon at a time.
3. Drain pineapple well and fold into mixture.
4. Chill for half an hour. 
5. Generously frost your cupcake.

 Alright, so I was going to halve the passionate cherries to use as decoration.  However, I gave away most of my cupcakes before I remembered to put the cherries on them.  So the 7 cupcakes I had left got a whole cherry.  My housemate and I ended up with whole cherries as well.  (Can one get drunk off a cherry? wow-ee)

 

Final Review: I’m actually REALLY tired of Passoa right about now but I think I attained the drink blend that I aspired to.  This newer cake blend seems so much lighter than the last and the frosting seemed like it really needed the pineapple.  The orange flavor highlighted the passion fruit and didn’t overpower it.  For this I am glad, it was my biggest pout inducer with my first batch.  That being said, these lovely little cupcakes give a refreshing zing to many a tropical fantasy.  While my mother disagrees with me, I think the alcohol could very easily be substituted for some passion fruit juice, something I am VERY fond of.  Overall, it was my quest for perfection that made this cupcake so much work.  I think I’m going to take a break on cupcakes for a few days and cook other things.  Luckily, I managed to give away most of the cupcakes I made today.  All the zombies got sent off to other parts of the island and my family received most of the patch of these.  I’ve heard no complaints.  However, I do advise caution when taking a bite of your passionate cherries.  Try not to just consume whole, they pack a whallop. 

Island Passion Cupcakes

over and out!

MacGuyvering cupcakes, one batch at a time February 8, 2008

The impatient baker that I am, fed up with the silly oddessy to find cupcake cups, I threw my hands up in the air with resignation of finding cupcake baking pans.  This shouldn’t be this difficult!  These sorts of things are supposed to be easily found!  This fucking island is bass ackwards, I swear.  Since I’m waiting on a certain hunk to accept my offer of being a near mail order bride in order to get off this place, I guess I have to make do with what I have on hand.  Even if I have to overuse my precious cupcake liners and pull out some random pans in order to complete the challenge.  Cupcake Hero should just give me an honorary prize for being the most persistent through adversity. 

But, just in case my experiment went wrong, I decided to whip up a batch of  Drunken Zombie Cupcakes. There was no way in heck I was going to endanger my precious Island Passion Cupcakes in some cockamanee experiment.  So, the little zombies were just going to have to bravely be my guinea pigs.  I can hear y’all gasping in horror.  No!  She couldn’t have done those cupcakes without a pan!  Is she NUTS?!  Well, why yes… yes, I am.  I would say a decade living on the island has made me bass ackwards too.  Or… at the very least, very desperate.

 More or less, right?  I  held my breathe, didn’t touch them.

Ha!  There is a god and he/she/it was watching my cupcakes.

They kinda look like biscuits in that picture, don’t they?

Drunken Zombie Cupcakes Makes 12 dozen

• 1/2 cup butter-flavored shortening (like heck I was gonna use my precious butter on this when it could go horribly wrong!)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 teaspoons Passoa
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon orange extract
• 1 cup self-rising flour
• 1/6 cup Zombie

1. Cream the shortening with the sugar and the Passoa.  Beat in one egg at a time.
2. Mix in extract and Zombie. Sift in flour.
3. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes.

 I made the Orange Passion Buttercream into a glaze by adding a tablespoon of Zombie.  (At least I’m going to call it a glaze because my hand slipped in pouring the additional liquid and therefore came out more runny than I would have liked.  However, I could have fixed it with the addition of more powdered sugar.  I was not willing to spend so much energy since I was remaking the buttercream for my darling passionate cupcakes that were baking as I worked.)

Final review: Pay no attention to the maniacally laughing woman who is pleased as punch for having successfully made cupcakes against all odds.  I was quite happy with my little zombies, more than I thought since I made them fully expecting them to fail.  They didn’t taste so great fresh out of the oven but I had to try them anyway.  My housemate tried the final frosted cupcake and loved them.  He said that the glaze worked well to counteract the balance of the light cake.  No, he really didn’t say precisely that, but that’s  my interpretation of what he said… so you’re just going to have to live with that.  The alcohol got baked off and the frosting didn’t seem boozy at all.  No taste like fruit loops here.  Overall, a wonderful success.  I found that it’s easier to bake them if they are more spaced apart and the cups don’t get filled too much.  There was at least one prettily round cupcake.  I was actually very fond of the square ones.  These I’m essentially giving them away and moving on to my next endeavor.

What is ‘Zombie’? February 8, 2008

Since several people were asking about it (even though MQ was the only one brave enough to comment and ask about it on the post!  Y’all need to leave comments more, I swear!), allow me to educate the masses….

By now most of you may know that I live in Puerto Rico and this is the home of Bacardi.  Needless to say, rum is a very popular libation.  I don’t know about everywhere else in the world, but Bacardi has a pretty wonderful line of pre-mixed cocktails.  There’s Bahama-Mama, Long Island Iced Tea and, of course, Zombie.  

According the the traditional way of making this mixed drink, it’s served in a highball glass and (pineapple juice, orange juice, dark rum, light rum, apricot brandy, sugar, lime juice and apricot brandy) slushed together with ice except for Bacardi 151 which is floated on top with a cherry.   How this traditional blend of seemingly yummy ingredients turns blue, I haven’t a clue.  Trying the read the side of the bottle produced no further enlightenment.  It just says it’s a blend of rum… so I’m guessing it has the light, dark and maybe even the limon Bacardis at work, not to mention 151 topping it all off.  And it states it’s a blend of natural flavors… which means it probably has pineapple and orange in it.  I’m thinking blue curacao to make it blue?  I can’t imagine them wanting to make it with brandy and an orange liquor is better than an apricot brandy in my books.  I could just be overthinking it.  Maybe they did just add some blue dye to make it look pretty.  Heck if I know!