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Shh! It's a Secret – Secret Ingredient Coconut Cupcakes with German Chocolate Cake-Style Coconut Frosting

May 14th, 2009

by Heather (Ghost Baker)

Let’s bake! What do you say? When too much time passes without any baking I get antsy!

I was bouncing some ideas off Edwin recently for what to bake, but he didn’t seem to interested in what I was coming up with. I understand his hesitation; typically baking experiments either end in sweet and wondrous success or abject failure!

I had some leftover ricotta in the fridge from a batch of ziti. Too many times these things go to unused and I find myself throwing away expired whipping cream, ricotta, sour cream and buttermilk. Not this time!

I’d also been thinking about coconut cake lately. I visited Alton Brown’s recipe, but he suggests coconut milk, coconut extract, coconut cream and coconut water. I don’t even know what coconut water is, but it sounds like an unwanted road block to me!

I turned to a Cooking Light coconut cake recipe and adapted it to make one dozen cupcakes. I didn’t have cake flour on hand, so I looked up an interesting adaptation to make all-purpose flour more like cake flour. I also put some shredded coconut in the food processor to make it as fine as possible and then added it to the batter. And of course, I experimented with adding 1/4 cup of ricotta.

You can’t pick out the ricotta, but it does give it some more flavor complexity and adds to the texture. I have a bad connotation with the word “dense” so I definitely wouldn’t call them that, but they’re more on the substantial side than flimsy and airy. I decided to pair them with the kind of frosting you’d find on a German chocolate cake – golden, full of coconut and sweetened with evaporated milk almost like Dulce de leche. I also made a batch of coconut buttercream frosting for half of them, but I much preferred the German chocolate cake frosting. The buttercream was just too sweet for the cake, I thought.

I think these cupcakes are very different from what I’m used to, and I am loving them!

Secret Ingredient Coconut Cupcakes with German Chocolate Cake-Style Coconut Frosting
Cake recipe adapted from Cooking Light
Makes 1 dozen cupcakes

1.1 cups all-purpose flour (one cup plus a little less than half a quarter cup) + 2.5 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs
3/8 cup light coconut milk
1/2 cup shredded coconut, pulsed in a food processor
1/4 cup part skim ricotta

Drop paper wrappers into cupcake pan. Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine flour + cornstarch, baking powder, salt, shredded coconut in a medium bowl with a whisk.

Cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl with an electric beater or stand mixer until creamy. Add eggs one at a time.

Alternate adding flour mixture and coconut milk to the bowl while beating; begin and end with the flour mixture. Add ricotta. Beat until combined.

Using a tablespoon, drop two tablespoons of batter into each cupcake wrapper. Divide any extra evenly so that wrappers are 3/4 full. Bake for approximately 18 minutes.

German Chocolate Cake Frosting
Adapted from Cupcakes! From the Cake Mix Doctor and also found on Cooks.com

6 fluid ounces evaporated milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 egg yolks
3/4 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup shredded coconut

In a large saucepan on medium heat, combine evaporated milk, sugar, butter, egg yolks, and vanilla. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon for approximately 10 minutes. The frosting should be thickened and golden. Remove from heat and cool completely before frosting cupcakes.

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Food Photography – Carrot Rainbow

May 13th, 2009

by Chef Edwin

Happy Tuesday, everyone. Time for another round of food photography. Today’s shot is from my trip to Europe last year. While backpacking around, I made it my goal to experience a wide variety of foods and visited a market square in just about every city I was in. These carrots are from a stand in Freiburg. I loved rainbow of colors together and, I must say, they were quite tasty.

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A Secluded Cabin In The Woods, A Good Book and Home Fries

May 12th, 2009

by Heather (Ghost Baker)

You may have picked up (or not!) that I’ve been a wee bit quiet around here the last few days. My husband and I took the opportunity last week to abscond for a mini vacation.

It had been a while since we went anywhere for more than a long weekend. It’s just been a busy year, and it’s rare for all the stars to align so that we’re able to make plans in advance.

We rented a cabin in West Virginia at Lost River State Park. The park was recommended to me by a co-worker, and it sounded like just the kind of low on planning/high on relaxation trip that we needed.

The mountains in West Virginia are truly gorgeous. Typically we do our mountain trips to Douthat State Park or Warm Springs, VA, which are excellent, but the mountains in West Virginia just seemed endless. Rain was really only intermittent, and the weather behaved at a perfect 70-75 degrees.

If you like the mountains, cabins at state parks really are the way to go. If you’re a technophile you might go mad (no television, no cell phone reception, no internet), but the cabins are inexpensive, well-maintained and generally spacious. The cabins we’ve stayed at have fireplaces, bedding and towels and a fully functioning kitchen with a stove, fridge, microwave, pots and pans and utensils.

I’ll throw out another plug while I’m at it – if you’re looking for something a little less rustic, on our last night in West Virginia we ate at a nice restaurant attached to a gorgeous inn with great mountain views – The Guest House at Lost River. The owner encouraged us to walk around and explore the property after our meal. It was beautiful and the rates are pretty reasonable for how nice it is. There’s not much in vicinity, but I thought my husband broke it down nicely, “if you just want to chill in opulence, it’s your place.”

Getting back to cabins – because you’re in remote regions, cooking your own food is usually the only game in town. There was nearby no grocery store to run to for eggs and milk, but luckily we picked up a few things before we left. I was able to throw together some curried home fries for brunch one day.

I just don’t buy into the idea that meals need to be complicated or time consuming to be good. I have a great memory of enjoying brunch at a friend’s house a few years ago – omelets, home fries with rosemary and thyme and mimosas.

I tried to pack only a few spices so that I wasn’t carrying the entire kitchen with me, so we brought salt and pepper, curry powder, cayenne, Nature’s Seasoning and paprika. I cubed two russet potatoes into 1 inch pieces and seasoned them generously. I cooked them for about 20 minutes in the cabin’s heavy cast iron skillet; they probably would have cooked faster if I had covered them. Whether you’re vacationing in the mountains or enjoying brunch with mimosas, home fries are a delicious addition.

Lost River Home Fries

1 medium onion, diced
2 russet potatoes, washed and cubed
non-stick cooking spray
salt and pepper, curry powder, cayenne, Nature’s Seasoning and paprika as desired

Heat large skillet to medium temperature and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Dice onion and add to skillet. Wash potatoes well, cut into thin slices and cube. Add potatoes to skillet about 2 minutes after onion. Add seasonings and stir potatoes frequently so that they don’t burn or stick to the pan. I was most heavy handed with the curry powder and salt.

Cook for about 20 minutes, or shorter if your skillet has a cover (if you have a cover, cook for half the time covered and half the time uncovered). You should be able to pierce the potato with a fork without resistance. Season with a little extra curry powder and salt on top before serving, as some of the spices do get cooked away.

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Lotta Green – Green Bean and Green Bell Pepper Stir Fry with Ginger

May 11th, 2009

by Chef Edwin

Thanks to everyone who gave us feedback on the new design. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re proud to say it’s a success. As always, we love hearing from you, so feel free to let us know anytime you have something to say. We’ll keep innovating in DinnerCakes land, so keep your eyes peeled for changes down the road.

As usual, my weekend was packed with things to do. You’re running around all week and then next thing you know it’s 5pm on a Sunday, you haven’t finished your laundry, dishes have stacked up and you’re very hungry. Enter my glorious quickie-fallback: stir fry.

Green beans should be in peak season for most people as well as green peppers. I decided to take these as my focus for this side dish. It’s ingredient list is short, but may use more ginger than you’re use to. There’s a style of cooking called Kan Shao, which means “dry cooked” – no stock or water. It’s a bit different than most stir fries, but I liked it.

Green Bean and Green Bell Pepper Stir Fry with Ginger

2 tablespoons oil
1/2 lb green beans
1 green bell pepper
ginger cut into 56 1/4×2 inch matchsticks
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar

Trim the green beans and cut in half. Cut your green bell pepper into half inch matchsticks. This doesn’t work out too well for the top and bottom of the pepper but go ahead and throw them in with whatever shape you can get.

Heat your wok to high heat and add your oil, swishing (carefully) to coat. As soon as the oil begins to smoke, add the green beans and bell pepper and stir fry for 2 minutes. Transfer everything to a plate. Heat the additional tablespoon of oil and add the ginger, stir frying for one minute. Add the green beans, bell pepper and additional ingredients. Stir fry for 2 minutes and serve with salt and pepper. Enjoy.

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Kitchen Tips – Egg Whites Only

May 8th, 2009

by Heather (Ghost Baker)

Edwin and I hope you’re enjoying the new site design that we unveiled this week! Coming to a clean and simplified site makes me feel all warm and fuzzy… it’s like having a freshly cleaned room!

In addition to the new design, we’re also trying out some posting changes. Kitchen Tips will be posted on Fridays, and Saturdays will be a day of rest for now. This is for a few reasons, but mostly because we thought you all might enjoy greater variety of content throughout the week. Like most things on DinnerCakes, this change is certainly open to debate – so please tell us if we’re way off base!

Now on to the Tips!

When you grow up around someone who cooks, you don’t always realize how much you’ve picked up just by observing.

I was recently helping a friend who was making a cake for her boyfriend’s mom’s birthday. The recipe called for some whole eggs (egg yolk and egg white) and then a few whites only. I was surprised when she was unsure how to separate the egg white from the yolk, aside from just breaking all the eggs into a bowl and then fishing the yolks out.

It takes a little practice, but it’s just a careful dance of cracking open the egg and letting the egg white run down as you pass the yolk back and forth between the two halves of shell. This would probably make a good tutorial video (if we had video tutorial capability… I’ll tuck this away in the back of my mind!), but I hope these photos help make a little sense of it.

Crack the egg in the middle.

Carefully pour the yolk back and forth, letting the egg white run down.

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Waste Not Want Not – Cumin and Curry Roasted Chickpeas

May 7th, 2009

by Chef Edwin

Maybe it’s my engineering background or the way I was raised, but I hate wasting food. Whenever I have leftover ingredients I try to think of some way to use them. Often, I roast them, trying some new combination of herbs and/or spices, hoping for some new successful discovery (they’re all discoveries, just not all great ones). Even if it doesn’t become a big hit, I feel better knowing I used all I could. What can I say? I like efficiency.

Last week I posted a recipe with chickpeas and if you used canned, then you probably had half a can leftover. That’s where this recipe comes in. Roasted chickpeas can be a great crunchy food to snack on. At the base, there’s just oil and a bit of salt; but you can easily experiment with other herbs or spices to see what you get.

Cumin and Curry Roasted Chickpeas
This recipe is for two cups cooked chickpeas, but can easily be scaled down.

2 cups chickpeas; cooked, rinsed, drained, dried
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin seed
1 pinch of salt

Preheat your oven to 450. Combine all the ingredients and place in a aluminum foil-lined roasting pan. Roast in the oven for 35-40 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally so the chickpeas brown (relatively) evenly.

Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes and (optionally) add additional salt to taste. Chickpeas should be crunchy. Enjoy.

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Food Photography – Dark, Milk and Chai Ginger Chocolate Truffles

May 6th, 2009

by Heather (Ghost Baker)

(Pictured: Dark, Milk and Chai Ginger Chocolate Truffles made for a co-worker’s birthday last week. Truffles are covered in coconut, pistachio, cashew, powdered chocolate or pecan).

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I hope you like what we've done with the place

May 5th, 2009

by Chef Edwin

Happy Design Tuesday, everyone! Notice anything different?

We started DinnerCakes a little over six months ago and we’re both very proud with how things are going. This site has really driven us both to become better cooks, and sharing our adventures with you has helped us foster a community of great people. It’s been a great six months and we’re looking forward the next six (and the six after that, and the six after that, and the… you get the idea).

Today we are very excited to unveil our new site design. We wanted to give DinnerCakes a unique look along with simplifying it down to just the good stuff and none of the clutter. We’d love to hear what you think of the new design, both good and bad. Leave us a comment or e-mail us directly.

Thanks for reading.

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Bakeless Cookies? That's crazy talk!

May 4th, 2009

by Heather (Ghost Baker)

I remember three years ago sitting among a group of women who were telling me they couldn’t believe I’d never tried, heard of, made, or otherwise been exposed to bakeless cookies – three years later here I finally am! Yesterday for the first time ever I made “bakeless cookies.”

This recipe is straight out of my bridal shower recipe box. A few months before getting married, my bridesmaids threw me a dessert themed bridal shower (they know me well, huh?). They requested that each of the guests bring a dessert recipe, and they collected them all in a cool wooden box painted blue and orange, the colors of my alma mater. I’m looking forward to slowly trying each of the recipes in this box!

So back to bakeless cookies – I’m not sure I “get” them. I guess I assumed they would firm up, but they’re still very soft. I can pick them up now without too much sticking to the foil, but the consistency is akin to warm, soft fudge or chewy caramel candies (without quite that level of stickiness). I wanted to just describe them as “little goo balls,” but Edwin advised me against using that imagery… woops? They did firm up quite a bit after I put them in the fridge, but they’ll always be soft.

While sadly I probably can’t pack these cookies up to take to work (because they’re so soft I’d worry they’d just meld together, and I think the consistency might confuse people expecting a typical flour-based cookie), I will say that they’re pretty addicting. I started out with just one, then I snuck back for seconds, and then the cycle continued on. I’m interested to hear what you all think about bakeless cookies, whether you try your hand at these or if you have your own recipe. There’s definitely no confusing them for baked cookies and nothing compares to cookie dough, but maybe they do have a place in the cooking/baking world after all? It’s hard to say no to chocolate + peanut butter, and it’s no secret that I’m a little obsessed with oats. These cookies are very chewy and oaty.

And in DinnerCakes housekeeping news – something big is coming to DinnerCakes tomorrow! If you’re a regular reader, then you may have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about. Edwin and I are very excited about it – please check back tomorrow to find out what we’ve been working on behind the scenes!

Bakeless Cookies
from my husband’s Aunt Claudia, who received this from her grandmother Louise

2 cups granulated sugar
dash of salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup oleo (same thing as margarine)
1/2 cup peanut butter (chunky or smooth)
3 cups quick cooking oats
3 tablespoons cocoa

Melt margarine in a medium size pan. Add sugar, milk and cocoa; stir constantly. Once the mixture starts to boil, cook for 5 more minutes and then add peanut butter, blending until smooth. Remove from heat and add in oatmeal fast.

Drop by tablespoons onto foil. As they cool they will firm up just enough so that you can pick them up and pop them into your mouth!

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Kitchen Tips – How to Avoid Green Speckled Carrot Cake!

May 2nd, 2009

by Heather (Ghost Baker)

Happy Saturday, DinnerCakes readers!

Today’s Kitchen Tip I learned just a few weeks ago at a cook-out. I got into a discussion about baking with the wife of one of my husband’s friends. She told me a great story about carrot cake!

She and her husband had another couple over for dinner, and she unwrapped her freshly baked carrot cake to get it ready for serving. She cut into it and noticed that there were green flecks throughout the cake! She knew it couldn’t be mold because she had just made it. One of the dinner guests thought she had put some zucchini in the cake.

Yikes! How many of you would have died from embarrassment like she felt?

It turns out that the only thing she did differently this time as opposed to in previous cakes was that she left on the outer layer of the carrot. She washed it of course, but she included the whole carrot rather than removing that top layer.

I did some googling and it looks like she’s not alone. Quite a few people have suffered the green speckled carrot cake phenomena. I can’t pinpoint exactly why, though. Some sites get extremely technical talking about the oxidation of the carrots. Other possible explanations I found were that sometimes if carrots are pushed above the soil when growing, the sun may turn them greenish, and that overbaking could also make them yellowish.

The bottom line is that you should peel off the outer carrot skin to be safe, and watch your cake to make sure that you don’t overbake it. If anyone comes across a more definitive explanation (in layman’s terms!) please let us know!

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