Cupcakes

I L-O-V-E Key Lime Pie. I’m a Florida girl, what can I say? Growing up in Miami, it was always on restaurant dessert menus and with the Florida Keys – especially Key West – so close, who can’t help but to love this little, inconspicuous, intensely flavored lime! It goes without saying, that if I am ever out at a restaurant and decide to have dessert, if Key Lime Pie is on the menu, most probably my decision has already been made for me – with the exception of Chocolate Souffle… a great Chocolate Souffle trumps Key Lime Pie any day… mmm Chocolate Souffle… we’ll leave the souffle day-dreaming for another day and another post.

On to the Key Limes…

Key Limes are indigenous to the Florida Keys. They are smaller and rounder than standard limes and are more yellow than green, having a yellow rind and yellowish-green fruit. Key Limes have more seeds, a higher acidity, stronger aroma, a thinner rind and are much more tart than common Persian Limes.

I am lucky enough to have some great local blogging friends. Orlando Foodie (Lenore) gave me some Key Limes from her tree. Little did I know that I would get 20 glorious, green, tart beautiful Key Limes! I was so grateful. Now, what to make? What to make? Like I said, I love Key Lime Pie, but I wanted to do something a little different with these babies. Cupcakes! Curd! Buttercream! Lightbulb! And the little cartoon light bulb above my head lit up. What?! Doesn’t everyone have a little cartoon light bulb above their head?

Key Lime Cupcakes with Key Lime Buttercream
Love & Confection original cupcake recipe
Buttercream Recipe adapted from a culinary school recipe

Key Lime Cupcake Ingredients:
 – 175 grams Cake Flour (1 & 1/2 cups)
 – 1 & 1/2 teaspoons Baking Powder
 – 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
 – 1/2 teaspoon Salt
 – 113 grams Unsalted Butter, softened (1 stick)
 – 225 grams granulated Sugar (a little more than 1 cup)
 – 2 Eggs
 – 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
 – 1 teaspoon Key Lime Extract
 – 60 grams Sour Cream (about 1/4 cup)

 – 175 grams Milk (about 3/4 cup)
 – 1 tablespoon Key Lime Zest (or regular lime zest)

 – 1 cup prepared Key Lime Curd for filling
 – 1 batch Key Lime Buttercream (recipe follows)
 – 1 cup toasted Graham Cracker Crumbs for decoration
 – Green Sixlets or Sprinkles for decoration

Key Lime Cupcake Directions:
 – Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Make sure your ingredients are room temperature.
 – Sift the Flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda and Salt into a mixing bowl, or your stand mixer bowl.
 – Add the Butter and mix with the paddle attachment until combined. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl with a spatula to ensure everything is mixed properly
 – Add in the Sugar, and mix until combined. Scrape the sides and bottom.
 – Add in the Eggs and mix until combined. Scrape the sides and bottom.
 – Add in the Vanilla Extract, Key Lime Extract, Zest and Sour Cream. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl.
 – Add in the Milk and mix to incorporate and create a smooth batter.
 – Portion into cupcake tins lined with cupcake wrappers. I use a 2 ounce ice cream scoop, to ensure that my cupcakes are even and uniform. Batter makes about 18 cupcakes
 – Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until light golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle of a cupcake.

Key Lime Buttercream Ingredients:
 – 100 grams Egg Whites (about 3 egg whites)
 – 200 grams granulated Sugar
 – 226 grams Unsalted Butter (2 sticks)
 – 226 grams Powdered Sugar
 – 1-2 teaspoons Key Lime Extract

Key Lime Buttercream Directions:
 – Buttercream can be made a day in advance and kept in the refrigerator. I also keep mine in an airtight container on the counter if it will be used the next day. Make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature before starting.
 – Create a double boiler on the stove by warming a small pot of water on medium until little bubbles form.  Make sure the bottom of your stand mixing bowl cannot touch the water.
 – Place Eggs and granulated Sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer and put on top of the pot. Turn the temperature down to medium-low and whisk continuously until the sugar completely dissolves and the eggs are warm.
 – Once warm, immediately place the bowl on your stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, and whip on high until white, glossy and doubled in size. (I place aluminum foil around my mixer to keep the heat in.
warm eggs whip better. Remove the foil once the eggs are ready.)
 – Continue whipping the eggs on medium-high until they are room temperature
 – Add the Butter into the whipped egg whites and whip until incorporated. Scrape the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl
 – While on low speed, gradually add in the Powdered Sugar. (not all at once, or both you and your kitchen will be covered in white!)
 – Add the Key Lime Extract and mix to incorporate.

Assembly:
 – Once the cupcakes are cool, either with a paring knife or apple corer, take out the middle of the cupcakes.
 – Fill each hole by piping in the Key Lime Curd.
 – Using a piping tip (I used a star tip) and bag, pipe the Key Lime Buttercream onto the cupcakes.
 – Use the Graham Crackers for decoration and crunch along the sides of the buttercream and green candy of your choice. (I used green sixlets. You can use sprinkles or gummy lime slices also)

Until next time,
LOVE & CONFECTIONS!

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It has been a while… Sorry it has been so long since the last post – lots of things have happened/are happening. I was really sick for a few weeks and my husband and I are in the process of moving. Long story short, the neighborhood has gotten worse and we want to live someplace we actually like… so I will try to post more, but packing and moving is obviously priority.

Here are some pictures of cupcakes I made for my husband’s birthday. He wanted some for a dinner with friends – I made beef wellington, roasted potatoes and green beans, yum! – and some for people at the two places he works. I miscalculated the amount made and ended up with a lot more than planned. These aren’t from scratch, but I added to them. *Disclaimer – I never said I was going to bake everything on my blog from scratch – time constraints and funds are to blame. When I have the available time and funds, I will gladly make everything from scratch, well, almost from scratch. “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe,” -Carl Sagan.

Some people might cringe or criticize and say, “You used a box mix? You call yourself a baker?” To answer, yes I used a box mix. Duncan Hines “Devil’s Food”, “French Vanilla,” and “Yellow Cake, ” to be exact. They’re the best and only cake mixes I use. Even one of my professors in culinary school, who is an Executive Pastry Chef at a Hyatt hotel said he uses Duncan Hines at home, “because when you make things from scratch, the last thing you want to do is go home and make more cakes, and besides, it’s the best.”

I have actually always used Duncan Hines my entire life. So back to the actual cupcakes – I miscalculated because I normally get 25 cupcakes out of the box mixes, but the husband requested mini cupcakes, so people could try all the varieties and not have to eat whole, big ones. I was perfectly fine with that, except for the fact that instead of 2 mini cupcakes per one regular, it ended up being 3 mini cupcakes per regular, and with only 1 mini cupcake tin of 24 cups, it took a while. (I searched at a place I thought would have another tin, but they didn’t, and didn’t have enough time to actually find one).

So, 200 mini cupcakes later – and a few bigger cupcakes because I only had 200 mini wrappers – I had 3 different flavor cupcakes and was ready to decorate.

The Devil’s Food cupcake was made into a S’more cupcake. The first picture is what I originally did for the S’more cupcakes – crushed graham cracker crumbs on the bottom, followed by the Devil’s Food batter, then a mini marshmallow in the center. I had decided against hollowing the cupcake out and filling it with melted marshmallow, and experimented this way.

Needless to say, thank goodness for the experiment, because they did not turn out how I would have liked them.

The second time around I decided to ditch the graham crackers on the bottom – they got lost and you couldn’t taste them – and the marshmallows in the middle – they kind of melted into the batter and you couldn’t taste it either. Instead I melted the marshmallows with a little bit of milk, in a pot on the stove, and once cooled, mixed into the French Buttercream I had been planning on using. It turned out delicious, and I sprinkled graham cracker crumbs on top.

The next are the Boston Cream cupcakes. I hollowed out the center of the French Vanilla cupcakes and used Jell-O pudding – yes, Jell-O pudding. Like the aforementioned disclaimer said, no time to make pastry cream, especially when I had a whole dinner to put together as well. Then I topped it with the French Buttercream and chocolate sauce. As far as the chocolate sauce goes, I didn’t want to use it but had little time in between dinner and dessert to temper chocolate. I’ll leave the discussion about tempering chocolate for another day.

The last were the Key Lime cupcakes. I used the yellow cake cupcakes and hollowed them out as well. I used some vanilla Jell-O pudding mixed with a little bit of Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Juice and lime zest for the filling. The French Buttercream also got some lime zest and was topped with lime slice jelly candy. The individual Key Lime cupcake picture didn’t turn out well, but you can still see them in the picture below. The Boston Cream cupcakes turned out to be the biggest hit.

French Buttercream (the “from scratch” element)
from About Professional Baking by Gail Sokol

200 grams Granulated Sugar
60 milliliters Light Corn Syrup (4 tablespoons or 1/4 cup)
60 milliliters Water (2 fluid ouces or 1/4 cup)
114 grams Egg Yolk
450 grams Unsalted Butter – very soft, but not melted
10 milliliters Vanilla Extract (2 teaspoons)

In saucepan, combine sugar, corn syrup and water and bring mixture to a rolling boil, stirring just until sugar dissolves.*

While sugar syrup is cooking, beat the egg yolks on high speed in the bowl of an electric mixer using the whip attachment, until the color lightens to a pale yellow.

On high speed, slowly add the hot syrup tot he egg yolks, pouring it down the sides of the mixing bowl and not directly onto the whip. Keep beating until the bowl feels cool to the touch.

Gradually add the softened butter**, a few tablespoons at a time, until it is all incorporated, blending in each addition of butter thoroughly. The buttercream may appear curdled until all the butter has been incorporated. Add the vanilla extract and blend well.

* cook to 250°F – firm ball stage
** Can use colder butter if sugar is slightly warmer – balances out temperature

Until next time,

Love & Confections!