Cinco de Margarita
Because I rarely drink tequila and am partial to any holiday that serves as an excuse for celebration, camaraderie, and tacos, five ways to enjoy tequila that won’t leave you confused about how you got home last night. (Well, the margarita might, so exercise restraint. You have work tomorrow.)
Uno – Best Basic Margarita
Rim glass with sea salt if desired. Combine 1 1/2 oz Tequila, 1/2 oz triple sec, 2 oz lime juice in a cocktail shaker, pour over ice. Garnish with lime wedge.
Dos – Margarita Popsicles
Pour 3/4 cup sugar into a sauce pan with 1/2 cup water, 3/4 cup lime juice, 2 Tbs lemon juice, 2 Tbs orange juice, bring to a simmer until sugar dissolves. Combine with 1 1/2 oz tequila and 1/2 oz triple sec. Pour into popcicle molds. If you want to be fancy, artfully place thinly sliced limes in the molds before freezing.
Tres – Margarita Cupcakes
Click here for this oldie but goodie.
Quatro -Margarita Pie
Click here for what is not pizza.
Cinco – Margarita glaze
Combine 1/2 cup tequila, 1/4 cup lime juice, lime zest, 1/2 of a jalapeno pepper, seeds removed and diced, 2 Tbs honey, and 1/3 cup marmelade in a sauce pan. Simmer about 3 minutes to use to brush on meat or poultry during last 5-10 minutes of grilling or simmer until liquid reduces and reaches a syrupy consistency, about 5-10 minutes, and serve on cooked meat or over vanilla ice cream or dollop on the top of cheesecake, or really on anything that spicy sweet stuff makes sense.
Good Company
Hidden Baby and some more s’mores
Food tastes better when you share. True story.
three’s company
I was lucky enough to share my Sunday morning with Courtney and Kelsey over at HiddenBaby.com downing a couple drunk s’mores (breakfast of champions, I know, but it’s okay, my lunch included birthday tequila shots with my college housemates).
I met Kelsey at my first 100+ person catering gig at a gallery – she was showing some of her amazing artwork and I was probably looking like I was going to throw up on my shoes from anxiety but somehow she still wanted to talk to me about working on making delicious things together.
and playing with butane torches
And yeah, we were sitting around a coffee table and not a campfire, but these definitely tasted sweeter with a few good stories poured on top.
sticky situation
Hopefully this is the first of many inspiring collaborations with these super talented sisters. Check out their blog and beautiful designs with an even more beautiful cause behind it.
ready for the next round
Please sir, can I have s’more?
Americanization, late nights at the office and knowing better but still making the same mistakes. Oh, yeah, and alcoholic s’mores
Last couple months have been busy – busy days at work/school means I don’t really feel like baking/blogging and eschew it for things like spending time with friends. (We drink cocktails together so…research? Yeah, lets call it R&D).
Hi folks, the Boozy Bakeshop has been in an intense period of R&D. Apologies for the lack of recipe updates. But we’ve entered some exciting Phase 2 studies that hold promise for future product development. We’re still beta testing but have some paradigm-shifting, thought-starters that with the right creative force can refocus out of the box strategy.
And by that I mean I made marshmallows. Various flavors, including bourbon b/c well, why not? Oh yeah, and I have this darling friend who’s never eaten a s’more before because she grew up in the land of crepes and cream puffs and wasn’t forced into girl scout camp or consumption of Hershey bars.
The bourbon marshmallows didn’t fluff up proper because SCIENCE!! I didn’t add the extra gelatin necessary to counteract the alcohol. I knew this would fail, but did it anyway cause I’m just a hopeless romantic hoping that counter-intuitive bonds will somehow fuse beyond laws of chemistry and work out like a romantic comedy producing saccharine delight. But that flies in the face of reality.
So while my friend sadly got an imperfect alcoholic s’more, below is the perfect alcoholic s’more. Since I’m older and wiser now than I was yesterday, it’s based on a 3 wise men.
Wise men (and women) eat s’mores. True story.
Drunk S’more (3 Wise Men Sammich)
Ingredients:
- Vegetable oil for pan
- 2 envelopes unflavored gelatin (about 2 tablespoons)
- 1/3 cup cold water
- 1/3 cup whiskey (Jack)
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 2/3 cup light corn syrup
- 1/8 teas salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teas nutmeg
- Confectioners’ sugar, for cutting/coating
- 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted
- 2 Tbs bourbon (Jim)
- 1/2 c Boozy Bakeshop ButterScotch (Johnnie)
- 8 store-bought graham crackers, split in half
Coat a 8-inch square baking pan with vegetable oil, ; line with
parchment, coat parchment with vegetable oil. Sprinkle gelatin over
1/3 cup water in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and let sit for 5 minutes.
Heat granulated sugar, corn syrup, 1/3 cup Jack, and
1/8 teaspoon salt in a saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally,
until syrup reaches 238 degrees on a candy thermometer, about 5 minutes.
Whisk gelatin in mixer on high speed for a minute, reduce speed to low and slowly pour in syrup in a steady stream down side of bowl. Gradually increase speed to high, and whisk for about 8 minutes or until almost tripled in volume. Whisk in vanilla, nutmeg. Transfer to baking pan and smooth evenly. Let stand least 3 hours at room temp until set (unless your apt is really hot, and then the fridge can be a good idea). Cut into 2 inch squares using a knife dipped in confectioner’s sugar. Coat marshmallows in more confectioner’s sugar to prevent sticking
Before serving, melt your favorite semi sweet chocolate in a saucepan over low heat, (don’t seize!), with Jim Beam, or other bourbon. On a non flammable plate, pack one half of a graham cracker sheet, (a two cookie square). Place marshmallow on top and cautiously flame with a creme brulee/kitchen torch, (it’s easy to go overkill, but you want ti warm and melty, not super charred, low and slow heat is better). drizzle with chocolate and butterScotch. Top with remaining half cracker. Devour.
ButterScotch
See what I did there? (Yeah, I hate myself a little too.)
Normally I cook low grade, drink high grade (read: price), but butterscotch was just begging for it and I had a mini bottle (what good is scotch if you can’t share?) Plus, Johnnie (except double black) isn’t in my top ten. (Yeah, I hate myself a little more right now.) Whatever, this was delicious over vanilla ice cream. (On a related note: Ardbeg Uigeadail, zomg!)
spoonful of goodness
Ingredients:
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup light corn syrup
- 1/2 teas salt
- 3 Tbs unsalted butter
- 1 Tbs scotch
- 1 teas vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
In a heavy bottomed sauce pan over medium high heat, combine brown sugar, corn syrup, salt and butter. Whisk until mixture comes to a boil. Boil until mixture is syrupy or about 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat. Slowly whisk in cream. Add scotch and vanilla and mix until smooth. Can be made up to 3 days ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator. Rewarm before serving.
Another Reason to Love Cowboys
Cookies&Beer, Christmas&Family, Red Hook&AGoodCause
I should write Crate&Barrel copy.
Instead I’m going to advertise something way cooler and better designed than trendy housewares. Hurricane Sandy did a number on businesses in Red Hook and some very cool people got together to produce a downloadable cookbook to raise money to ReStore Red Hook. Check it out here: allhandsondeckredhook.org
Donate&Download. 100% of your donation goes to support 100% awesome small businesses.
In it, you can get your hands on Baked‘s delightful Cowboy Cookie recipe. Which got me thinking. (Uh oh.)
See, around the holidays in my house, my mom makes elebentyhundred different types of Christmas cookies and my dad and I crack a beer and sit around and eat said Christmas cookies. Then my mother mocks us for eating Cookies&Beer. Whatever. Woman doesn’t know what she’s missing.
cookies at high noon
But do you know what is better than Cookies&Beer?
Oh God the beer is coming from inside the cookies!!!
Yup, Cowbeer Cookies.
Yup, I’ll have to rethink that name.
Cowbeer Cookies
You may want to give yourself extra time for these – while not labor intensive, the dough needs to chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before you even think of putting them on a cookie sheet.
makes 2 dozen
Ingredients
- 1 bottle of strong flavored beer, like stout
- 8 Tbs (1 stick) unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teas vanilla
- 1 cup flour
- 1/4 teas salt
- 1/2 teas baking powder
- 1/2 teas baking soda
- 1 cup old fashioned oats
- 1/4 teas espresso powder
- 1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup pretzel sticks, broken into pieces but not crushed to a powder.
Pour bottle of beer into a medium sauce pan and set over low heat. Simmer until beer reduces to approx 1/8 cup liquid. It will want to boil over so keep an eye on it.
Meanwhile, cream butter and both sugars together in the bowl of a stand mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in egg until combined. Add vanilla.
Dissolve espresso powder in the reduced beer. Add to mixer and beat until combined. Mix flour, oats, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a medium bowl. Add half the dry ingredients to the mixer and beat for about 10-15 seconds. Add the remaining dry ingredient and mix until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips and half of the pretzels. Let dough chill in the fridge for 30 minutes in the bowl or wrap tightly in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator for up to 4 hours. Preheat over to 350 degrees. Scoop dough onto parchment or silpat lined cookie sheets forming 24 even balls. Leave space as they will spread. Sprinkle with remaining pretzels and press just slightly to make them stick to the top of the cookies. Place in freezer for 10 minutes. Bake for 11-15 minutes, rotating halfway through. Let cool on cookie sheet for a minut or two before removing with a spatula to cooling racks. Store in airtight container for up to one week, if they manage to last that long.
Calva-tres!
Pie and butter and cake – oh my!
It’s no wonder really that I really like, uh, booze. One of the only baby pictures I have where I’m not stuffing my face, I’m attempting to down a glass of champagne, some panicked looking hands in the background attempting to thwart my desires. It’s actually a series of photos 1) look furtively at the coffee table 2) stealthily approach 3) attack/swig. Apparently, parents were more interested in photos of their kids than their actual kids long before Instagram.
Every night for the next eight years or so, to counteract the champagne incident of Christmas ’83 and expand whatever braincells survived the fateful sip, my mustaschioed, leather slippered, brandy sniftered father would sit on the couch in the den, reading aloud from some hard bound volume of Dickens or Twain, (I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said he was wearing a smoking jacket). I would graciously allow my sister to get a closer look at the pictures first in order to sneak a finger dip into Dad’s brandy glass while his attention was on her, the flavors mellowing nicely in my mouth with whatever store brand toothpaste had been on sale that month.
While my preference now is for armagnac, my younger self preferred Calvados, since it essentially tastes like apple juice that finally got it’s shit together, got a job and moved out of its parent’s orchard. I moved on, too; around eight or nine, I started reading to myself at night and was therefore brandy-less until college. (I know, we fancy.) So here are three holiday excuses to use Calvados in your kitchen – Calvatres, if you will, (yep – here all week folks) – ’cause nothing says home for the holidays like, uh, booze.
My coworkers thoroughly enjoyed dos y tres.
The Trifecta of Calvados – go!
torte in triplicate
Apple Torte (uno)
Ingredients:
For the Crust
- 1 stick cold butter, cut into pieces
- 2 tbs sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/teas salt
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tbs calvados
For the tart
- 7 apples
- 2 Tbs unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 Tbs calvados or other apple brandy
- 1 Tbs lemon juice
- 1 1/2 teas ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teas nutmeg
Combine butter, sugar, flour, salt in food processor and pulse until sandy in consistency. Add egg. Pulse until just combined. Press into 10 inch tart pan with removable bottom. Freeze.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Core and peel three apples into small chunks. Saute in 1 Tbs butter, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 Tbs lemon juice, 1/2 teas cinnamon, 1/4 teas nutmeg for about 10 minutes. Add calvados. mash lightly with fork. Spread onto pie crust and place pie crust back in freezer.
Cut remaining apples into thin slices. Arrange in circular pattern. Combine remaining cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle onto tart. dot with remaining butter. bake for 40-45 minutes or until crust browns slightly and apples are cooked through.
Brandied Apple Butter (dos)
makes about six 8 oz jars
Ingredients:
- 8 lbs of apple, peeled, cored, cut into chunks (about 30-40 apples. I like using a variety – macintosh are best, but usually some random granny smiths and galas find their way from mouldering in the fridge to the pot.)
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 teas ground cinnamon
- 2 teas ground ginger
- 1 teas ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teas ground cloves
- 1 cup apple cider
- 1/4 cup Calvados or other apple brandy
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
Combine all ingredients in a heavy bottomed pot over medium high heat, stirring frequently. After about 30 minutes, reduce to low and let simmer for 2.5-4 hours more, stirring periodically to make sure the bottom doesn’t stick or burn. Mixture should be a thick, dark caramel colored and have reduced by about half. Puree with an immersion blender until smooth. (Caution, easily splatters and it can be hot!! Let cool first or wear an apron and long sleeves. Splatter burns are not sexy.) If canning, return to stove to make sure mixture is hot before putting into sterilized jars. Can be kept refrigerated up to one month.
Honey Ginger Cake (tres)
makes four mini loafs
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/2 cup molasses
- 1/2 cup honey
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teas salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup milk
- 1/8 cup calvados or other apple brandy
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1/4 cup finely diced candied ginger (optional)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line four approx 5.75 x 3 x 3 loaf pans with parchment. Grease well. Sift flour, ginger, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg into a large bowl. Set aside.
Heat butter in saucepan over low heat until melted. Remove from heat and stir in molasses and honey. Mix in sugar, milk and eggs until blended. Stir in candied ginger, if adding.
Add reserved flour mixture to batter; mix until well blended.
Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 40 minutes or until wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean.
Snowicane in the Stand Mixer
Tres Leches cake and Grandmotherly Advice
I’m sitting on the kitchen floor sniffling.
Why? This:
Yup, that’s a stand mixer full of egg whites. And tears. It’s like a little meteorological freak storm front hitting a low pressure system of feelings in a metal bowl. Global warming is real and it just melted the polar icecaps of my aorta.
Why is a bowl of egg whites making me sniffle? Okay, see, a friend asked me to make him a tres leches cake for his birthday. I really didn’t know what it was and the variations are rather endless though all with the same theme of cake doused in sweetened condensed milk. Also, I never make sponge cake. There are just too many ooeygooeycaramelmarshmallow things in the world to make to waste time with sponge cake. But who am I to say no to a birthday request?
I found this recipe from Ree Drummond. In her post she mentions her friend tasting the cake and bursting into tears.
Me thinking: Well, that must be some cake!
Me thinking again: It probably isn’t the cake, but that the cake had some greater cosmic significance. It was an authentic cake, for her.
But this cake needed to be special, authentic, for the birthday boy. So I puttered around on the internet some more and then asked another friend for her recipe, which, with her preferred modifications to another recipe, ended up being almost identical to Ree’s, (except using fresh berries instead of maraschino cherries)
Tres Leches cake, covered in drifts of whipped cream
It takes a village to make good cake. (And booze.)
ANYWAY, I’m whipping the egg whites to “snow’, as my grandmother used to say. In fact, I can hear her German/Franco accent cooing ‘make it like snow’, widening her eyes and pursing her lips, the face she’d pull to indicate surprise or revelation. As a kid, I really did believe it was snow. I’m smiling at the memory until I realize that my nose is quivering and that blurry vision is not the effect of my hangover but the waterworks welling up, about to spill over into my carefully watch egg snow. I hold back long enough to combine the batter and pop said cake in the oven. Then I sit on the floor and sniffle. I have a perfectly good couch 5 feet away.
The cake doesn’t have any cosmic significance. The cake is inconsequential. The cake is a lie. Cake is memory sweetened with frosting. It is the reward for another year of life lived well, but if we were supposed to repeat the past, we’d have a birthday kale salad or a protein shake: sustainable and sensible. Instead we get hopped up on sugar and fling ourselves into the new year with plans for awesomeness (this is the year I will start my own business, hike the Appalachian trail, eat my weight in cheese fries). Change in habit can be hard to accept at moments. The sugar haze makes it go down easy, and by the time we crash, we’re well ensconced in the new thing, halfway to Maine in hiking boots, swallowing seventy-five pounds of cheese fries with only forty more to go.
My grandmother passed away last December. It’s Sunday morning and I’m missing our Sunday morning phone calls. I have new Sunday morning habits, equally lovely but different. I barely even noticed the evolution of things until the loss of her was palpable. I’m missing the time when I thought I knew what path I was on and direction was simple. I’m missing her grandmotherly advice at a time when I would actually want to take it: I should run off with an artist. I should be a muse. I should write the story of her life. I should make cake.
The cake is delicious. But it is just cake (okay, really yummy cake).
the lady herself, and her charming husband
Copied from thepioneerwoman.com, with some minor changes because that’s how we do.
Tres Leches Cake
Ingredients
for the cake:
- 1 cup All-purpose Flour
- 1-1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
- 1/4 teaspoon Salt
- 5 whole Eggs
- 1 cup Sugar, Divided
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup Milk
for the tres leches part:
- 1 can Evaporated Milk
- 1 can Sweetened, Condensed Milk
- 1/4 cup Heavy Cream
- 2 oz Dark Rum (optional)
for the icing:
- 1 pint Heavy Cream, For Whipping
- 4 Tablespoons Confectioners Sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan with parchment and butter parchment and sides liberally.
Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Separate eggs.
Beat egg yolks with 3/4 cup sugar on high speed until yolks are pale yellow. Stir in milk and vanilla. Pour egg yolk mixture over the flour mixture and stir very gently until combined.
Beat egg whites on high speed until soft peaks form. With the mixer on, pour in remaining 1/4 cup sugar and beat until egg whites are stiff but not dry.
Fold egg white mixture into the batter very gently until just combined. Pour into prepared pan and spread to even out the surface.
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Turn cake out onto a rimmed platter and allow to cool.
Combine condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream in a small pitcher. When cake is cool, pierce the surface with a fork several times. Slowly drizzle all but about 1 cup of the milk mixture—try to get as much around the edges of the cake as you can.
Allow the cake to absorb the milk mixture for 30 minutes. To ice the cake, whip 1 pint heavy cream with confections sugar and vanilla until thick and spreadable.
Spread over the surface of the cake. Decorate cake with fresh berries. Cut into squares and serve.
Real Girlfriend
Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes and dating advice from The Oatmeal
I saw this the other day on The Oatmeal and I thought “hey, that could be about me. I rock climb. I bake cookies. I’m gonna bake cookies shaped like ewoks.”
I don’t really know what an ewok is.
The google provided some direction. They’re sort of Paul Ryan looking. Not what I was thinking. I think I was thinking of gremlins. Or Oscar the Grouch?
But wait, the underbite, the big sad eyes, throw a towel over his head and Disco here could do a mean ewok impression.
Exhibit A: ewok on the left, Disco on the right.
Photo of Disco by @lot71. Ewok is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd.
I was serving up a taco feast at Disco’s house later that night! I’d bring cookies!
Cookies, check! Ewok, check! Oh, The Oatmeal, I’m on my way to being a real girlfriend!
Oh, but wait, by definition, I need a boyfriend to be a real girlfriend. Rock climbing and new found ewok knowledge aside, I’m single. My cookie spatula IS shaped like Darth Vader but the implications of James Earl Jones and meta-cookie eating were making my head spin. So I made these instead. The frosting is a revelation; I want to bathe in it.
Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes
Ingredients
Makes 3 dozen minis (or 1 dozen standard)
- 3/4 cups unsweetened dutch process cocoa powder (I prefer King Arthur’s Double Dutch Dark Cocoa)
- 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teas espresso powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teas cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 oz rum
- 1/2 cup sour cream
For the frosting
- 12 Tbs (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 2 c. powdered sugar
- 1 Tbs heavy cream
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. cayenne pepper
- 1.6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, melted (about 2/3 c. chocolate chips)
- 5 oz. white chocolate, melted (about 2/3 c. chocolate chips)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line mini cupcake tins with cupcake papers. Place cocoa, flour, baking powder, espresso powder, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. Mix well and set aside. In a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar on medium speed until really good and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Add vanilla and rum. Reduce mixer speed to low. Spoon in the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with sour cream, starting and ending with the flour mixture.
Fill cupcake tins 3/4 full. Bake 17-19 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the cupcake comes out clean. Let cupcakes cool in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Let cool completely before frosting.
Meanwhile, in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and powdered sugar until light and fluffy. Add cream, vanilla, cinnamon, cayenne, until combined. Reduce speed to low and pour in the bittersweet and white chocolate. Scrape down the side of the bowl and the paddle, continue to mix on medium-high a few more minutes until light and well blended. If frosting is too soft, place in the refrigerator for a few minutes until it is the right consistency to pipe or spread onto cupcakes. Refrigerate cupcakes after frosting. Bring them up to room temperature before serving.
Capture + Cocktails = an app! an incentive!
Long silences. They happen. Particularly with this blog. But I couldn’t bake things and blog about them! I was busy reconnecting with people I haven’t seen since, like, 2007! So now I’m reconnecting with you. And to make it even sweeter, I’m gonna ask you for a favor. But since I’m in marketing, I’ll incentivize that favor.
I’m testing out a new iPhone app called Capture. What’s cool about it is I can ask you for specific picture of something we both like, for example, booze, and you can share your photos with me to use on Boozy Bakeshop. So this is what I need you to do:
Download Capture from the app store (it’s free!) http://bit.ly/U6IHra
Then look for a photo request from Boozy Bakeshop.
It might look like this:
And then this:
Snap a picture of your favorite cocktail by tapping “Capture It” and submit with its name/brief description.
I’ll choose the most awesome* one and turn it into a boozy dessert!
That’s the incentive part. But going forward, I’ll also be able to use your photos to create galleries and such on the site. Capture will have requests from other bloggers like me too. I like it. Communalblogging.
*Awesomeness to be determined by Boozy Bakeshop and our trusted panel of experts.**
**And by experts, I mean friends who drink cocktails and eat the things I bake.
Straight Up Cupcake
Being a child of the 80′s, third wave feminism with it’s girl power anthems and roots of sex positivity (see: Madonna), didn’t really have an effect until post-wave radio replay of the early 90′s. I vaguely recall women scoffing at my stay at home mom while they raced off each morning in shoulder pads, Easy Spirits, and the Mercedes their dual income household afforded them the privilege of driving. I was 5 in 1988. Mandatory modern/hip hop/jazz dance class at my grade school introduced Patti LaBelle moves and “you go girl” into my vocabulary. One beat of “Straight Up” and the whole song gets full cranial replay with a few of the elementary dance moves twitching through my muscle memory.
Ms. Abdul, in her post structuralist interpretation of the classic boy-girl relationship asks for honesty. She’s not a Disney princess, waiting in hopes for some needy ego-maniacal somnophiliac. She’s demanding the hard, but straight talk of low expectations. Whether Ms. Abdul’s lover provides her with said straight up answers, and whether she chooses to believe them, remains to be seen. (The chorus repetition suggests she is dubious at best, requiring multiple confirmations). I get the sensation that it was a two steps forward, two steps back kind of deal, leaving her alone with a [MC Skat] cat.
In any case, while we’ve certainly entered fourth wave feminism, where we reclaim the domestic by selling aprons on Etsy and canning things, I’m not sure if Gotye is really the anthem of our times. Then again, I get little broad spectrum pop in my world of new wave 80′s synth/indie rock/grand ole opry. In one such testament to fourth wave feminism, I took a day off of my career to cater a gallery opening hosted by the ever amazing and beautiful Streetwater for Straight Up, a collection by the devastatingly talented Cameron R Neilson. Since the project started in Manhattan, we served manhattans, straight up. Which of course, I turned into a bite sized cupcake. Or rather, 324 bite sized cupcakes.
this cupcake was not photographed at a perfect 90 degree angle, therefore it is not infringing on IP rights of the initial Straight Up concept. Nor is it in anyway a parody. I was simply sitting on the floor, looking up.
Manhattan Cupcakes
Ingredients
Makes 3 dozen minis (or 1 dozen standard)
- 3/4 cups unsweetened dutch process cocoa powder (I prefer King Arthur’s Double Dutch Dark Cocoa, your chocolate cake comes out close to black in color and tastes fudgy rich. This is not some weak Hershey’s mess. This is real cocoa for the chocolate lover.)
- 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teas espresso powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 oz bourbon
- 1/2 cup sour cream
For the ganache
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 3 Tbs confectioners sugar
- 3 oz unsweetened chocolate, roughly chopped
- 1 teas vanilla extract
- 1 Tbs bourbon
- 1/4 cup + 1 Tbs red cherry jam (Hero or Bon Maman preferred)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line mini cupcake tins with cupcake papers. Place cocoa, flour, baking powder, espresso powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Mix well and set aside. In a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar on medium speed until really good and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing with each addition one. Add vanilla and bourbon. Reduce mixer speed to low. Spoon in the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with sour cream, starting and ending with the flour mixture.
Fill cupcake tins 3/4 full. Bake 17-19 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the cupcake comes out clean. Let cupcakes cool in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Let cool completely before frosting.
Meanwhile, Put chocolate in a heat proof bowl. In a heavy bottomed sauce pan, bring cream and confectioners sugar to a low boil. Remove from heat and pour over chocolate. Whisk until smooth. Add in vanilla, bourbon, and jam, whisking after each addition. Feel free to add more jam to taste if you like your ganache more sweet, but it does make the frosting softer. Refrigerate until completely cool. Using an electric mixer, beat until fluffy. Frost and eat!
