This week's cupcake was (clearly) dedicated to the upcoming 4th of July holiday. Sweet Tooth provided me with some homemade strawberry jam last week and I really wanted to try and incorporate it into my recipe so here's how I did just that. I was intimidated by the idea of adding the jam directly to my regular recipe because of the excess liquid. I toyed with the idea of adding it in as a swirl but really wanted to present a red and white layered cake. Luckily I located a recipe for Jam Cake which you will see below.
Taste: ***1/2 | Presentation: ***1/2
Jam Cake
(from 'Joy of Cooking')
1 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
10 tbsp (1/4 stick) butter
3 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
2/3 cup strawberry jam (any will do)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease muffin pan(s). In a medium bowl, thoroughly whisk together the dry ingredients (flour through salt). In a large bowl beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy (~5 mins). I was a little surprised here as to how much light and fluffier this mixture was after beating it for 5 minutes and will continue to do so from now on (I usually only do it for no more than 2 mins). Beat in 1 egg at a time. Beat in milk. On low, beat flour mixture into wet until barely blended. Beat in jam and set aside.
White Cake
(modified from 'Joy of Cooking')
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 cup dried blueberries
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Combine vanilla and milk in a separate dish. In a medium bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in 3rds alternating with the milk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Mix until only combined. In a large bowl, on medium high speed beat together the egg white and cream of tartar until stiff but not dry. Fold 1 quarter of the whites into the batter then add the remaining. I have tried to create 'peaks' with egg whites on SEVERAL occasions and have failed EVERY time for this reason my batter was a little on the runny side and I had to add an extra 2/3 cup of flour.
I poured the each of the batters into individual ziploc bags and snipped one of the corners to allow more control for creating the stripe effect of the cupcake. I sprinkled in a few dried blueberries in between the layers toward the middle so that they wouldn't appear on the outside of the cupcake which would interfere with the red and white stripe pattern. This recipe yielded 12 regular size cupcakes and 12 minis, baked at 20 and 17 minutes respectively.
Frosting
3/4 stick butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup blueberry vodka
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
5 oz white chocolate
pinch of salt
blue food colouring
Melt the white chocolate (microwave or double broiler) and set aside, allowing to come to room temperature. Combine sugar, milk and vanilla. Mix in butter and salt. Mix in the chocolate and blue food colouring. Refrigerate 1/2 hour until spreadable. Unfortunately the icing separated quite a bit (likely due to the alcohol content) and so I tried to save it by stirring it continuously for several minutes but without any luck so I decided to add another 4oz of melted chocolate, 1 cup icing sugar, 1/3 cup milk, 1/3 cup butter. This also helped to mute the bluberry flavour of the original batch as it was quite strong. The final product wasn't quite what I had planned but turned out pretty and tasty in the end.
After frosting the cakes I topped each one with a white chocolate star from a mixed bag of red, white and blue stars I found at Dollar Tree.
The Panel:
General consensus:strawberry jam flavour muted by the spices but aesthetically pleasing/creative. Judges also commented that it was very moist. Peanut and Crazy Cakes found it too sweet.
Fathom's Chef: 'Hated to finish it.' gave a 5+ for taste
Sweet Tooth: 'Blueberry icing was excellent'
My comments:
From the moment I sampled the batter for the Jam Cake I realized the spices were too strong but I wondered if baking might bring out the strawberry flavour a little more (which it didn't) so I would definitely cut back on the spices in the future. Jam cake wasn't as red as I would have liked for this project, the white cake was more golden and the frosting FAR from the dark blue I would have liked but I think it was a fun play on words. Arguably the moistest cupcake I've produced to date, likely attributed to the use of jam in the batter.
General consensus:strawberry jam flavour muted by the spices but aesthetically pleasing/creative. Judges also commented that it was very moist. Peanut and Crazy Cakes found it too sweet.
Fathom's Chef: 'Hated to finish it.' gave a 5+ for taste
Sweet Tooth: 'Blueberry icing was excellent'
My comments:
From the moment I sampled the batter for the Jam Cake I realized the spices were too strong but I wondered if baking might bring out the strawberry flavour a little more (which it didn't) so I would definitely cut back on the spices in the future. Jam cake wasn't as red as I would have liked for this project, the white cake was more golden and the frosting FAR from the dark blue I would have liked but I think it was a fun play on words. Arguably the moistest cupcake I've produced to date, likely attributed to the use of jam in the batter.