The Weekend Post #23

Saturday Morning Snapshot

Ella, upon realizing she’s not invited to see Cap 3…

State of the Blog

You can find Baking Mischief recipes in a few roundups this week: Salted Pretzel and Nutella Chip Cookies in “ 17 Sweet And Salty Ways To Take Pretzels To The Next Level ” on BuzzFeed, Margherita Pizza in Karen’s Kitchen Stories’ Bread Box Round Up , and Ashley Benson’s site XOBenzo featured my Star Wars BB-8 Cupcakes for May the 4th in “ Star Wars Cupcakes That Will Blow Your Mind .”

This was an exciting week on the blog for me, because it was the first week of Nerd Month ! I’m having the best time coming up with recipes inspired by some of my favorite pieces of popular culture. This week I got to nerd out over Person of Interest (first four seasons are available on Netflix, watch it!) and Captain America . Writing about shows/movies I love has been a blast, but I’m also just so pleased with the recipes I got to post this week. They’re some of my favorites on the blog so far!

Next week get ready for some major fangirling, because we’re tackling recipes inspired by three of my very favorite shows by my all time favorite show runner, with some shockingly tasty shots, a shrunken dessert, and a Peruvian dish that carb lovers are just going to adore.

Recipes/posts released this week were:

Strawberry Glazed Sencha Green Tea Doughnuts - 4

Strawberry Glazed Sencha Green Tea Doughnuts - 5

Strawberry Glazed Sencha Green Tea Doughnuts – My favorite baked doughnut recipe infused with sencha green tea and topped with a fresh strawberry glaze and sprinkles.

Chicken Shawarma With Yogurt Sauce – Make Avengers Shawarma! A simple chicken shawarma recipe with tender, smokey and flavorful chicken and a salty, garlic and lemon yogurt sauce served over crisp veggies and warm pita bread.

Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes – Insanely chocolatey Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes made with three different types of chocolate, stuffed with a creamy chocolate pudding, and topped with sprinkles and a chocolate glaze.

Pop-culture Corner

Captain America: Civil War is out the weekend. Did you go see it? I saw the movie Saturday morning and really enjoyed it.

Some non-spoilery things I loved: Friendship!, Black Widow, un-shed manly tears, T’Challa, hyper-competent team work, age-appropriate Spidey, and slimy smiling Martin Freeman (my favorite Freeman after John Watson Freeman).

And some I didn’t: Black Widow’s always over-styled hair, Bucky’s too long/too short hair, romance?, Hawkeye’s goatee, and the ridiculously long false eyelashes on the ladies. It’s mostly just hair gripes TBH… ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Meal Planning

Saturday: BBQ Steaks Sunday: Mozzarella and Asparagus Stuffed Chicken Breasts Monday: Chops with Bread Stuffing Tuesday: Salad Wednesday: TBD Thursday: Zuppa Friday: Sausage and Rice

Insanely chocolatey Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes made with three different types of chocolate, stuffed with a creamy chocolate pudding, and topped with sprinkles and a chocolate glaze.

For me, the real heart of the Captain America series is our Brooklyn boys so when it came time to choose some Cap-themed recipes, Brooklyn Blackout Cake immediately sprang to mind.

Marvel via Tumblr

Brooklyn Blackout Cake originated in Brooklyn from the Ebinger Baking Company, which opened its doors in 1898 . But it wasn’t until around WWII that the cake got its name, so while it’s never featured in the films, it still makes me think of Captain America every time I see it.

Plus, I maybe just really wanted an excuse to make the cake for the blog, and since I prefer making cupcakes to cakes, as is my wont, I turned it into Brooklyn Blackout CUPCAKES.

Um, if you don’t LOVE chocolate, you may be excused now, because there is nothing here but chocolate. You’ve got deep, dark chocolate cake. You have chocolate pudding stuffed into that cake. Then there’s a chocolate glaze on top of that.

Pile on some chocolate cake crumbs, and then just because I never want it to be said that I am not excessive in all things, we sprinkle some chocolate sprinkles on there too.

And oh my gosh, how to describe this cake to you. It’s like dying and going to chocolate heaven. You use three different types of chocolate in this cake, so you get three different shades of holy cow delicious. The cake itself is made with dark chocolate and coffee, then we use a bitter-sweet chocolate in the pudding, and a sweeter semi-sweet in the glaze.

It really is one of the most decadent desserts I’ve ever made. And just in case it seems intimidating to you, these Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes are actually pretty easy cupcakes to put together. No stand mixer is required, and the pudding is literally just heating a few ingredients together while your cupcakes bake and remembering to give it a stir occasionally.

It’s not simple, but it is easy. Honestly, the hardest part is not eating all the components separately before you get them assembled.

Ingredients

Cupcakes

▢ 8 tablespoons ( 4 oz) unsalted butter
▢ 1/2 cup ( 3 oz) dark chocolate* chopped
▢ 2 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
▢ 3/4 cup and 2 tablespoons ( 105 g) all-purpose flour
▢ 1/2 cup ( 40 g) unsweetened cocoa powder sifted
▢ 1 teaspoon baking powder
▢ 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
▢ 1/2 teaspoon salt
▢ 1 cup ( 200 g) granulated sugar
▢ 2 large eggs and 1 large egg yolk at room temperature
▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
▢ 1/2 cup buttermilk
▢ 1/2 cup hot coffee

Pudding Filling

▢ 1/4 cup ( 50 g) granulated sugar
▢ 2 tablespoons ( 15 g) cornstarch
▢ 1/8 teaspoon salt
▢ 1 1/2 cups milk any percentage is fine
▢ 1/2 cup ( 3oz ) bittersweet chocolate, chopped (good-quality chocolate chips are fine)
▢ 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Chocolate Glaze

▢ 4 tablespoons ( 2 oz) unsalted butter
▢ 2 tablespoons milk
▢ 1 1/2 teaspoons light corn syrup
▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
▢ 1/3 cup ( 2oz ) semisweet chocolate, chopped (good-quality chocolate chips are fine)
▢ 1 cup ( 120 g) powdered sugar sifted*
▢ Chocolate sprinkles

Instructions

Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350°Line 22 cupcake cups with liners.
In a medium microwave-safe bowl, microwave butter until almost completely melted. Add dark chocolate and oil and microwave for 30 seconds. Stir. Microwave for an additional 15 seconds if necessary, until chocolate is completely melted. Stir until well combined and set aside to cool.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract. Whisk in cooled chocolate mixture. (It can be warm, but if it is hot to the touch, set aside for another couple of minutes. You don’t want to scramble the eggs!)
Whisk in half of the flour mixture until just combined. Add all of the buttermilk and mix. Whisk in the last of the flour, mixing until just combined.
Whisk in the coffee.
Fill cupcake tins just under 2/3 of the way full. You should have about 22 cupcakes. Don’t over fill!
Bake for 15-18 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcakes comes out clean.

Pudding Filling

While your cupcakes bake, in a medium saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Whisk in milk, pouring slowly so no lumps form.
Cook over medium-low heat, whisking out lumps occasionally until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of your spoon, about 6 to 10 minutes. The heat should be low enough that your pudding cooks without coming to a simmer. If it begins to simmer, turn the heat down.
Add chocolate and cook for 1 to 2 more minutes, until chocolate is completely mixed in and the mixture is thick. Add in vanilla and stir.
There will be some cornstarch lumps in your pudding. This is normal and you won’t notice them when the pudding is stuffed into your cupcakes, but it they bother you, you can strain your pudding through a mesh strainer to get rid of them. Transfer your pudding to a storage container and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, until it finishes firming up.

Fill Cupcakes

Cut a cone shaped piece out of the center of 20 of the cupcakes, reserve the remaining Cut the tip off of the cone and place in a separate bowl to use later, keep the tops.
Fill cupcakes with pudding and replace the tops.
Crumble the remaining two cupcakes and cupcake centers to create the crumb topping. Set aside.

Make the Glaze

Make sure you have all of your cupcakes filled and topping and sprinkles ready before starting the glaze. This glaze starts to set after 10 minutes or so, so you want to be able to put it directly onto the cupcakes. Combine butter, milk, corn syrup, and vanilla in a medium pot. Cook over medium heat until butter is melted. Whisk in chocolate and stir until incorporated. Remove from heat and immediately whisk in sifted powdered sugar and stir until mixture is smooth.
Spoon glaze over cupcakes. Do three or four at a time and then coat the batch with crumbs and sprinkles. Since this glaze sets, if you wait too long the crumbs/sprinkles won’t stick to your cupcakes.
Repeat with the remaining cupcakes. If the glaze begins to harden, return to low heat and stir until smooth and spoonable again. Allow cupcakes glaze to set for 15 minutes before serving.

Notes

Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes Nutritional Information Cupcakes Adapted From: Baker By Nature Pudding Adapted From: Smitten Kitchen Glaze Adapted From: Handle The Heat

Small-batch Instructions: To halve this recipe, half of 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour is 1/4 cup and 3 tablespoons , 1/4 cup of sugar is 2 tablespoons , 1/3 cup of semi-sweet chocolate is 2 tablespoons, 2 teaspoons . To halve an egg yolk, separate yolk into a small bowl and measure out 9 grams or 1/2 teaspoon of yolk. Make-ahead Instructions: You can make the pudding filling up to two days in advance, just make sure to keep it stored in an air-tight container until you are ready to use it.

Jello shots with a major flavor upgrade. Candy-sweet and topped with triple sec whipped cream, you’ll actually want to savor these shots!

We’ve hit week two of Nerd Month and I am having SO much fun. I hope you are too!

When I told my RL people that I was doing an entire month on the blog dedicated to recipes inspired by my favorite pieces of pop culture, they were a little worried.

To quote my sister (in her most concerned voice), “Someone’s going to edit those posts for you, right?” As though I would be too overcome with fangirling to be understood and intelligibly transcribe recipes.

Okay, that might actually be a problem this week, because this week we are doing a theme within a theme (oh man, I should have planned an Inception recipe this month) and covering one of my very, very, very favorite things, Bryan Fuller shows!

If you are not familiar with Fuller’s work, he’s the mastermind behind such prematurely cancelled favorites as Wonderfalls , Pushing Daisies , and Hannibal (he’s also helming the upcoming Star Trek reboot over on CBS All Access and American Gods on Starz).

We’re starting the week off with one of his early shows, Wonderfalls . It was my first favorite show (also my first experience with cancellation) and tells the tale of Jaye, a disaffected twenty-something who suddenly begins hearing voices. Are the voices God? Are they the devil?

Fox via Whatthekatzdraggedin

Who knows, but it’s a great, sweet and funny show that tells a complete 13-episode story despite its early cancellation and also features a pre-PieMakerElfKing Lee Pace.

There are a ton of recipes I could have pulled from the show, like fig pancakes or fish jello, but I finally settled on something that appears in the very first episode:

Jello shots!

The traditional jello shot recipe is 3 ounces jello mix, 1 cup water, and 1 cup vodka. And it makes a serviceable shot.

This recipe cuts some vodka, adds some triple sec, some sprinkles, and some triple sec-infused whipped cream. So it’s a lot tastier, a lot more interesting, and way more fun to look at.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of traditional jello shots, but by replacing half of the vodka with triple sec, a very sweet orange-flavored liqueur, you get a candy-sweet jello shot that still packs a punch but is so good you’ll want to eat it with a spoon. (And real talk, if you serve them in 2-ounce glasses like these, it’s pretty much the only way to eat them.)

Fox

I used grape jello, because that’s the type of shot Jaye asks for in the show, but you can make these with any flavor you think would pair well with orange.

Do you have a favorite show creator? What was your first favorite show?