i'm back...and i brought cupcakes!

so it's been three months. no biggie. i really am going to try and post more in the next 5 weeks or so. this is my favourite time of year for cooking...


anyway, here is a nice treat. coffee walnut cupcakes! 

okay, and i'll be honest. i piped like, three of these before getting lazy and just frosting them with a spatula.
these are inspired by a trip to edinburgh, scotland. 

my friend georgia and i were lucky enough to go during the festival fringe and stay with floss, a wonderful friend of georgia's! we spent a large chunk of time seeing plays and being typical festival goers, but floss knew the in and outs of edinburgh and brought us to lots of great local places...a concert at an underground pub, a polish vodka bar...(had cherry almond vodka...fantastic)
floss worked at the queen anne restaurant at the edinburgh castle and one morning, we made plans to visit her there. such a good decision. the castle grounds are dramatic and haunting, and the view is spectacular! 

we walked around for a bit, then spotted floss' restaurant and went off to get lunch! georgia ordered fish pie, and i ordered:

...can you guess? haha, it's haggis! look how cute it is! the other layers are turnips and potatoes, which in scotland are referred to as neeps and tatties.
okay, this was my first haggis experience and i loved it. i have to admit, i was a little nervous on the walk over there...but it's deep,  savory, and a little spicy. and with the creamy root veggies to mix it with...it's good. and warming. and considering how startlingly cold edinburgh was in august, i'm sure it fares quite well once this time of year rolls in.
by the way: for those of you who are vegetarians and still want to try this scottish classic upon visiting, you will very easily be able to find a vegetarian version with nuts and beans, which i've heard is really good. perhaps if i make it up there again, i will try it...
anyway, after our meal we decided to order a pot of tea and some cakes. i ordered coffee walnut cake, which apparently is quite popular in the united kingdom, but i had never heard of it!

 (check out our "reserved" sign. so vip.)
so the other day, i made coffee walnut cupcakes! nigella lawson had a recipe in nigella kitchen and i just switched it into cupcakes. 
this is a snap to make, and you may even already have all these ingredients on hand. 
as a five year old girl in my art class says, it's "easy peasy lemon squeezy."

 coffee walnut cupcakes 

adapted from nigella kitchen

Ingredients

For the cake:

1/2 cup walnut pieces

1 cup plus 2 tsp superfine sugar

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 1/3 cups flour

4 tsp instant espresso powder, or about 2 tsp instant coffee mixed with 1 tbsp boiling water

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

4 eggs

1-2 tbsp milk

For the frosting:

3 1/4 cups powdered sugar

2/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

2 1/2 tsp instant coffee dissolved in 1 tbsp boiling water

Preparation

 Heat oven to 350 F. Line 2 cupcake tins with cupcake liners, or grease and powder well.

Put walnuts and sugar in the food processor and combine to a sandy powder. Add the butter, flour, coffee, baking powder and soda, eggs and combine until smooth. Add milk, little by little, until the batter has loosened up a bit- you don't need to use all of it. 

Divide the mixture between all the cups, slide into the oven and cook for 15-20 minutes. 

Once cooked, remove from oven and cool on a wire rack. Meanwhile, make the buttercream! Combine the butter and sugar, and then add the hot strong coffee. Mix until a smooth, creamy consistency.

Once the cupcakes are completely cool, frost. And feel free to garnish with walnuts! It was my favourite part!

Pâte à Tartiner à la Noisette

Well! This was a big experiment and it was much more difficult than I imagined, and nearly ended in complete failure. But it didn't! It's good to remember how a cooking project gone wrong can be turned around. Persevere and succeed, my friends!

Today I attempted to translate a recipe from a French cooking magazine, (Vie Practique) and make it. Pâte à Tartiner à la Noisette is a chocolate and hazelnut spread; pretty much Nutella. I chose it as my first translation project because it looked "easy". Ha! Oh well, I learned.

Now, perhaps the French speakers out there will struggle with this less than I. I used a French-English dictionary and Google Translate  to figure the words I didn't know (which were many; my French is pretty bad) and I'm sure there were some discrepancies. Here is my translation: 

Okay, so here is my actual journey making it....

   Pâte à Tartiner à la Noisette

                                        

A few notes before we begin: I could not find powdered hazelnuts. I'm sure you can find it here in the US, but it must not be very common. Hence, this recipe will tell how to make it, but if you can find it, simply skip those steps and jump ahead in the recipe. Lucky you! Also, the original recipe calls for vanilla sugar, which I saw lots in English and French kitchens, but not so much here in the States. It's wonderful, I very much recommend you make some! Just add a split vanilla bean to an airtight jar of sugar. It will be fragrant and still subtle enough to be used in anything that requires sugar. Finally, the original recipe asks for 150 grams (over two sticks!) of margarine. I used butter instead, because I think margarine is disgusting, and I also recommend you reduce the amount by a little; during the "failure" stage of cooking this, it separated and I drained off heaps of butter. Two stick should be plenty.

Ingredients

1 heaped cup of dark chocolate

1 cup powdered hazenuts, or 1 scant cup whole hazelnuts

1 can sweetened condensed milk 

2 sticks butter 

1 tablespoon vanilla sugar

2 teaspoons hazelnut oil 

Preparation

First, make the hazelnut powder. Preheat your oven to 350 and toast the hazelnuts for about 10 minutes. Slide them into a clean dishtowel and vigorously rub them so their skins slip off. Some stubborn skins will remain on; ignore them. The idea is to get most of them off. 

 Put the skinned hazelnuts in a coffee-grinder or a food processor. I was worried it would turn into a paste, so maybe I didn't grind them as finely as I could have. But let it become a powder.

Put the oven at 410. Take hazelnut powder, and then tip it all onto a small baking sheet or a ovenproof dish. Spread evenly and pop into the oven. Let it toast for about 8 minutes. (By the way, this smelled incredible)

Make a double boiler: heat a medium pot with about 2 cups of water and when it's come to a boil, put a heat proof mixing bowl on top of it. It should be big enough that it sits on the pot without you needing to hold it. Throw the chocolate and half of the butter into the bowl and stir with a wooden spoon until melted and smooth.

 Add the rest of the butter, the almond powder, the vanilla sugar (or just plain sugar, and a splash of vanilla extract), the condensed milk, and the hazelnut oil. 

Stir constantly until it is smooth and thickened, but not for too long. The recipe says 10 minutes- that proved to be way too long for me. 

(Here comes the part where I thought it was all over...)

So, I took it off the stove and it was all separated, curdley looking,really dark and gloppy, sticky and was one unappetizing mass. I was really bummed, because it was going to be for the blog and I really didn't want my third blog entry to be something that got ruined, especially since I paid 12 dollars for a stupid bottle of hazelnut oil, etc. etc. (Yeah...expect to see a lot of hazelnut oil in the next few weeks)

So I made myself a cup of tea and was feeling sorry for myself, and suddenly it hit me: water! I poured some of the hot water from the kettle into the mess of chocolate and stirred with all my might. It was like magic. It suddenly looked like Nutella, smooth and brown and creamy. I was exhilarated. I threw it back over the heat for a minute or so just so it wasn't super watery and then poured it into glass jars, let them cool for a bit, and sealed it. 

Chocolate hazelnut spread! Hurray! It doesn't taste like Nutella, but I mean, it isn't Nutella. And besides, Nutella isn't French, it's Italian. But it's lovely, chocolately and has a nice hint of hazelnut. Would be nice on some soft bread, crepes, iced cream, or, let's be honest, with a spoon. It also would make a nice gift.  So try it out, and remember: MISTAKES CAN USUALLY BE FIXED!! Such a good thing to remember.