Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream

Happy Birthday Caity!  Welcome to thirty!

I swear that this is not poo.

I don’t know if you know this, but the original plan, eight years ago now, was that Stef and I were going to set up Cait with the Pie.  They’re both complete computer nerds, skinny jerks, and their birthdays are only four days apart.  What could possibly go wrong?  Needless to say, it didn’t happen, to everyone’s relief.  Anyway, today Cait turns thirty, and I’m pleased to say that now we have been friends for over half our lives. Pretty heady stuff when you’re a girl who rarely stayed in one place longer than five years growing up.

In continuing the birthday theme, I am going to give you the recipe for the chocolate fudge ice cream you saw in the Pie’s ice cream birthday cake on Monday.

I took this recipe (and modified it only a tiny bit) from My Lemony Kitchen, and I think it’s tops, even though I am not particularly fond of chocolate ice cream.  It is, however, a very British recipe, and everything is in metric, including the measurements for a substance known as GOLDEN SYRUP.  Fortunately in Newfoundland, where we love everything British, this was easy to find.  This partially inverted refiners syruptastes kind of like molasses, and kind of like corn syrup.

It’s extremely sweet.  And good for serving with “sweet puds.”  Can any of my UK readers tell me what exactly a PUD is?  I am on tenterhooks to know.

This is where your handy dandy kitchen scale is very useful.  If you don’t have one, you should get one.  They are always worth it.

So.  Ice cream.  In a pot with a heavy base, pour 300mL whole milk.

Chop up 100g dark chocolate and scoop up 25g butter and add those to the mix.

Heat on medium, stirring often, until everything is melted and smooth.

Measure out 125g sugar and 75g golden syrup.  I weighed the syrup on top of the sugar, so that the whole thing just slid into the pot and I wasn’t left with a sticky mess.  Clever, eh?

Add the sugars to the pot and raise the heat to bring the mixture to a boil.  Reduce the heat and allow to simmer for about four minutes.  Then remove the whole thing from the heat and allow it to cool until it’s just warm.

In a mixing bowl, beat up 4 eggs.  Slowly, stirring the whole time, pour the slightly warm chocolate mixture into the eggs.

Strain this whole thing into a heatproof bowl or the top of a double-boiler.  You may need to scrape the bottom of the strainer occasionally, as the egg whites are quite membranous.

Plop the bowl full of chocolate onto a pot of barely simmering water and cook until it thickens and coats the back of your spoon.  Now you have custard.

Something caught fire under my burner at this point, but I like to believe that the delicious smoky taste to my chocolate ice cream was not accidental.

Remove the chocolate custard from the heat and stir in 300mL heavy or whipping cream.

I also added in a few tablespoons of crème de cacao as a softener.  You’ll note that the packing tape was still on the lid from when we moved in four years ago.  It’s not a popular liqueur in this house.

Allow your mixture to cool completely and store it in the fridge overnight.

Then churn it in your ice cream maker according to the machine’s instructions and then do with it what you will.

I smoothed mine into an ice cream cake but I bet it would be great by itself, or maybe with some fudge sauce …

My new favourite Gluten-Free Pecan Brownies

I don’t know what it is about chocolate, but it just lends itself so well to gluten-free cooking. This recipe I pulled from the most recent issue of EDF and I think it’s the best brownie recipe I’ve found in a long while (Frugal, I know you think you’ve made enough, but this one is worth a try!).

I made a triple batch for a friend’s bake sale, so ignore the massive quantities in my photos.  If you follow the recipe below you’ll end up with a single pan of ooey-gooey nutty brownies.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and butter a baking dish (remember that the smaller the dish, the thicker your brownies will be).  Lay some parchment paper in there as well, to make it easy for you to remove the brownies when they’re done.

In a small bowl, whisk together 1/3 cup cornstarch, 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon fine salt.

In a larger, metal bowl, chop 12 oz chocolate (I used a mix of milk and dark).  You can use chocolate chips and melt the whole thing in the microwave if you want, but I’m picky.  Add in 6 tablespoons butter and melt until smooth and glossy.  Remove from the heat.

Add 3/4 cup granulated sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla to the chocolate mixture and then 3 eggs, added one at a time.

Add in your cocoa mixture and stir it as vigorously as you can until the mixture takes on a sort of cohesiveness that has it following the spoon around the bowl as you go.

Then you can stir in 1 cup chopped pecans if you like.  I prefer pecans to the more bitter walnuts, but you could also add almonds or hazelnuts or even white chocolate chips — whatever floats your boat.

Pour the batter into the pan and smooth the top.  Bake for about 35 minutes, or until set and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out with only a few moist crumbs.  Put the pan on a wire rack to cool completely.

When it’s all cool, you can cut it up and eat it.

It was extremely difficult to cut all these brownies, which filled the house with the scent of butter and chocolate, and then wrap them all in little baggies and seal them in a box to be eaten by other people.  Ah well, it’s all for a good cause, right?  I just may have to make them again very soon.

Brownies Better than Sex?

Well these ones sure are.  Apparently, so the recipe says.  I haven’t had one yet so I’m not sure what I can tell you about them.  They smell really good.  I made them for my students for the last day of class.  I hope they don’t get the wrong idea.

So here’s how you make ‘em.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.  Spray two pans and line them with parchment and spray them again.  Get trigger happy.

In a large bowl set over a pot of simmering water, melt together 12-15oz chopped chocolate and 1 cup butter.

It’ll get all smooth and shiny.

Remove that from the heat and stir in 2 cups sugar.

Add in as well 4 large eggs, slightly beaten, and 1 teaspoon vanilla and stir until smooth.

Then stir in 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon baking powder.  Whisk it good.

Divide your batter between your pans and bake for 21 minutes.  It seems like an odd number but it seems to work.  When you pull them out they should be all lovely and crackly on top, like some kind of shiny brown salt flat somewhere.  I love the surface of a good brownie.

Let them cool (and cook a bit more) in the pans, set on wire cooling racks.  When they’re completely cool you can cut them up and eat them.  I haven’t cut mine yet because I’m afraid of eating them all before I get to class.  And then I will have nothing to show for myself, save a fat belly and a sugar high.  Not a good way to start a three-hour lecture!

Chocolate Rose Birthday Cupcakes

Yesterday was Kª’s birthday (otherwise known as The Lady Downstairs).  She’s now 19, or somewhere close to that .  She’s also the mother of two very energetic young boys, and if you include her husband, she’s outnumbered in the house by males 3 to 1.  So I thought that for her birthday I’d give her something incredibly girly — a flowered cupcake.  The recipe is Martha Stewart and I got the idea for the flower from here.  The decoration part is really time consuming (at least, with my amateur skills) but so totally worth it.

This recipe makes 24 large cupcakes.

First, preheat your oven to 350°F and line two muffin tins with paper liners.

In a bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1 teaspoon baking soda and give that a stir.

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, plop in 12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) cocoa powder and 6 tablespoons hot water and mix them into a paste.  Apparently this helps to intensify the chocolate flavour.  I found I had to add an additional 4 tablespoons of water in order to get a paste, so keep that in mind.

Add in 12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) buttermilk (or soured milk), 6 tablespoons melted butter, and 2 whole eggs plus 2 egg whites and whisk until combined.

Gradually add your bowl of flour and sugar and whisk until smooth.

Scoop the batter into your liners and bake for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the middle cupcake comes out clean.  Place the muffin tins on racks and allow the cupcakes to cool completely.

While they’re cooling, plop a 250g package of plain cream cheese in a mixer together wtih about 2 cups icing sugar.  Whip that up until it’s smooth and creamy.  This is your icing.

Frost your cooled cupcakes generously.

Here’s where the ridiculous part comes in.  You’re going to need several packages of Fruit by the Foot, or some kind of store-brand equivalent.  I haven’t had this stuff since I was a kid.  The Pie was thrilled and went off in the throes of nostalgia, an extra candy sticking out of his mouth.

You will need 12 strawberry flavoured ones (red) and at least 1 apple-flavoured one (green).  I could only get these variety packs, so I had to cut the green bits from the multi-coloured ones, and I ended up with some purple roses.

Unroll one of your red strips and use a knife to cut a sine wave down the middle of it lengthwise.  Don’t worry about being perfect — it will look fine no matter what.

Take one of the halves and, starting from the end, tightly roll it up for about five inches.  This is your “bud.”

Take the bud and plop it in the centre of one of your frosted cupcakes.  Carefully drape the rest of the candy around the bud, tapping it into the frosting to anchor it.  I find it helps if I sort of let it feed through my fingers on one hand and use the other hand to rotate the cupcake.

Then cut out two small leaves from the green stuff and tuck them into the frosting under the flower you have created.

And so you are done.

Now you just have 23 more to go.  And actually the purple ones are kind of nice, I think …

Gluten-Free Chocolate and Raisin Brownies

Fussellette and I have been attempting to re-create the ooey-gooey goodness of Gluten-Free Pantry’s Chocolate Truffle Brownie Mix.  This recipe, from one of my favourite bloggers Nick at Frugal Feeding, may very well replace that mix in my heart.

The ingredients are simple: chocolate, butter, sugar, eggs, cocoa, almonds, and raisins.  And we all know the best things in life are often the simplest.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and spray and line a glass baking dish.  The larger your dish, the thinner your brownies will be, so keep that in mind.

In a large metal bowl suspended over simmering water, melt together 200g dark chocolate and 75g butter until smooth.  Remove it from the heat and put it on a heatproof surface.

Chuck in 130g sugar and stir that up.  Then add in, one at a time, 2 eggs.

Stir in, as well, 1 tablespoon cocoa powder and 2 tablespoons ground almonds.  I think next time I might experiment using almond flour instead, but today I didn’t have any. With just ground almonds I did have some trouble with cohesion when it was done.

When that’s all combined, add in a couple handfuls raisins according to your preference.

Slide that good stuff into your dish and bake for anywhere between 15 and 25 minutes, depending on your brownie depth, until the centre is JUST set.  If you bake any longer, then you’ll have cake, not a brownie, and that just isn’t the point.

As hard as it will be, make sure you let the brownies cool completely before slicing and serving.  in fact, it often helps, when making especially tender brownies, to freeze them for an hour before cutting them.  You can always heat them up again later, but if you move in too soon you’re likely to end up with a brownie mess.

Simple Butter Fudge (Tablet)

…

Oh.  Hello.  Can I help you?

You want to learn to MAKE this stuff?  And you want me to teach you?

Sorry.  Can’t.  I’m too busy cramming it in my face.

Come back later.

…

Okay fine.

I’ve wanted to teach myself to make fudge for an age and a half. Fudge is one of my favourite things, especially the simple traditional ones.  Butter and Maple fudge?  I could eat those forever.  And whenever I can get my hands on them and the Pie is out for the evening, I frequently do.  I pay for it, oh yes, I pay for it.  But it’s totally worth it.

This year my New Year’s Resolution was to learn to make fudge.  That and eat more vegetables.  I never thought vegetables would be a problem for me.  But of course that was before I moved to Newfoundland.  Anyway.  Fudge.  Resolution for fudge.

So last week I decided that enough was enough.  It was time.  Plus I keep trying to think of luscious dessert-y-type objects that also happen to be gluten-free so that I can bribe Fussellette to drive me places.  I figure it’s a win-win situation for all concerned.

In searching for crumbly oh-so-melt-in-your-mouth fudge recipes on the internet, I came to the realization that the stuff I am thinking of is also known simply as TABLET, a traditional Scottish bon-bon.  I wish I had known this sooner.  Finding a good recipe would have been quicker, and every time I passed a package of tablet in the specialty store I would have purchased it.  So perhaps it’s a good thing I didn’t find this out sooner.

Enough with my blathering.  I found this recipe by Stewart C. Russell and it seems to be the best, mostly for the clear instructions.  And if I’m going to experiment and things are going to go horribly, spectacularly wrong, I want it to count.  So I doubled the recipe and modified things a bit.  I’ll give you my version here, and if you don’t like the craziness of it you can go back to Stewart and do his recipe the right way.

You will only need four ingredients for this, but you need a lot of most of them:

1 cup cold milk (this is for dampening down your sugar.  The measurement is approximate.)

200g butter (I used salted instead of unsalted, because I like my fudge a little less than sickly sweet.  This measurement is slightly less than the 1lb [454g] block you get in the stores.)

3, 300g tins sweetened condensed milk (Stewart’s recipe calls for a 400g tin, which doesn’t seem to exist around these parts, so this is the reason I doubled the recipe.  In the end I had 100g more milk than the math called for but I don’t think it did any harm.)

2kg brown sugar (you can use white here for a lighter fudge, but this is what I had around)

First thing: generously butter two rimmed baking sheets.  I mean GENEROUSLY.  And you will need these ready to go before you do anything else, because when you need them you will have no time to spare.  Put them somewhere handy, on a heatproof surface.

Take out your largest saucepan (this stuff foams up quite a bit). And a big wooden spoon (you always make candy with wooden spoons).   I also recommend using a candy thermometer.  We’re going to do some other tests here but if you want surefire accuracy I would use one as well as a fail-safe.

Plop the sugar in that there saucepan and pour on the milk.  Give that a wee stir.

Add in your butter and your condensed milk.  Take a dobble of that and put it on a plate.  Admire the grainy texture and pale colour.  You are going to have quite the colour chart on this plate by the end.

Heat the stuff in the saucepan on medium-high, stirring, until the butter is melted and everything is starting to get smooth.

Bring the mixture to a boil.

Turn it down to a simmer (this will depend on the thickness of your pot, the amount you have in it, and the temperature of your element). You’re going to simmer it for a while, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking. It’s gonna get foamy and scary.

You’re waiting for the “soft ball” stage in candy making, which is when your thermometer hits 240°F.  If you’re simmering and you can’t get the sugar to increase in temperature, try turning up the heat a little bit at a time until you see a difference.  Just make sure not to burn it!

While you’re waiting, keep testing out your liquid on your plate.  Dobble some on and let it cool.  Watch it darken in colour and smooth out in consistency.  On this one the latest dobble, the one at the far right, is exhibiting some caramel tendencies, as it’s starting to stretch out when I pull it.  That means we’re almost there.

Another way to test is to take a teaspoon-full of your sugar mix and plunge it into a small amount of cold water for a second or two.  Then tip the spoon and watch the sugar pour off the spoon.  Here it’s coming off in a smooth string, so it’s not ready.

Still too stringy here.

Ah.  Here we have a SOFT BALL coming off the spoon.  It’s ready.

Remove the pan from the heat and start stirring it vigorously with your wooden spoon.  Not so vigorously that you splash yourself with molten sugar, but put some energy into it.

Pause occasionally to scrape the crystallized sugar off the sides of the pot.  These crystals will help to seed other crystals in the mix, which is what we want.

When you start to feel the grate of crystals on the bottom (when scraping your spoon down there feels a little gritty), then your fudge is starting to set.

Quickly pour the contents of the saucepan onto the baking sheets. Use a spatula to get it all.

You can see how it started to set as I was pouring because I took too long.  As a result, I have fudge with lumps.

Leave the stuff to set overnight, if you can stand it, or at least until they’ve cooled completely.  Those light blotches you see are just crystallizing sugar, which is a good thing.

Look how nicely it just pops out of the pan!

Use a long flat knife to cut or break your set fudge into pieces. When you are cutting it, press down on the whole length of the blade at once.  If you go in at an angle the fudge will crack along a different line.

Of course, then you get reject pieces, which is what I’ve been eating.

I recommend cutting your fudge into smallish pieces.  Otherwise you might eat too much.  Oh who are we kidding?  You (or someone you know and love) are (is) going to eat too much anyway.

Store in an airtight container.  Or mail pieces to all your friends.

I think I’d like to try this again with granulated sugar, as opposed to brown.  I think the molasses in the brown sugar, together with the extended simmering time I had to get the sugar up to the right temperature, made for a firmer fudge than the super crumbly stuff I really love.

CLEANING TIP: If you fill your empty saucepan with hot water right away and leave it for a bit, then cleanup will be a breeze.

Wingin’ It Wednesday: Raspberry Ice Cream Meringue Sundae

This was dessert when Fussellette came to dinner last week.

Started first with a meringue (my recipe is from The Joy of Cooking, but you can see a chocolate version here).

We plopped on the meringue some raspberry ice cream (see post here, but minus the vinegar).  Then we topped it with whipped cream, melted chocolate, and fresh blackberries.  Sweet and simple.

Hazelnut Dacquoise

Do you know what a dacquoise is?  If you don’t, that’s okay.  I didn’t either until I made this recipe.  Seems it’s a layered dessert made with flavoured meringue alternating with some form of creamy goodness.  You can’t really beat that.  And the best part?  This fancy schmancy dessert is gluten free!

And to be honest, despite the fact that it looks a wee bit finicky, this thing is pretty easy.  No harder than baking a cake, I’d say.  I wanted to find a fitting use for those beautiful blue fresh eggs that Miss Awesome gave me, so I thought this would work out.  And I actually pulled the recipe itself from the Get Crackin’ website.  So if the egg farmers think it’s good, it must be good.

So let’s begin.

Separate 4 egg whites from their yolks and bring them to room temperature.  Keep the yolks — we have a recipe for those in the next post.

Take a narrow bowl and chuck it in the freezer, along with your beater.  We’re going to use this to whip cream later on.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.  Pour 1 cup shelled hazelnuts onto a baking sheet.  If you want to call them filberts, you can go ahead.  To me “filbert” sounds like a euphemism for a bodily function, or another name for giving someone a raspberry.  Hazelnuts it is.

Toast the hazelnuts for 8 minutes, shaking the pan gently about halfway through, until the skins start to split and darken. Tip the hazelnuts out onto a clean tea towel.  Lower your oven temperature to 325°F so you can bake the meringue once it’s ready.

Wrap your toasty warm nuts up in the towel and rub the nuts vigorously in the towel.  Yes, I know it seems weird.  Just do it. There, you see?  Now you’ve taken off the skins — well, most of them.

And now you can remove your nuts and leave the skin bits behind.

Chuck the hazelnuts in a food processor with 1/4 cup granulated sugar for about 10 seconds or until they’re partially chopped.

Haul out 2 tablespoons of the hazelnut/sugar mix and save that for garnish later on.  Continue to process the nuts and the sugar until the nuts are finely chopped, and set that aside for a while.

Line two rectangular baking sheets with parchment paper.  On each sheet of paper, draw two 4″x8″ rectangles.

Flip the paper over so the pencil marks are on the bottom.  But you should still be able to see them.

Now let’s work on the eggs.  With an electric mixer, beat your egg whites until they’re frothy.  Then add 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, and continue to beat until soft peaks form.

Slowly add in 3/4 cup granulated sugar, a little bit at a time, and continue to beat until all the sugar is incorporated and you have reached the stiff peak stage.  This is when the meringue is glossy and white, with no distinguishable air bubbles, and the peaks created by your beater can stand up under their own weight.

Gently fold in the finely chopped hazelnuts and sugar.

Spread the meringue on the baking sheets so it fills each of the four rectangles and smooth the tops as much as possible.  Bake in your 325-degree oven for 25 minutes, until they are crisp on the outside and golden on the edges.  Let them cool on the pans.

While the meringue is baking, you can make your ganache filling.

Chop 5oz dark chocolate and plop it in a heatproof bowl set over barely simmering water, or the top of a double boiler.  Add in 1/3 cup whipping cream and cook, stirring, until the chocolate is melted completely and the mixture is smooth and glossy.  Remove it from the heat and allow it to cool slightly.

Take your bowl and beater out of the freezer and pour 1 cup whipping cream into the bowl.  Look how nice and frosty that beater is.

Whip it into a frenzy.

Gently fold in the melted chocolate until it’s fully combined.

When the meringue is cool to the touch, gently peel it off the parchment paper. Set one rectangle on a serving dish and slather with your newly made ganache.

Add another layer of meringue and repeat the process. alternating layers until you get to the top, which should end with a ganache layer.

Take your reserved chopped hazelnuts and sugar and sprinkle them over the top.

Refrigerate your confection for at least 30 minutes to set, or overnight.  Just remember that the longer you keep it, the softer the meringue is going to get. Also, if I were to make this again, I would use slightly more ganache, maybe a cup and a half — I had trouble getting it to spread over the length of the rectangles, and I like to be generous.

Slice like a loaf of bread and serve it up.  Crispy, chewy meringue and sweet, silky ganache … my two favourite things!

O Canada: Nanaimo Bars

Despite having eaten probably a thousand of these over the years, I have never made one before.  I guess I thought it would be hard.  It really isn’t.

The origins of the Nanaimo bar are shrouded in mystery.  Some say they are not from Nanaimo at all, that some housewife merely pointed to a town on a map when she named her crusty buttery bar.

Others (Canadians, mostly, and especially those from Nanaimo), insist that the Nanaimo bar belongs in its rightful birthplace on Vancouver Island.  For our purposes, we’ll go with the second story.  According to that second story, miners in town would take the bars with them when they went to work.

There are, of course, a hojillion recipes out there for Nanaimo bars.  There are a bajillion variations (my neighbour makes a variation with candy canes at Christmas).  I kept seeing ones that told you to use custard powder or pudding mix and I kept thinking, where is the original recipe?  How can I make this from scratch?  Then I realized that using a powder mix IS the original recipe.  The custard powder is there more for flavour and sticky-together-ness than it is for making an original custard.

This particular recipe, with some very minor modifications, comes from Nanaimo [Nah-NIGH-mo] itself, which is a tiny town on the tiny Vancouver Island, a few hours’ ferry ride away from Vancouver in British Columbia.  Apparently the mayor of Nanaimo held a contest several years ago to find the BEST Nanaimo bar recipe in town.  It was re-posted by the owners of the Buccaneer Inn, in Nanaimo.  How many times do you think I can say “Nanaimo”?  I bet it’s more than you think.

In a double boiler, or a bowl suspended over a pot of simmering water, melt 4 or 5 ounces dark chocolate with 2 tablespoons butter.

Stir it until it’s smooth and set it aside to cool to room temperature.

It will cool faster if you swish it up on the sides of the bowl.

In a stand mixer or with an electric mixer, whip together 1/2 cup room temperature butter, 3 tablespoons cream, 2 tablespoons custard powder (I used Bird’s), 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 2 cups icing sugar.

Keep going  until it’s light and fluffy.

In another bowl over a pot of water, melt and stir together 1/2 cup butter, 1/4 cup sugar, and 5 tablespoons cocoa.

Beat up an egg.

Add that into the melted butter, sugar, and cocoa, and stir to thicken.  The egg will cook as you do this, and the texture might turn out a little lumpy, but that’s fine.

Remove the mix from the heat and stir in 1 1/4 cups graham crumbs, 1/2 cup finely chopped nuts (I used almonds), and 1 cup sweetened dessicated coconut.

You can easily chop the nuts in your food processor.

Press the coconut crumb mixture into the bottom of an ungreased 8″ square pan.  Lacking that, I used a 10″ x 7″ pan and hoped for the best.

Spread the yellow custard mixture over the top of the crumb base.

Pour on the melted, cooled chocolate and gently spread it to cover the whole area.

Chuck in the fridge and leave it to chill for at least an hour.

Cut it into squares and eat them all.

Store what you can’t in good conscience finish in an airtight container.

(Polar) Opposite Cupcakes

The Pie is kicking butt and taking names with the Memorial University Geographical Society (MUGS) this term, and he volunteered me to be the official caterer for the group.  Last week MUGS held two open houses.  For the first, I whipped up a batch of Miss Awesome’s espresso cookies (because all undergrads need a little caffeine) and a batch of margarine chocolate chip cookies (with Caramilk inside each one, à la the Rolo cookies).  For the second, I decided to create two dozen of these cupcakes.

While chocolate and vanilla actually go quite well together, most people consider them to be opposites of each other.   As this is a geographical society, why not have the chocolate and the vanilla represent both poles on our planet?  Sure, it’s a stretch, I know, but bear with me.  Both of these batter recipes contain buttermilk, which is one of my favourite baking ingredients, and they both come from Baking Bites.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and line two muffin tins with cupcake liners.

For the Chocolate Cupcakes:

In a large bowl, whisk together 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa, 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, 3/4 cup granulated sugar, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon baking powder.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together 1 egg, 6 tablespoons water, 6 tablespoons buttermilk, 2 tablespoons melted butter, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Alas, I forgot the melted butter in the microwave until it was too late.  It looks so sad and neglected.

Pour your wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk like crazy until you get no more floury bits floating around.

Fill 12 of the muffin cups with chocolate-y batter. It’s easy if you use a spoon.

For the Vanilla Cupcakes:

In a bowl, whisk together 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat 1 cup granulated sugar with 1/4 cup room temperature butter until fluffy.

Beat in 1 egg, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1/4 teaspoon almond extract until the mixture is smooth.

Pour in half your flour mixture and stir until almost combined.  Add in 1 cup buttermilk and mix again, then the rest of the flour mixture, and beat until all the ingredients are combined.

Fill the other 12 muffin cups with that batter.

Bake the cupcakes for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of the centre cupcake comes out clean.

Allow the cupcakes to cool in the pans for about 10 minutes before using a fork to remove them to a cooling rack to cool completely.  I wish now that I had used large cupcake liners instead of medium ones.  Ah well, what’s done is done.

For the Frosting:

Nothing says holy-crap-this-frosting-is-awesome like ganâche (well, at least, if you’re ME because I’m weird like that), and for me this is the easiest thing in the world to do.

Start by chopping up about 6 ounces each of dark and white chocolate.

Plop the pieces in microwave-safe bowls and pop them in the microwave.  Nuke ‘em on medium power, stirring a few times in between, for about 5 minutes, or until the chocolate is smooth and liquid.  The white chocolate will likely melt long before the dark does, so keep an eye on it so as not to burn it.

Stirring the whole time, add 1 cup room temperature whipping cream into each chocolate. The warmer your cream, the less lumpy your ganâche will be, but the longer it will take to set. Keep that in mind.

Now, because I want something a little firmer than my usual ganâche, I’m going to add some icing sugar.  Start with 1 cup icing sugar and add more until you come to the consistency you like.  Chuck the frostings in the fridge for a bit to set.

For the Writing Icing:

I was originally going to write on these cupcakes using store-bought piping gel, just because the results are easy and predictable.  It then occurred to me, however, that I’d purchased these gels to make a cake for the baby shower for a co-worker’s first child.  This was like three jobs ago, in a different province, and I think the little girl is five years old now.  It might be time to get rid of those.

Instead, I decided to make a sort of royal icing and pipe it on myself.  So I started with two small bowls filled with 1 cup icing sugar each, a few tablespoons water, and some food colouring.

Add a little bit of the water to the icing sugar and stir until you get a good consistency. Likewise, add some food colouring to the mix.

I think this looks so weirdly neat.

Add more icing sugar or food colouring until you reach your desired colour and texture and set those aside.

Remember that this type of icing is kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid, so its physical properties might not be exactly what you expect.  AHA!  SCIENCE!  I like to sneak in a little learning on you now and then.  Sorry.

Assemblage:

Start by smearing your ganâche on your cupcakes, dark for the chocolate, and white for the vanilla.  Or the opposite.  Whatever floats your boat.

Grate a little bit of dark chocolate on the surface of the vanilla cupcakes, and a little bit of white chocolate on the chocolate cupcakes.

Looks pretty, right?  Now we’re going to de-classy it a little bit.

Spoon your coloured icing into a piping bag and start writing.

You probably don’t want to write MUGS on your cupcakes.  Unless you do. In which case, why?

Store them in the fridge to keep them fresh, and enjoy them as you will.  I think they look a little like Franken-cupcakes, but the Pie likes the look of ‘em, and he’s the boss.  I have no idea how they taste, either, because there weren’t any extras.  But I can only assume that they are passably tolerable, just like everything else I do!