Author Archives: FritoKAL

Gnomish Cupcake Vendor – 2016

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The annual Blizzcon Gnomish Cupcake Request line is open!

Gosh this looks an awful lot like the 2015 post. 😉 But it’s the 2016 post, I assure you.

What does that mean?

It means if you’re going to Blizzcon (or aren’t but for some reason will be in the Anaheim on the 5th of November), and you follow either me or Techno on twitter, feel free to make a reasonable request for a flavor of cupcake you’d like to receive.

FAQ-like thing:

Who can ask for cupcakes? Honestly, it’s really anyone who goes to Blizzcon who knows us or kind of know us. If you’ve gotten a box before, ask away. If you’re friends with someone who has gotten a box, ask away. If you work for Blizz or wowhead or do cool creative stuff at Blizzcon and wear yourself out, ask away. If you’re not sure, message us. Odds are the answer is “Sure thing!”

What does this cost? Nothing. I really just like giving out delicious things to people.

Seriously? Yes, seriously. But if you really want, bring me a sticker, draw me something, write me a haiku, do something fun and creative.

 What’s a reasonable request? It’s probably easier to say what’s not reasonable – I can’t do bacon, because it won’t travel well. I’ve tried. I also still don’t have a good vegan gluten free cupcake recipe.

Does that mean I can accommodate vegan? Yes! It does!

Does it mean I can accommodate gluten free? Yes! It does!

But not both? Still not this year. I tried, they’re still not there yet.

How many cupcakes do I usually give people? Four (per person). Which happens to be exactly what fits into a small bakery box.

How many flavors can someone request? Four – but don’t assume you’ll get all those.  I try, but sometimes it’s just hard to manage every request. Your odds increase the more general the requests get. “Chocolate” is easy, “White chocolate raspberry with cheesecake filling” is less easy.

Should you tell me about food allergies and flavors you hate? Yes. Because Techno and I semi-randomly load the boxes for people who have not specified. We’re super accommodating, because we’re not jerks, and also because Techno has a number of allergies of his own.

Seriously, super accommodating. If you want a box of unfrosted chocolate cupcakes, no filling, no sprinkles, just cake, I am happy to make them.

Do the cupcakes travel well? Kind of. They end up in bakers boxes, which travel great in a car, but I have no idea how they’d handle planes. I’m also not sure how the TSA would react to a box of cupcakes. In theory I can put cupcakes into jars, and they’ll fit into disposable tupperware too, but again, the TSA. If you’re driving, and traveling with them, I recommend an ice pack to keep frosting from getting unacceptably squishy.

When does this happen?  Blizzcon weekend – this year, we’ll be up on Saturday. We’ll tweet, DM people and text the people we have numbers for when we arrive. Techno and I have cupcake t-shirts. We also have a small loud toddler, and we’ll be those people with a cooler.

Where do I make requests? Here in comments, or on twitter, or via email.

National Cupcake Lovers’ Day!

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Apparantly (According to the folks over at squishables.com at least, and I love their enormous spherical huggable stuffed animals-and-food-and-uh-states? almost as much as I love cupcakes so we’ll go with it) it’s National Cupcake Lovers’ Day!

To celebrate, have a quick ten in no particular order cupcakes-I’ve-made picture set – and hopefully ten eight topics for me to make posts about!

#1 – Chocolate-Strawberry Cupcakes. Chocolate cake and frosting, fresh strawberries and filled with a sadly discontinued chocolate-strawberry jam made by Stonewall Kitchens. I did the cool fanned out sliced fruit thing! I was so proud of myself!

#2 – Strawberry-Basil Cupcakes. You can read all about these here. I kept a cup of basil sugar stored in my freezer for a month after this and topped waffles with it.

#3 – Caramel Apple Cookies-and-Cream Cupcakes. Brown sugar cake, apple butter filling, apple-cream cheese frosting and then rolled in crushed caramel-apple Oreos, and drizzled in thick melted caramel. The caramel apple oreos have green filling. It’s weird looking.

#4 -Snickers Bar Cupcakes. Chocolate Malted cake, peanut-caramel filling, caramel buttercream frosting and then topped with peanuts, and chocolate and caramel. Caramel no longer looks like a word.

#5 – Raspberry Lemonade Cupcakes. Vanilla bean cake, filled with seedless raspberry preserves (from a stand at the local farmer’s market, I buy local when I can!), topped with lemon cream cheese frosting, freeze dried raspberries and a lemon shortbread cookie. The freeze dried raspberries are delicious on their own. We ate half the bag while decorating these!

#6 – Blueberry Pie Cupcakes. Vanilla Bean cake, filled with blueberry pie filling. Vanilla bean and blueberry buttercream swirled frosting, topped with fresh blueberries and a blueberry cookie. These were the cupcakes I made for my son’s first birthday party! My son picked all the blueberries off his giant cupcake, ate them, then ripped the cupcake apart and ate the filling with his fists. His whole face was purple.

#7 – Tagalong Girl Scout Cookie Cupcakes. Chocolate cake, with a tagalong cookie sunk into the batter. Frosted with peanut butter ganache, and then dipped into melted chocolate and chilled until the chocolate was hard. Made for my husband to take to his office for his birthday. He ate four. I don’t know how, they were so rich.

#8 – Sticky Caramel Cupcakes. Brown sugar/honey cake, filled with hot caramel, frosted with caramel buttercream and drizzled with more melted caramel. This cupcake launched a friendship. I brought these to Blizzcon 2013, 2014, and 2015, and a good friend of mine has managed to eat them without making a mess. I don’t know how! I’m pretty sure he’s actually a cupcake-eating robot.

#9 – Halloween 2015. Pumpkin Spice Latte cupcakes and Caramel Hot Cocoa. Pumpkin Spice have an espresso-spice cake, are filled with pumpkin pie filling and have whipped cream frosting and are topped with crushed pumpkin biscotti. The caramel hot cocoa are double-chocolate cake, filled with a caramel-chocolate sauce, and frosted with caramel buttercream with a caramel swirl. Caramel REALLY doesn’t look like a word anymore.

#10 – Christmas 2015. Clockwise from top left: Sugar Cookie Dough, Christmas Cookie, Caramel Mocha, and Baileys-and-Cocoa. You can read a bit about these here. I could eat that Bailey’s cream cheese frosting out of the bowl with a spoon.

Baking for Christmas!

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Flavors: Sugar Cookie Dough and Christmas Cookie, Caramel Mocha and Baileys-and-Cocoa

Quick recipe notes:

All the basic frosting you see on my cupcakes always starts with one of three basics – the two here are

–Cream Cheese Base–

8oz cream cheese

1/2 cup butter (unsalted)

1 cup powdered/confectioners sugar

—

and

–Mallowcreme Base–

1 cup butter (unsalted)

1 1/3rd cup powdered/confectioners sugar

7 ounces marshmallow fluff

—

I use the marshmallow because it’s a quick way to get light, airy, fluffy, stable frosting. Marshmallow is basically sugar, some kind of gelatin and air – I use a fluff that’s kosher and vegan friendly (and when baking for my kosher or vegan friends I switch the butter out for some other option), but any will do.

After that, it’s all dumping something else into the mixing bowl with the frosting. Jam (seedless). Cocoa. Vanilla. Vigorously smashed oreo cookies. A shot and a half of Baileys. Whatever makes you happy.

Today’s frostings: (seen on the picture here, clockwise from top left.)IMG_1253 (2)

Vanilla Cookie Dough: Mallowcreme frosting base, 1/4 cup brown sugar (sifted to prevent clumps), 1 tablespoon real vanilla extract.

Cookie Butter: Mallowcreme frosting base, 1/2 cup Speculoos Cookie Butter (from Trader Joe’s)

Super Fluffy Vanilla Mallowcreme: Mallowcreme frosting base, 1 tablespoon real vanilla extract. Chill for at least an hour in the fridge, then re-mix on high speed until super extra mega fluffy.

Bailey’s Cream Cheese: Cream cheese frosting base, 1.5 shots Bailey’s Cream Liqueur, 2 tablespoons vanilla caramel sauce. This requires chilling, because the extra liquid makes the frosting very soft. Chill this for at least an hour before using it.

 

IMG_1219 (3) IMG_1242 (3)

Gnomish Cupcake Request Line is OPEN!

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The annual Blizzcon Gnomish Cupcake Request line is open!

What does that mean?

It means if you’re going to Blizzcon (or aren’t but for some reason will be in the Anaheim area the weekend of Blizzcon), and you follow either me or Techno on twitter, feel free to make a reasonable request for a flavor of cupcake you’d like to receive.

FAQ-like thing:

Who can ask for cupcakes? Honestly, it’s really anyone who goes to Blizzcon who knows us or kind of know us. If you’ve gotten a box before, ask away. If you’re friends with someone who has gotten a box, ask away. If you work for Blizz or wowhead or do cool creative stuff at Blizzcon and wear yourself out, ask away. If you’re not sure, leave a comment.

What does this cost? Nothing. I really just like giving out delicious things to people.

Seriously? Yes, seriously. But if you really want, bring me a sticker, draw me something, write me a haiku, do something fun and creative.

 What’s a reasonable request? It’s probably easier to say what’s not reasonable – I can’t do bacon, because it won’t stay crispy. I also still don’t have a good vegan gluten free cupcake recipe.

Does that mean I can accommodate vegan? Yes! It does!

Does it mean I can accommodate gluten free? Yes! It does!

But not both? Not this year.

How many cupcakes do I usually give people? Four. Which happens to be exactly what fits into a small bakery box.

How many flavors can someone request? Four – but don’t assume you’ll get all those.  I try, but sometimes it’s just hard to manage every request.

Should you tell me about food allergies and flavors you hate? Yes. Because Techno and I semi-randomly load the boxes. We’re super accommodating, because we’re not jerks, and also because Techno has a number of allergies of his own.

Seriously, super accommodating. If you want a (like someone did last year) a box of unfrosted chocolate cupcakes, no filling, no sprinkles, just cake, I am happy to make them.

Do the cupcakes travel well? Kind of. They end up in bakers boxes, which travel great in a car, but I have no idea how they’d handle planes. I’m also not sure how the TSA would react to a box of cupcakes.

When does this happen?  Blizzcon weekend – this year, we’ll be up on Friday. We’ll tweet, DM people and text the people we have numbers for when we arrive. Techno and I have cupcake t-shirts.

Where do I make requests? Here in comments, or on twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strawberry-Basil Cupcakes

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Strawberry-Basil Cupcake

 Inspired by any number of delicious things I’ve eaten lately, and a tumblr post on making mint sugar.

 Fresh strawberries and basil, pound cake and cream cheese frosting. These were perfect for the summer – sweet, lightly frosted and loaded with fruit. There’s more strawberries hiding in the middle of that cupcake.

 

 

 

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Basil sugar in the food processor

Basil Sugar

Herb infused sugars are incredibly easy to make. It is as simple as the herbs, the sugar and a food processor. Mint, basil, rosemary, anise – any flavor that goes well with sweet can be used here, though the amounts needed will vary.

Basil sugar was: 2/3rds cup of granulated sugar and half a bunch of fresh basil (approximately ½ cup)

Start by adding the sugar into food processor and then add basil a few leaves at a time until basil and sugar are completely blended – sugar should be green and clump together when pressed with a finger. This will make way more basil sugar that you need. Save it, put it on your waffles.

 

 

 

Basil Macerated Strawberries

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Basil macerated strawberries

Macerating fruit makes it sweeter and softer and can add the flavor(s) of the other elements used in the maceration process.

Normally maceration is done with a liquid (it’s like marinating, for fruit!) – you soak fruit in a liquid (vinegar, wine, juice, syrup, any liquid with a flavor will do). But because my strawberries were going to be sitting on top of cake, I didn’t want them to be squishy, or to have them make the cake soggy. So instead, I used sugar  – the sugar pulls the liquid out of the strawberries, leaving them sweeter, tarter and with a hint of basil. I used the basil sugar I made, but any granulated sugar will work.

Basil macerated strawberries: 1 lb strawberries, 2 tbsp basil sugar, 1/3rd cup fresh basil – Chop strawberries into small irregular pieces. Chop basil finely – pieces should be smaller than ¼ inch. Mix strawberries, basil, sugar in bowl. Chill for at least half an hour.

 

 

Cake, Frosting and Decorating

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Pound Cake fresh from the oven

Pound Cake

Pound cake is boring. It’s buttery, it’s sweet, it’s dense, and there isn’t much more to it.

Which makes it the perfect delivery mechanism for everything else delicious in the world.

Pound cake: Use your favorite pound cake recipe – or use a box mix, but add a tablespoon of vanilla. Fill your cupcake tins only halfway – pound cake rises more than regular cake. Ignore the baking instructions if your pound cake recipe is for a regular loaf pan or cake pan – cupcakes are smaller, so they bake faster, and need a lower temperature to not burn. I baked at 350 F for 15 minutes. Your oven may vary, so check after 10 minutes. The tops of your cupcakes should be gold and tan and a butter knife inserted into the center of a cupcake should come back clean.

Why a butter knife instead of a toothpick? A larger surface area means I am more likely to get an accurate check if the middle of my cake is still unbaked. Knives are also longer, which means I can check from further away, and not risk burning my fingers on the oven rack.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Like pound cake, cream cheese frosting is kind of boring. Classic, but boring. And like the cake, it’s a perfect accompanist to other flavors. It’s sweet and tangy enough to pair up with the tart-sweet intensity of the strawberries, and doesn’t drown out the basil.

I have a standard recipe I use every time:

  • 8oz cream cheese. Chilled – take it straight from the fridge to the mixer, stop to spoon it into smaller lumps if you want.
  • ½ cup butter. Room temperature – you want it to blend with the cream cheese, so it has to be soft.
  • 1.5 cups powdered sugar.
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract.
  • Mix cream cheese and butter together in a mixer on low to medium speed (your mixer’s speed may vary) until blended – you should not be able to see individual pieces of cream cheese or butter.
  • Set the mixer to slow and add sugar in small increments (¼ cup at a time or less) until sugar and butter/cream cheese are blended.
  • Add vanilla, continue to mix until the vanilla is entirely mixed into the frosting.
  • Chill for 10-15 min before frosting. You want the frosting soft enough to work with, but not so soft that it will slide around on the cupcake.

Filling and Decorating

While your frosting is chilling in your fridge, you want to setup a place for all those strawberries to go. With the rounded handle of a spatula (or your thumb, or anything else about that size and rounded and clean) press holes into the centers of the cupcakes- you can push down pretty far, because the pound cake should compress, preventing you from pushing down to the cupcake wrapper.

Using a ‘petal’ frosting tip in a pastry bag ( I used a Wilton #104 frosting tip, but any similarly shaped tip should work fine ), pipe cream cheese frosting in a ring around outer edge of the cupcake – depending on how strongly you squeeze the bag, you should make 3-5 ‘rings’ – frosting height should be approx ¾ths of an inch.

Cream cheese frosting tends to be softer than buttercream – if your frosting is very soft, chill cupcakes for 15-20 minutes before adding strawberries.

Carefully spoon strawberries into the middle of the cupcake/frosting “ring” – start with smaller pieces, then add larger pieces to the top. The strawberries should rise over frosting, they’re the main flavor of the cupcake, the more you add, the better.

Sprinkle basil sugar with fingers or a small spoon over frosting and strawberries. The sugar will be clumpy and irregular in size – I used my fingers, to get a more even distribution of sugar over the entire cupcake.

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Strawberry Basil and Blackberry Mojito Cupcakes

The finished product (and blackberry mojito cupcakes as well – to be featured at a unknown later date on this very blog!) –>

This made 15 cupcakes, plus an exceptionally large amount of leftover basil sugar, and about a cup of extra strawberries.

The Gnomish Cupcake Vendor

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So every year at Blizzcon I do this thing I’ve started calling “The Gnomish Cupcake Vendor” – basically, I make a whole bunch of cupcakes and box them up and take them up to Blizzcon to give to my friends (and occasionally Blizzard people, authors, and random new friends!)  – it started out as just a “Oh, hey, I have some cupcakes, here guys!” and has turned into basically a big project but it’s my favorite thing about Blizzcon. I get to make a bunch of delicious things, sometimes trade them for stuff (this year’s take: Some canadian candy, some great stickers from From Draenor With Love, and a spontaneous bearhug that was basically the platonic ideal of bearhugs) and share with my friends!

(because I have a ton of friends that all year see a ton of live-tweeting of cupcakes, and provide flavor ideas (strawberry-lemonade, maple bacon pancake, caramel-apple-cookies-and-cream), funny names for the cupcakes (the “Are you FUCKING kidding me chocolate cupcake”), feedback of the visual and taste varieties and also because I love my friends)

My ‘main’ in World of Warcraft is a gnome, and I giggle like one and identify with them strongly, so of course I’m a Gnomish Cupcake Vendor!

Header graphic is a sketch by Cadistra, of Wow, Eh? fame! She drew it for my birthday! It’s the best thing ever. You can see the full version here: http://fritokal.tumblr.com/post/103255439786/this-was-my-birthday-present-from-cadistra