Disneyland Inspired Cupcakes

The very last news package I shot in my advanced electronic news production class was a story on the Christ Cathedral, formerly known as the Crystal Cathedral, in Garden Grove, California. My story focused on the renovations and changes the Catholic Diocese of Orange plans to make to the church in order to ready it for celebrating Mass. This happens to be the only story I did for Cal State Fullerton’s “OC News” that did not revolve around desserts…or food in any way. You can watch it here.

            It was so much fun to roam around the cathedral’s beautiful campus—and it was even more fun to have the church doors (which had recently been closed to the public) opened just for me. But there were definitely a couple of highlights.

One involved a moment of creativity and innovation on the part of my friend and videographer Frank. Essentially, technology failed us and the camera refused to record. So we took our iPhones—one nestled in my bra to record my voice over and the other to record my standup—and finished my package. Pure genius.

            The other highlight was my trip to the ladies’ bathroom. I opened the door and, I swear, I think I heard angels singing. Thanks to an anonymous donor who felt it was of the utmost importance to create a bathroom so gorgeous that its glory would rub off on the women utilizing it, I took my first bathroom selfie in the prettiest bathroom I think I have ever seen.

            At the end of the shoot, Frank and I decided to celebrate at Disneyland. I had been fighting the beginnings of a cold all day, but who says no to Disneyland? Not this girl.

            Frank and I circled the park as I looked for the exact thing my sweet tooth was craving after a long day of shooting. After much debate and internal struggle, we—well, I—settled on cake and a cup of coffee.

            After circling the park a couple more times to look for cake, we finally walked into the Plaza Inn. We picked up a tray, moseyed on over to the dessert bar…and it was way too difficult to make a decision. So I picked up two pieces of cake—red velvet and carrot—and I was more excited than I had any right to be. As we demolished the cake, Frank and I discussed whether I should post a recipe for red velvet cake or carrot cake on Rubbing Sugar. But then I had my own moment of creativity.

On each plate was a series of decorative swirls and dots in a ruby-toned red syrup and a sunny, golden yellow syrup. I had been surreptitiously rubbing each bite of my cake into those swirls and figured out that they tasted like raspberry and pineapple. I would never have thought those two flavors would be so delicious together, but they were! It was simultaneously sweet and acidic, fruity and tart. And after a bit of research, I have yet to come across the combination of raspberry and pineapple in a cake. So I got the chance to play around and tweak my own raspberry cake recipe. The pineapple frosting recipe, however, came from here.
 

I have to admit that my favorite part of making these cupcakes was swirling the raspberries into the batter. The cotton candy pink swirls of fruit against the creamy white batter was fantastically whimsical. After baking, the raspberries turn a deep, inky purple. Also, although it doesn’t show up well in my photos, I did add yellow sanding sugar on top of the frosting for a sparkly sheen. Additionally, I used fresh raspberries on top of each cupcake. I found that if they are frozen for a couple of hours before you place them on the cupcakes, they will be less fragile and easier to press into the frosting.

           

Raspberry Cupcakes with Pineapple Frosting (Yield: 12-14 cupcakes)

Raspberry Cupcakes

Ingredients

1-1/2 c. flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 c. butter, at room temperature

1 c. sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

1/4 c. milk

1/4 c. yogurt

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 c. frozen raspberries with juice, thawed and slightly mashed with a fork

1.   Preheat the oven to 350° F. Place a cupcake liner into each well of the muffin tins.
2.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
3. In a separate larger bowl, beat butter with a fork. Add the sugar and mix until light and fluffy. You could also do this in a stand mixer, but with the butter softened to room temperature, I like to do it by hand.
4. Crack in one egg at a time, mixing well after each addition.
5.  In a measuring cup, combine the milk, sour cream, and vanilla and whisk until smooth.
6. Add half of the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and, switching to a rubber spatula, fold it into the butter mixture until it is just incorporated. Next, add all of the wet ingredients to the bowl, again mixing until just combined. Then stir the last of the dry ingredients into the batter. Be careful of over mixing—it will make your cupcakes tough!
7. Gently fold the raspberries and their juices into the batter. You don’t need to completely incorporate them—the pink and purple swirls of raspberry are gorgeous. 
8. Fill each wells of the muffin tin until the are three-fourths of the way full. I use an ice cream scoop to keep my cupcakes the same size. Bake 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.
9. Let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting.

Pineapple Frosting

Ingredients

1 c. butter, at room temperature

1/4 tsp. salt

5 c. powdered sugar, sifted onto a sheet of parchment paper

1 (8-oz.) can crushed pineapple

1. Open the can of pineapple and strain the fruit, setting the pineapple aside as well as reserving the juice.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter on medium speed with the paddle attachment until it is smooth.  Mix in the salt.
3. With the mixer on low speed, gently pick up the sides of the parchment paper so that you can carefully funnel in the powdered sugar a little at a time. Be sure to only pour in small amounts at a times so that your kitchen (and you) doesn’t get covered in sugar.
4. Once the butter and sugar are combined, you can bring the mixer speed back to medium speed. Place five tablespoons of the crushed pineapple fruit into the bowl of the mixer, then add just enough of the pineapple juice to make the icing spreadable. This should take approximately two to three tablespoons of juice.
5. Taste for adjustments—add a pinch more salt if the frosting tastes too sweet or more fruit if you want more texture. If the frosting is too thin, you can add more powdered sugar (1/4 cup at a time until you reach the desired consistency) or place it in the refrigerator for a couple hours so that the butter has time to firm up. Before frosting the cupcakes, re-whip the icing until it is smooth.

I'm Alive (and Eating Guava Jam)!

        Let me begin by stating that I have survived.
        I survived both finals and the holidays and came out victorious - victorious because I will be graduating summa cum laude in the spring. This was my goal going into college, so all the sleepless nights and anxiety and resultant acne paid off.
        But needless to say, Christmas and New Years have been keeping me busy in the kitchen these last few weeks, so I have had more to do than stare at my computer screen until my grades came out. There were gingerbread cookies and mini cannolis and honey-coated struffoli and baby rum cakes and date-stuffed maamoul and citrus biscotti and walnut shortbread and Nutella drop cookies.
        I gave most of it away and then didn’t touch the sugar jar for over a week…other than to put it in my coffee in the morning. And I wouldn’t have touched it at all (really, I swear*) if not for the bag of overripe guavas sitting in a corner of my kitchen.
        My friend Vidhi has a guava tree in her backyard, and it produces fruit at the end of November and into December. So for the last few years, Vidhi has given my family a bag of guavas during the holidays. And sometimes, if I'm lucky, we get to pick the guavas together.

(My friend Vidhi reaching for a guava. I totally took this creeper shot of her.)

        The first time I tasted a guava (which was when Vidhi first started bringing me the fruit from her yard), I remember being instantly hit by a wave of nostalgia. It was still faintly green and under ripe, which is how my mom likes to eat them, and it tasted like sunshine and freshly cut grass and early summer. It was glorious. Both the smell and the taste of the guava unlocked something stored away in the dark dusty corners of my mind.
        Apparently, my mom craved guavas a lot when she was pregnant with me and would take walks as an excuse to steal the fruit that hung over the side of a neighbor’s fence. If that’s not some sort of sign, then I don’t know what is. I just thank my lucky stars that my mom never encountered an evil witch wanting a baby like Rapunzel’s mother did. If she had, my life would have been very different and I would have probably been named Guava, which isn’t attractive. But I digress.

        I had 27 small, ripe guavas on my counter, and their pungent scent was saturating my kitchen and giving me a headache. So I set to work making jam. Using this recipe as a guide, I came up with a guava jam formula—because you never know quite how much guava puree you will end up with. Essentially, you stir in an equal number of cups of sugar as you have cups of puree. The amount of fruit puree also dictates the number of tablespoons of fruit pectin you add (fruit pectin helps the jam to thicken and gel). And for every cup of puree, I added two tablespoons of lemon juice. You can adjust my recipe accordingly.

        The color of this jam is just gorgeous. It is the exact shade of coral that tinges the clouds at sunset. Just looking at my little jar of guava jam makes me happy, but I am going to be honest. I overcooked it. It tasted delicious but the texture was wrong—the jam was thick and chunky and rubbery. But I saved it by reheating it with a few tablespoons of water. On another note, I did not bother canning my guava jam. The batch was not large, so I don’t think it will ultimately last long enough to go bad. Plus, I’ll be keeping it in the refrigerator…and I may also be turning them into tropical thumbprint cookies before long.

*This is a lie.

Guava Jam

Ingredients
1-1/2 c. guava puree
1-1/2 c. sugar
Grated zest of 1/2 a lemon
3 tbsp. lemon juice
1-1/2 tbsp. dry fruit pectin

1. To make the guava puree, clean and peel the fruits. Then cut them in half and scoop out all of the seeds with a small spoon. It seems like a lot of waste, but trust me, the seeds are extremely hard and you won’t want them in your jam.
2. Place all the guava halves in the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Set aside.
3. Rinse and dry the food processor then pour in the sugar and lemon zest. Pulse until the sugar and zest are combined and the zest is fine. This allows the lemon flavor to be distributed more evenly and fully as well as prevents there from being rubbery strips of zest floating around in your jam.
4. Combine the puree, lemon sugar, lemon juice, and fruit pectin in a large saucepot and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring frequently with a heat-resistant rubber spatula. Be careful! The jam will splatter!
5. Continue boiling and stirring the jam until it thickens. This took me roughly 10-12 minutes, but as I said, I mistakenly continued to cook mine. Take the jam off the heat when it is able to drip off your spatula in large, thick, delicious blobs.
6. Let cool for a few minutes then pour into a clean jar. Store in the refrigerator.