4 Levels of Cupcakes: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

Hi, I'm Stephen and I'm a Level 1 Chef. I'm Gabrielle and I'm a Level 2 Chef. My name is Penny and I've been a professional chef for 15 years. I hate traditional frosting, so I opted for a cream. cheese frosting and this makes the

cupcakes

very bearable for me. I love

cupcakes

because I think you are a blank canvas. Today I'm going to add an espresso to mine. I chose to make a pina colada inspired cupcake because every time I have a pina colada it makes me feel like I'm on vacation we're going to jump in and start making the batter, grab the butter and we're just going to drop it in the bowl and put our mixer on. over medium heat and we're going to start moving that around like this, so I'm going to start with the dry, they're all going to go into my blender right now on the sieve.

I have all-purpose flour, salt and baking powder, baking powder, baking soda, the essentials. and I'm going to sift in that Dutch cocoa powder to give our cupcake a really nice velvety chocolate flavor and then we're going to add our sugar to the mix, brown sugar, we're going to add all my sugar, now sugar, we're going to move on to our moist. Ingredients This is where the magic begins. I love using buttermilk recipes because it kind of counteracts all the sugar you're using. I like to zest my citrus directly into the bowl and then I'm going to cream the butter and sugar into the the abrasiveness of the sugar will remove the oils from the lime zest and I'll get more flavor out of it that way or into our vanilla vegetable oil and break it up. some eggs, that won't be good, uh, yeah, I'm going to separate the egg yolk from the egg white then we're going to add our flour to the mixture vanilla extract baking powder a little salt and then we're going to make the milk I'm going to go ahead and pour this little by little into our dry The ingredients are fine so now we are going to start the creaming process and I will do this for a much longer time than most people in general, thank you, cream.

See, that's why machines can't take jobs from humans, sometimes you just need that. human touch that human element is one of the secrets of this recipe is a coconut cake I really put too much emphasis on the coconut flavor so we start with a very high quality canned coconut milk that will give us a lot of coconut fat and a lot of richness and just for an extra kick we added about 3/4 teaspoon of coconut extract, the most important ingredient in our espresso. I like to incorporate all of these ingredients first and then add my espresso which is so lovely in this mocha pot so I'm going to start adding my eggs and I'm going to add them as much as possible one at a time and the last thing I'm going to add it's the grated sweetened coconut, the milk goes everywhere, that's why I think it's so funny, I wasn't fully prepared for this kind of it's like a chocolate mocha bomb, which definitely seems like that's what happened here, so just like the Italians do, I like to use white cupcake liners because I like to let the cupcake shine.

I really like using recycled material liners. I think they give them a very natural look and are also great for the environment. If you can find the spoon with the yellow hand, it's the perfect amount for a standard size tin of cupcakes, it will basically fill them up. 2/3 of the way because the dough will definitely rise a lot when in the oven. You will do something like using a spoon. You will end up with different amounts of dough, some of them might be more brown and burnt by the time the others are fully baked, so you can see them as a caterpillar, this dough will turn them into something new, so we will put them in the oven at 350 degrees for a little more than approximately 15 minutes. 375 for 20 minutes we will bake them at approximately 350 degrees for between 19 and 25 minutes.

I hate traditional frosting, so I chose a cream cheese frosting instead of the traditional conventional one. I don't know what they use it for. but I ate it, so for my pina colada cupcakes, the key ingredients are obviously wrong, but other than that pineapple, I'll start by cutting the head and then the tail into strips. They are fine dice, the vanilla pod split. I'm going to dot it with a little bit of butter and sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top and this is going to be ready for the oven so to keep the espresso chocolate train rolling a very proper espresso chocolate buttercream, I'm going to go ahead and get started.

Basically, putting these two giant sticks of butter back into your mixer, we're going to use our Dutch cocoa powder to sift it, it's going to get rid of any lumps or clumps and then I'm going to do the same thing with my powdered sugar so you can see. What if I don't sift it? That's our roasted pineapple and I'm going to turn it into a puree that I can use later to add to my glaze and now I'm going to add even more pineapple flavor. when using dried fruit they really concentrate, I doubt the taste, the pure essence of the fruit, beautiful, this is an Italian meringue buttercream, so we will cook the sugar and then drizzle it into the mixer while the egg whites are whipping.

I'm going to start with a little bit of sugar, a little bit of water that I'm going to pour around the sides. I'm not going to go up much. I'm going to whisk them now on medium speed, it comes to a boil and I start whisking when it starts to boil. it gets a little foamy i'm going to sprinkle my second amount of sugar adding a little granulated sugar directly to the egg whites you'll get a more stable meringue we'll start with the cream cheese which we'll place in the first one in a bowl and then we'll put this on medium heat so that it turns and we will beat it, so put the butter with salt.

This seems more manageable at low temperature, so I'm going to keep it low for now, discreet, no profile, now I'm going to make a dulce de leche that we'll use later to fill the inside of the cupcake. I'm going to use the sous-vide. This is a great way to do it because it keeps the water at a constant temperature and I can just put this here and go away and forget about it for a long time and there's no risk of burning it so you give it a little bit more flavor. I'm going to add one more vanilla bean, so I put a can of sweetener in the bag. condensed milk my vanilla bean that has been scraped I'm going to place this in the vacuum sealer.

I'm going to drop my bag of vanilla sweetened condensed milk in here so we're going to cook this for 9 to 12 hours until we get the dark caramel color that I'm looking for okay so I'm going to add to my heavy cream now vanilla espresso a little bit of instant espresso powder. Basically we want to give you a giant dose of caffeine when you eat these cupcakes. We'll add our powdered sugar patient so our meringue is cold enough and I'll start adding the butter while the butter is still creaming. I'll add a pinch of salt, shaved vanilla, pineapple puree that I made earlier. so like most of that pineapple powder and since this is an alcoholic cupcake it needs a little bit of alcohol in the buttercream and this is rum, we're going to add the vanilla extract, so you want to add each ingredient in stages, It's all about balance, I think that's how it is. ready, this is the piece of pineapple that I had reserved before we cut out the core, sprinkle the top with sugar and I will burn them, these will become the last piece of garnish for the top of our cake.

The way you would find a piece of pineapple on the side of the glass for your pina colada, the texture has already changed quite a bit since adding the rest of the ingredients now it's much fluffier, it's much creamier, I think it's about from ready to place on top of our cupcakes we are ready to decorate our cupcakes we are going to fill our piping bags with our pineapple buttercream this is our completed dulce de leche that was in the immersion circulator for 12 hours I am NOT a sophisticated schmancy girl , but I like to give my cupcake a little pizzazz, so I'm going to put a little bit of this in your buttercream in this bag.

I think we all know where I'm going with this, so now I'll use my confidence. spoon to put the frosting on my cupcake and you really want to foam it. It looks professionally done in the center. I'm going to place my delicious dulce de leche and then on top of that buttercream. I made these cherries ahead of time, they are soaked. in rum and Aperol and a little sugar, a little vanilla bean and rather a wing bean and I soaked them for four days to make them super super boozy and complete our rummy cocktail cupcake. I'm going to cut this corner and I like to kind of do a tour so I'm going to go around the outside corners, there's my frosting and then I'd love to garnish them with a couple of chocolate covered espresso beans.

Now I want to cut a strawberry. If you want to cut it into four, it will create a little bit of fort and add a little bit of toasted coconut so everyone knows there's a coconut cupcake in there and this is my cupcake and here's my level 2 cupcake and this is my FINA colada cupcake remember the papers in there I don't want to eat that covered, delicious oh my gosh that was so good, the lime zest really brightens that coconut cake, it's light, it's airy, the cake is very moist and has a little nice touch of espresso on the cake, the only thing I would do differently would be to put more frosting on it.

I'll probably put frosting inside, that would have been nice. We had three different chefs who made three very different cupcakes. Let's start with Stephens' dough, he made a shortened pie. Shortened cakes are high in solid fats like butter (the fat coats the gluten proteins limiting gluten development and results in a tender cake rather than a chewy bread-like cake. This is why fats are known as shortening for baking shortened cakes. He uses a basic creaming method which is incorporating air into the dough. mixing crystalline sugar with room temperature butter, as if cavities were a myth, and adding eggs to make a light and airy mixture, this is an important step if you want a light cake, added the rest of the ingredients at once and mixed .

Well, this makes a moist, light cupcake with a uniform texture and a soft, relatively flat top. Gabrielle's chocolate cupcake batter had more sugar than flour. We call it high ratio cake. Dutch processed cocoa is an alkalized cocoa that gives it a smoother chocolate flavor and darker color. I used liquid oil instead of butter and a cup of hot coffee to make an evenly thin dough. There's nothing wrong with being a little messy in the kitchen. These cupcakes have a tall, rounded top and a moist crumb like Steven Penny made a shortened cake, but. He added many more layers of ingredients and flavors to give a fruity tropical touch to his cupcakes.

He weighed his ingredients and sifted his dry ingredients, which gives consistency to this recipe. Baking the cupcakes includes setting them up to expand and browning the batter. Stephen baked his cupcakes at 375 degrees. Fahrenheit, which can cause excessive browning and a bump to form on the top of the cupcake due to the rapid release of steam from the batter, so I would take the browning to be due to the caramelization and meillard reactions of the sugar in the hot oven. Gabriele and Penny baked their cupcakes. At 350 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a more typical temperature that allows the dough to expand and crisp on top without the excessive browning that can occur at higher temperatures, we have three very different glazes, all three of our chef's made a buttercream version that is light. light, fluffy mixture of sugar and fat sometimes including whipped egg whites buttercream should be sweet but not too cloying rich and buttery but not greasy Stephen mixed cream cheese and butter with powdered sugar for a simple frosting cream cheese It cuts through the extreme sweetness of this frosting and mixes easily with the butter.

There is enough liquid in the butter and cream cheese that you only needed a tablespoon of vanilla to make this quick and smooth version of the frosting. I love making buttercream because it's so light, fluffy, and sweet. Gabriele made an American cream. Italian-style buttercream, which is a raw mixture of butter and sugar. She flavored her buttercream with cocoa powder and instant ground coffee to help reduce the sweetness of this frosting. Penny's glaze is complex because it is cooked and has additional flavoring components. She made a flavored Italian buttercream. with rum and roasted caramelized pineapple I would say it adds to the flavor.

I love that Italian buttercream is a meringue style frosting made from foamy egg whites cooked with hot sugar syrup. Softened butter is added in the final product. It is very soft, silky and so light that it is hard to believe it contains so much butter. Steven topped his simple cupcakes with chocolate truffles and store-bought strawberries that went great in his rather stiff cream cheese frosting. This added color and visual appeal is also tasty, but otherwise monochrome cupcakes. Gabrielle added chocolate. covered espresso beans that, while simple, give you an idea that there is coffee and chocolate in the cupcake, they also provide a nice crunch tocomplement the espresso powder in the glaze.

Penny's cupcakes have a tropical theme in every step, from the coconut and lime in the batter. filled with dulce de leche and powdered pineapple topping the pineapple is freeze-dried so that the flavor is extremely concentrated the powder reaches your taste buds and dissolves quickly into a sweet and slightly spicy touch of pineapple and its pretty yellow color reminds me of tropical sunshine I really feel like I'm sitting on the beach right now in the tropics enjoying a pina colada these cupcakes are sweet, rich, tender and full of flavor next time you make cupcakes we hope you'll consider these tips on mixing ingredients and baking to make your cupcakes a real pleasure