So today, in celebration of the new class of AmeriCorps surviving their first registrations. I made the Tiramisu cupcakes. Then I found out Courtney has a gluten allergy. Va bene… after tonight’s registration, I stopped at Wholefoods and picked up All-Purpose Gluten Free All-Purpose Flour. I was hoping
that’d give me what I needed for a gluten-free Babycakes or VCTOTW recipe, but I was short all sorts of ingredients like arrowroot and potato starch among other things. Too many things that I couldn’t control the ratio of.
I looked at the GF flour package and it claimed to be able to substitute 1:1 with regular all-purpose flour, even better if you add Xanthum gum, which oddly enough, I did have. I went for the vanilla cupcake recipe and did 3/4 c. GF flour, and 1/2 c. almond flour and almond extract. I was planning to top it with an almond chocolate ganache. I did a dozen mini-cupcakes and then there was batter for 4.5 regular-sized cupcakes.
Even I burn cupcakes. I knew, but forgot, never use the bottom rack. The minis were on the bottom and turned before I knew it. The regular sized ones came out fine. I ate the .5 size for taste testing. The cupcake wasn’t what I hoped and it didn’t have the body or flavor to stand up to the ganache (though it was delicious: semi-sweet chocolate chips, almond milk, almond extract, almond butter). Alternative, fill with cherry preserves and top with the cream cheese almond icing. We’ll see how Courtney likes them. I’m looking forward to trying gluten-free again with the right ingredients.
In other news, I also made a specia batch of chocolate cupcakes for a cople of my favorite guests at Artie’s. They’re an elderly couple that come in twice a week usually. They are the most vivacious, well-travelled, sharp witted, sweet people. The husband does most of the talking, not out of a sense of dominance, but love; his wife had a stroke and mostly wears a sweet reassuring smile while she nods approval to his responses. They come into Artie’s after her physical therapy appointments. We’ve talked about our love of chocolate, people they’ve met, languages, traveling, anything. When they come in, they usually get a icecream sundae with hot fudge or a chocolate waffle. They love their chocolate. They definitely deserve cupcakes, and I did the VCTOTW chocolate but subbed in some almond flour. It made the texture of the cupcake somehow softer and richer. Then I used the ganache and garnished with sliced almond. The ganache cools to a nice shell to maintain the moisture of the cupcake and the amlonds add a crunch. The modification was dynamite and will be repeated.
