A Retry of the Blood Orange Cupcakes

I was so bummed all day about last night's cupcakes. Despite my best googling efforts, I was unable to find anyone that has ever had the similar problem with a beige batter inexplicably turning blue-grey in the oven. My first efforts to blog about my baking were just sadly lacking, and it was almost an embarrassment being as I consider myself a better baker than producing moldy-looking cupcakes. So tonight I was determined to avenge these baking mishaps by straightening out the blood orange cake recipe.

My dad was in town for the night because he's working in my neighborhood these past few days, and after meeting him for a drink after work, I took him to Garden of Eden, one of my favorite places in Hoboken and also the best place to find exotic fruits and vegetables. I picked up a few more blood oranges, and we perused the wide array of produce. There are a lot of great cupcakes to be imagined out of all those different fruits.

My first change in the recipe was instead of adding the orange juice directly to the milk, I first added additional sugar and reduced it down to a syrup on low heat on the stove. I think the original recipe was too wet, and this helped cut some of that, plus add some sugar that was lacking in the original. Once this syrup cooled, I added it to the milk to comprise the wet ingredients. Other than that, the only change I made was to add some red and orange gel food color to the batter before the egg whites as a preventative measure against the grey. I would have preferred just the natural ingredients, but I wasn't about to serve a something that looked so awful (except to my coworker Kara today, but I gave her fair warning it wasn't supposed to look like that). The end result was a much, much better cupcake. Not only was the color much improved, but the orange taste was more pronounced and less bland.

These cupcakes are making the trek into the city with me tomorrow for work. I get some really weird looks when I walk onto my bus with my cupcake carrier. One girl in the streets of NYC followed me down a block yelling at my back "YO! Can I have some cupcakes?!?!" last time I brought cupcakes to work. Let's hope tomorrow's transport doesn't provoke that sort of anxiety again.

Wooooo...Finally a success!

Grey Orange Cupcakes???

For the past couple days, I have had this image in my mind of blood orange cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream. I don't really know where this idea came from, being as I've never even had a blood orange before. There's a gourmet grocery store near my apartment though that has every fruit imaginable and ones I did not even know existed. So after frantic searching there today (for some reason, they were buried in the mountain of apples), I found some blood oranges.

Cross-section of the orange

I have been unable to find a citrus cupcake recipe that I'm 100% happy with. The last lemon cake I made turned out like a cake brick. I feel like the juice in the recipes really weigh down the cake. I wanted something lighter and airier. After doing some research, I was convinced that the correct way to go about this was incorporate beaten egg whites into the batter, rather than just mixing in the eggs as usual with the butter and sugar. Despite the questionable outcome of these cupcakes, one thing is certain, and that is the cake itself had a great texture.

The batter was a light pinkish color before it went into the oven. Originally, I anticipated it being a deep pink-red, but the juice was not as opaque as I thought it was going to be. If I wanted them to be darker, I would have had to add food dye to the batter, which I didn't want to do this time. It was quite a surprise when I took the baked cupcakes out of the oven, and they were bluish grey. I have absolutely no idea how this happened. It must have been some reaction between the ingredients, but I'm really unsure what it was. The only thing I can think of is maybe it was the egg whites. It's a total mystery though.

The grey cupcakes...wtf!?!?

The color of the cupcakes made me think they were going to be awful tasting. I mean, how many grey things taste great? I can't think of any off-hand. They actually tasted quite good. Like I said earlier, the texture was right, and the orange taste was subtle, but really good. Combined with the vanilla bean buttercream, it was one of my favorites I've made. If I could work on the cake color, this would be even better. The frosting was awesome. I really like vanilla, and the combination of vanilla beans and vanilla "crush" (available from Sonoma Syrup - I found mine at Marshall's) really made the frosting taste like vanilla ice cream.

Finished product - tastes better than it looks

I feel like starting this blog has brought my cupcakes bad color luck. Neither the cosmo cupcakes nor these turned out nearly the color I intended them to be. Here's the recipe for anyone brave enough to try it (really, it's kind of an awesome cupcake, it just needs food dye to override the grey).

Blood Orange Cupcakes
makes 9 cupcakes

Ingredients:
1 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
2/3 stick butter, room temp
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg yolk, room temp
2 egg whites, room temp
1/3 c. whole milk, room temp

1/3 c. blood orange juice
1/2 tsp. orange extract

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place liners in cupcake tins.
2. Beat the butter in a mixer on high. Add the sugar and beat on high until it is light and fluffy.
3. Add egg yolk and beat well. Add orange extract.
4. Sift dry ingredients together.
5. Mix milk with orange juice.
6. To the butter mixture, add 1/3 of the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated. Add 1/2 the milk mixture and mix. Continue alternating the dry and wet ingredients, ending with the dry.
7. In a separate, clean bowl, whip the egg whites into a light foam.
8. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.
9. Scoop batter into cupcake trays, 2/3 full.
10. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until cake springs back when touched.

Vanilla Bean Buttercream

Ingredients:
1/2 stick butter, room temp
2 oz. cream cheese
1/3 pound confectioner's sugar
1/4 vanilla bean, beans scraped out
1/2 tsp. vanilla crush

Directions:
1. Cream butter and cream cheese together
2. Add scraped vanilla beans and bean crush. Beat well.
3. Slowly add confectioner's sugar