Recipe: Spice Cakes with Lemon Icing

When you move overseas, to a country where you don't speak the language, you often rely on the kindness of new friends. I've been baking lots of treats recently as thankyou's to people who have helped us get bulky baby items home (and up steep flights of stairs) and translated various important papers for us. The currency of homemade cupcakes seems to be just as appreciated here in Amsterdam as it was in Montreal. So wherever you are, if you want a sweet treat or to say thank you to a kind friend, these cupcakes are a nice alternative to my Scrumptious Chocolate Cupcakes and just as delicious.


Lemon Spice Cupcake

This spice cake recipe was often made as a birthday cake when I was growing up and was always accompanied by lemon icing. The two are inextricably linked for me. This is a no-fuss one-bowl type of cake.

Spice Cake
Makes two round 9" layer cakes or about 16 cupcakes.

In a large bowl, mix all at once:

• 2 c flour
• 1 c sugar
• 1/2 c soft butter
• 1/2 tsp each: cloves, nutmeg (grate fresh!) and salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 each: tsp allspice, baking soda
• 1/4 c molasses (fancy-grade)
• 1/2 c milk

Grating the nutmeg fresh makes a big difference and it only takes half a minute on a microplane. (Seriously, we thought this step was going to be fiddly and annoying, but it grates up so fluffy that you don't need to do much to get your 1/2 tsp!) If you're using electric beaters, beat for just 2 minutes until it comes together. If you overmix, the cake will turn out dry.

Stir in:

• 2 tsp baking powder

Beat in:

• 2 eggs
• 1/3 c milk

Beat batter for another 2 minutes or less, until just combined, then pour into your pans. If you're making it as a cake, be sure to grease and flour the cake tins. For cupcakes, you can do the same, use paper liners, or bake in silicone muffin cups.

The original cake baking instructions are to bake at 375°F (190°C) for 25-30 minutes. For these cupcakes, I baked at 180°C (355°F) in a convection oven for 20-25 minutes. Check on them early and test with a toothpick to determine when they're done.

For the icing, I blend about 1/4 cup butter with 1 1/2 - 2 cups icing sugar, the juice of half a lemon and the zest of 2 lemons.


Lemon Spice Cupcake

You can find more of my recipes in the Food section, in the tabs along the top.

Photographs and artwork by Allison Gryski. © All rights reserved.

Recipe: Scrumptious Chocolate Cupcakes

Happy February 15! If Valentine's Day didn't go quite as you hoped and you need to console yourself (or plead forgiveness) with chocolate, then follow along for some super easy chocolate cupcakes! They're also good if you just want to shower someone with extra chocolatey affection and have something yummy to nibble on with your coffee, tea, or a glass of milk!


Breakfast Cupcakes

We have a lot of birthdays to celebrate in February, so this recipe often appears about now for that reason. Of course, this year, we're mostly occupied thinking of the expected new birth day, which will probably be sometime in March! In any case, I made these last night and I must say, cupcakes for breakfast are delightful!

Scrumptious Chocolate Cupcakes
Makes a batch of 24, so you'll have plenty to share (or freeze for later).
Preheat oven to 375°F or 180°C.

Combine in a medium sized pot (about 1 quart size):

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup margarine, Crisco, or butter
• 1/2 cup good quality cocoa powder (the bittersweet stuff for baking, not the drink mix!)

Bring to a boil and remove from heat; stir until shortening is melted (put on heat again if necessary).

Whisk in:

• 2 cups white sugar and 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 cups flour and 1 tsp baking soda

Whisk well to get out the lumps.

Stir in:

• 3 eggs
• 2/3 cups sour cream (or plain yogourt)

In a pinch, you can replace the sour cream or yogourt with milk or soy milk, but use a scant 2/3 cup or it will be too runny.

Ladle the batter into greased or lined muffins tins (or silicone muffin cups) and bake for 15-20 mins. You can also make this as a cake in a 9x13" pan or two round 8" pans and bake it for about 35-40 mins.


Scrumptious Chocolate Cupcakes

I like to decorate my cupcakes with lemon or mocha icing and sprinkles. I use about 2 c of icing sugar to something like 1/4 or 1/2 c of butter. Do not even think of using anything other than butter! I don't really measure it, but just adjust as I go until it tastes "right" and is a good consistency. If you're making the lemon icing, then thin it out with lemon juice and add the zest of 1 lemon. If you're making the mocha icing, then replace some of the icing sugar with bittersweet cocoa powder and thin it out with strong coffee.

Spread the icing on your cupcakes, add some fancy sprinkles, and then gobble with glee!

Photographs and artwork by Allison Gryski. © All rights reserved.

New cards in shop!

new cards
Originally uploaded by allisongryski

I've been working away on some new cards and I've started listing them in my etsy shop. There's some completely new designs, like the zen set and a mix of old-and-new like the choose-your-own cupcake set. And I decided to make a few of the romantic skulls cards. So far I've just listed one on white, but I also made some black-on-pink ones. I've also got some more of the stamped little city cards made, but not listed. I'll continue listing things in the next little while. Custom requests are, of course, always welcome.

Burst, a new word, and cupcakes

Burst
Originally uploaded by allisongryski

I finished my work entitled "Burst" this weekend. It's bubbles bursting into sunbursts. It's mostly pencil crayon and water colour paint. There's all sorts of sparkly glitter, but most of it didn't actually show up in the picture. I had a lot of fun with this piece, though it was nerve-wracking to cut into the large bubbles that I drew/painted since I'm terrible for being afraid of "ruining" something I'm working on. It's good for me to push myself outside my comfort zone though and I'm pretty happy with the result. (see the wordplay copycat pool for everyone's pics).


Burst
Originally uploaded by allisongryski
Even though I think perhaps my friends were less into this than me, I am going to announce a new word, since it's a good way to motivate ME to try something new. So, a new word. When this idea first occurred to me, I made up a little list of words that I thought would make interesting themes, and the next one on that list is ... shadow. I think 2 months was enough time to both let the ideas percolate and fit in a little procrastination without getting stalled, so I'm going to aim to be done for the end of May. Play along if it pleases you.


Burst
Originally uploaded by allisongryski
Artsy-fartsy or not, my gal pals are definitely into cupcakes. My real deadline for finishing my Burst piece was actually Sunday, not the end of the month, since we had a cupcake baking party. Cupcakes were made and mostly eaten up right away (with a few to take home for lucky sweeties). We had a surprise visitor from Portland. My kitchen was turned into a disaster area and then cleaned up. Songs were sung in the kitchen, icing was eaten out of the bowl, sugar highs were had. It was excellent fun. I highly recommend filling your kitchen with cheerful friends baking yummy things.


pretty cupcake papers
Originally uploaded by allisongryski

Cupcake Mystery

Chocolate cupcake
Originally uploaded by allisongryski

I've been meaning to mention the pink/yellow poll results for awhile. I was quite surprised because the number of views of the yellow and pink cupcake cards in my etsy shop suggest the reverse preference to the poll results. The pink has consistently had double the views and yet the vote was unanimous for yellow. It's a cupcake mystery!

In any case, this means it's time for a new poll soon. I'll post one as soon as I come up with a good (or sufficiently silly) question.

Cupcake cards in shop!

Yellow birthday cupcakes card
Originally uploaded by allisongryski

The cupcake cards are now available. I've listed one pink and one yellow to begin with. I have a few other styles that I'll be adding in the next few days.

Practically edible cupcake cards

Pink birthday cupcakes
Originally uploaded by allisongryski

Since "birthdays" is currently winning the "when do you send cards" poll, I decided to sort through my photos for things that I could make into birthday cards. While many of my flower and butterfly photos are excellent for birthdays, cupcakes seem especially appropriate. I already make some stamped cupcake cards (a couple of which I've given for birthdays myself). While the stamped cards are adorably cute, I think these photo cards are going to be mouth-watering. It's too late to run to the photo shop today though, so these cards probably won't come into existence until Friday. For now, you can take a look at my Papery set for the photos that I'll be using.

Petits Gâteaux: a review

Petits Gâteaux
Originally uploaded by allisongryski

I love food: making it, eating it, and reviewing it. Ever since D and I moved to Montréal in 2004, we have kept a Montréal restaurant review guide with short reviews of everywhere that we've tried. When it comes to food, we are very picky. This food snobbery doesn't mean we're only interested in caviar and quail eggs, but we do expect food to be delicious and good value for the money. With writing reviews, we can hugely enjoy eating at a restaurant with terrible service, if only to note all their gaffes and report on them later. Equally, when a restaurant impresses at every level, we sing its praises to all and sundry.

Last week, I received an email from Claire, one of the co-owners of Petits Gâteaux. She had read my (rather negative) review of Petits Gâteaux on my restaurant guide and invited me to come visit again since they had a new pastry chef. We came to an arrangement that she would provide some cupcakes for D and me to taste test in exchange for a review here and an updated entry in the guide. I fully disclose that the cupcakes shown above were provided to me free of charge. When tasting them, however, we kept in mind that the standard price is $2.85 for an individual cupcake or $15.00 for a box of six.

Here is my review from June 2007:

The shop is very cute... cuter than the cupcakes, which were slightly sloppy in appearance and a bit dense and dry. The lemon icing was nice, but the pink stuff on the vanilla ones was over-sweet. Cocoa Locale is much better.

My updated review in the guide reads:

Very cute shop, which matches the cupcakes. The raspberry-sour cream cupcake is stunning and the chocolat-poire and tarte citron cupcakes are delicious. There's an appealingly wide variety of flavours and styles. This place has vastly improved with the new pastry chef.

My first impression was that I can understand why Claire was keen to have me visit again. As you can see from the picture, the cupcakes are certainly appealing looking. The shop was bustling with a long line-up when I entered. Despite everyone's natural indecision on which cupcakes to select, with 2 shop girls serving cupcakes, plus Claire, and another lady at the cash register, the line moved along speedily. I allowed Claire to choose a selection of the cupcakes and since I wasn't in a rush, I waited for one flavour that was still in the kitchen. This allowed me some time to take a few pictures of the shop and to see that there was very speedy turnover of cupcakes. Even late on a Saturday afternoon, fresh cupcakes were coming out regularly. After wishing me a good tasting and asking for feedback of anything that we did not like, Claire sent me on my way with a beautiful box of 6 flavours (tarte citron, raspberry sour cream, coffee, choco-poire, vanilla, and banana-fudge). Merci Claire!

D and I cut each cupcake in half so that we both tasted each flavour. Overall, there was a nice variety of flavours and textures. Some were more like muffins, while others were definitely dessert confections. I particularly appreciated that there were some choices without icing, something that's often hard to find in a cupcake shop.

Tarte Citron: A not-too-sweet lemon meringue pie inspired cupcake. It had a really yummy custardy lemon filling, though this filling did make parts of the crumb a bit gummy. Despite that, it was one of my favourites out of the six.

Raspberry-Sour Cream: This was by far the most beautiful cupcake. All the raspberries were at the bottom of the cupcake, though. I'm not sure if this was intentional, or if they sank in the batter. I would have loved this cupcake if it had a bit more of the raspberry/sour cream tartness that I was hoping for. As it was, I just liked it a lot.

Coffee: It had a nice coffee scent, but not overwhelming coffee flavour (though this might depend at what stage you eat the chocolate-covered coffee bean on top). It reminded D of coffee cake as in cake to eat with coffee. I think this was due to the slightly more muffin-y texture.

After sharing three cupcakes, we needed a bit of break, so we put the rest in the fridge. The next day, I took them out for about an hour, before eating them. I figured that this was the sort of thing we'd do if we were purchasing cupcakes and likely, something other customers would do too.

Vanilla: This was probably my least favourite and I'm not sure that I would buy it. For such a simple cake, it needs to be outstanding, and it was just OK.

Banana-fudge: This had a very good banana flavour with a delicious rich chocolate fudge on top. It was by far the most muffin-like in texture, which might or might not appeal to you.

Choco-poire: A very rich chocolate cake with a juicy pear slice. I would highly recommend this one to anyone who doesn't like icing and it's certainly one I'd pick again (even though I do like icing). Rich and desserty, but not too sweet.

Petits Gâteaux has definitely benefited from the change in pastry chef. I will certainly consider buying cupcakes from them again and in fact, I think it slightly dangerous how conveniently located they are. They have a wide variety of flavours, and also offer mini-cupcakes, not to mention a cupcake-and-beverage (milk, tea, or coffee) deal for $3.95. I think they offer something a little different from my other cupcake favourite, Cocoa Locale. If you visited before August 2007 and were disappointed, I'd say they were worth another go.

For more pictures of the shop and the cupcakes, see my Petits Gâteaux flickr set.

Petits Gâteaux
783, av. Mont-Royal Est
Montréal, Québec
514-510-5488