Sunday, December 25, 2011

Ginger has moved to another hut

What better way to celebrate Christmas than with all things ginger. I mean, Santa was a ginger wasn’t he?  Yeah, pretty sure he was a red head in one of those claymation movies – I think it was Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Maybe you should google it. It is probably worth the effort for mindless trivia and could quite possibly be key in an ice breaking party situation.  I’m not going to google it.  As a fellow red head I am going to say yes. Yes, Santa was a ginger.  His exuberant generous nature coupled with his ability to hold a grudge so tightly he readily scars a child for life by giving them a lump of coal while their siblings get riches beyond imagination can only be a product of the manic nature that is a ginger.  God bless our schizophrenic personalities.  And to truly pay homage to dear Kris Kringle and all that is ginger, I offer a cupcake and martini that has that ginger heat but is still sweet.  Like Santa himself.
So the cupcake I am going to share with you is one that I recently made for my friend George.  George suffers under the dellusion that he is omnipotent and can force me into making him cupcakes by just telling me “Make me cupcakes”.  Which is really quite ridiculous, like ordering someone to go to the bathroom.  Think of the reasoning here:  eventually I am going to have to go to the bathroom, so ordering me to go really can’t be much of a Darth Vader type power trip, but if it makes you happy to think you can intimidate someone into making them do something they by nature are just bound to do, then ok, I am not going to point out the obvious.  And this is true with cupcakes as it is with bodily functions.  I am just going to bake.  I have to.  Anyway, I made Georgie cupcakes.  Now George does have exquisitely good taste and, like me, he loves ginger.  So I had to make something with ginger.  And I had found this fabulous ginger spread at Home Goods.  Stupidly, I only bought one jar.  Lessons learned, when you find something good at Home Goods, buy in bulk.  You may never see it ever, ever again at that price.  You get hooked in on some gourmet treat for 3.99 and they never, ever stock it again.  And then its too late because you then convince yourself you cannot live without ginger spread and when you try to buy it elsewhere you find that you can’t buy it for under $10.  Damn.  This is how it is with my ginger spread.  So you can deduce that George must be a good enough friend for me to one, ignore the ‘order’ thing and two, give up the precious contents of my single jar of ginger spread to go into his cupcakes.
What is ginger spread you may ask.  Why it is only the most fabulous combination of ginger and sugar cooked down to the consistency of apple butter.  It can go on anything from cheese to toast and what I highly recommend, right off the spoon au natural.  This ginger spread I found is made by the Ginger People.  A word on The Ginger People.  I heart them.  I write their name over and over in my notebook.  If you can find their products buy them – in bulk.  They have fabulous recipes on their website as well:  http://www.gingerpeople.com/cooks-corner.  You should know I will make their version of the ginger cosmo – only I will use Mandarin Orange Vodka instead of triple sec and it will be fabulous.
Ok so back to the food, I made Carrot Cake cupcakes with Ginger Cream Cheese frosting.  And they were damn good.  I adapted the recipe from Ina Garten.  I just adore Ina, she really should have been a red head.  But she is more of a Maryanne than a Ginger.

Carrot Cupcake with Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting next to the main ingredient of a
Dark and Stormy: Ginger Beer

Carrot Cake Cup Cakes
Adapted from The Barefoot Contessa Parties!  by Ina Garten
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 3 extra-large eggs
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 3 cups grated carrots (less than 1 pound)  If you are a juicer, save the pulp when juicing carrots – freeze the remains, in 1 cup zip lock bags and unthaw when needed.  Of course if you are a juicer you probably already do this as juicers tend to be that type of save everything on the planet kind of people.  And good for you.  Really.
Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Beat the sugar, oil, and vanilla together in the bowl of an electric mixer. Add the eggs, 1 at a time. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, and salt. With the mixer on low speed, add 1/2 of the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Add the grated carrots to the remaining flour, mix well, and add to the batter. Mix until just combined.
Line muffin pans with paper liners. Scoop the batter into muffin cups filling each to 3/4 full. Bake at 400 degrees F for 10 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and cook for a further 35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a rack.

Cream Cheese Frosting
  • 3/4 pound cream cheese, at room temperature
  • 1/2 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • ¼ cup Ginger Spread (if you can’t find ginger spread use ginger preserves – the Trappist Monks at Spencer Abbey make really fabulous ginger preserves)
  • 1 pound confectioners' sugar
  • Crystallized ginger for garnish (see note below, garnishes are never optional)
Directions
For the frosting, cream the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla with an electric mixer.  Add the sugar and beat until smooth.  Remove a 3rd of the frosting and mix with the ginger spread.  I have to be honest and admit that I use more than a ¼ of a cup, it’s more like a ½ cup.  This will make the frosting very loose, but no worries this portion will be used to fill the cupcakes.
Assembly
When the cupcakes are cool use a paring knife to cut a cone shape from the top of the cup cake.  About an inch from the edge of the cupcake insert the knife at an angle and cut along the top of the cupcake in a circle keeping the knife at an angle.  Don’t go too deep with the cut, you want to leave some cake.  Remove the cone you just cut and slice off the bottom of the cone.  You are going to use the top but not the bottom of this cone.  The eco minded, and you know who you are, can save this bottom portion to use in place of cookie crumbs for cheesecake or some other creative outlet.  Or you could just throw it away.  Or you could eat it.  That’s what I would do, I’d eat it.   If you are the only one in the kitchen, no one else will ever know.  You can even lick your fingers or the spoon.  Go wild.
Fill the cavity the cone left behind with the frosting/ginger mixture.  Replace the top. Now for the fun part. Place the frosting in a decorating bag fitted with a star tip.  Starting at the outside edge of the cupcake, pipe a continual circle around the cupcake moving toward the center, slightly overlapping rows.  The beauty is that you don’t even need cake decorating skills to be good at this type of decorating.  The overlapping rows forgives everything.  Top the cup cake with crystallized ginger.  Mix yourself a dark and stormy martini, grab a cupcake, sit back on your couch with your feet up and have yourself a me party – ginger style.  Enjoy!
Dark and Stormy Martini
·         Ginger Beer
·         Lime juice, can be fresh but if you use Rose’s Lime Juice it will give the drink a level of citrus sweetness that is delightful
·         Spiced Dark Rum
Ok so the dark and stormy is a traditional cocktail, served on the rocks in a tumbler.  But put it in a martini glass for a pretty presentation.  To make it a martini, have all the ingredients cold so you don’t have to use a shaker.  The ginger beer is carbonated so if you want to ignore my advice then wear a rain coat, it will be an excellent explosive mess.  Take my advice, skip the shaker.  Start by placing an ounce of lime juice at the bottom of the glass.  Fill will ginger beer to about a ½ inch below the rim.  Top the drink with the rum, pour slowly so the rum floats quietly at the top looking very much like a New England Storm approaching over the water.  Eat with your cup cake.

A note about garnishes:  They aren’t optional.  I get so peeved when people refer to garnishes as food’s version of accessories like shoes and purses.  So wrong.  Shoes, like garnishes are not an optional accessory.  One, shoes are necessity.  You have to have to wear shoes (in most parts of the country) and if you are going to have to wear shoes then they should be freaking fabulous.  Because if you are lucky enough to be able see your feet when you look down, well they should be something you want to stare at, otherwise why even bother looking down?  Nothing ruins a day like ugly shoes.  Fabulous shoes, like garnishes are what sets the  Betty Crockers of the world  apart from the Martha Stewarts.  It tells the world that you worked freaking hard to make their gastronomical experience special and they better freaking appreciate it.  Like my shoes, I want to look at my food and drinks and appreciate the beauty and then be able to eat it.  The garnishment that is, not the shoes.