Thursday, May 29, 2008

Crème Fraîche Cupcakes- Part Dix

Initially, my agenda with the Crème Fraîche Cupcake line was to offer a selection of dense and rich pastries that rotate daily. Something familiar and accessible, yet different... get me? Alice Q Foodie recently referred to these babies as "a plated dessert posing as a cupcake" on her blog and I'm proud to say that I think they have a pretty intense impact, too. I had planned to stuff each one with different caramels, sauces, and fillings that were already in use around my kitchen. Common sense for a professional foodie: if you're taking the time to make a quality component from scratch you might as well use in more than one application.

Well, I'm closing out this week with 20 total flavors and I'm officially out of multitasking ingredients! Bit of a double-edged sword, really- I no longer have convenient fillings at my disposal so I need to invest more energy in creating new options. Though while I need to start making fillings specifically for cupcakes, I am no longer hindered by existing parameters. In short, I'm expanding my cupcake vocabulary.

This conundrum has resulted in something particularly delicious today- an incredibly yummy banana compote.

I've been looking at Sheri Yard's pastry cookbooks for sometime, specifically her first one: The Secrets of Baking. It more or less reads as an encyclopedia of all things pastry, conveniently organized into master recipe concepts and variations. If you're interested in taking your personal baking to the next level, I highly recommend it. It has certainly proven personally useful over the past few years.

One particular recipe in her book is for a cake filling she calls banana schmutz. Doesn't sound very tasty, eh? Trust me on this one. It's not a complete dessert, but a component for something larger, and as such I never really found a use for it since I don't do layered cakes. Rummaging around the shop in search of cupcake fodder today, my mind quickly flashed to her recipe. Using her formula as a springboard, I pushed and pulled the ingredients here and there, omitting and adding, until I found something a bit more "eclipsey". The finished filling is made from ripe bananas, dark muscavado, dark rum, and browned butter. Super, super tasty.

I may have to find more applications for this culinary treasure. Until then, you can enjoy it in center of one of our little square cakes:

Banana Cinnamon-Dark chocolate-crème fraîche cake+brown sugar & banana filling+dark chocolate ganache glaze+vietnamese cinnamon.

Hazelnut Aniseed-Dark chocolate-crème fraîche cake+toasted hazelnut gianduja filling+dark chocolate ganache glaze+aniseed.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had the banana cinnamon on Friday, and it was rich and amazing - so much banana in such a small tasty package! Any chance there's some listserv I could sign up find out what flavors are available on a given day?

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