This week’s SMS was chosen by the fabulous Leslie of Lethally Delicious: roasted pecan cake with caramel orange marmalade and burnt orange buttercream. As you could probably gather from the title of my post and my photos, I strayed from the recipe a bit a lot. I just made a layer cake last weekend and I really didn’t have the motivation to make another one so soon, nor did I have enough mouths to feed to justify it. That said, I didn’t completely want to skip Leslie’s selection so I modified it to work for me.
The first change I made was to scale the recipe way back and make cupcakes instead of a cake. The recipe called for 12 egg whites and I happened to have 3 in my fridge leftover from another baking project so I went with 1/4 of the recipe, winding up with 7 cupcakes. Second issue – the recipe involved toasting pecans and then grinding them to make a flour to incorporate into the cake batter. I really don’t like nuts in most things, cake included, so I decided to skip the nuts entirely. I didn’t figure I could ignore the nut flour completely though and unfortunately, the recipe didn’t indicate how much flour would be yielded by grinding the nuts, so I estimated and added 3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour to my batter as a substitute. The recipe has you combine the nut flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt and then add browned butter and vanilla before incorporating egg whites that have been beaten to stiff peaks. When I added the butter to my dry ingredients, the result was essentially a paste-like substance and I wasn’t all that confident that my substitution was going to work. I wish the book had included more information at that point to indicate what the texture of the batter should be. I folded in the meringue the best I could, put the batter into the cupcake pan and hoped for the best!
To my surprise, 14-ish minutes later, the cupcakes had baked up nicely! I let them cool on a wire rack and then tried one. I figured no sense in frosting them if they weren’t any good, right? I found that I really like the cupcake, though! I know it wasn’t at all what was intended by the author, but it was still tasty. It had a nice, tight crumb but it was still light and very flavorful. I decided not to fill the cupcakes (early reports from the other SMS bakers indicated that the orange marmalade filling was overwhelming and much too sweet) and also took the easy way out on the frosting. I like buttercream but I LOVE whipped cream and it was quicker. I whipped about 1/3 cup of heavy cream until it thickened some, then added a little less than 2 teaspoons of sugar as well as 1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed orange juice and some orange zest. I didn’t measure the zest but would guess it was about 1/4 of the zest from 1 large orange. I whipped until stiff peaks formed and then piped onto my cupcakes, with just enough for all of them. I love the specks of orange zest in the whipped cream and it had just enough orange flavor to announce its presence without being overwhelming.
While I did enjoy these, they probably aren’t something I’d make again. I would like to try the layer cake eventually though, when I have folks who like nuts that would be willing to eat it! Many thanks to Leslie for hosting this week! You can find the recipe on her blog as well as photos of the cake as it was meant to be baked 🙂
really cute cupcakes 🙂 i love the whipped cream
Beautiful! I too wish the book had more visual instruction on what to expect because the batter was not a traditional one. Your cupcakes look yummy!
Great cupcakes. Way to scale down on the recipe! I had a busy week and my kitchen is in the process of being remodled!
Making something work for how you like it is really what it is all about, right? Those are beautiful cupcakes.
I wish I could get whipped cream to work. I would use it more often instead of frosting.
I love cupcakes. Your cupcakes look great!
Carmen
Great job playing around with the recipe. Your cupcakes look wonderful!
Tracey, your cupcakes look wonderful, and I’m so glad that they were a success for you. I’m really taken with the shape of them — they’re so perfect in circumference from top to bottom. Do you have special cupcake pans that aren’t narrower at the bottom than the top? Those cupcakes are just gorgeous.
Awesome work! I lvoe whipped cream too!
Gorgeous, Tracey! 🙂 Love the little ones…
Your cupcakes look wonderful! Love your take on this recipe.
Very pretty… I love the flavor of brown butter, so I’m such the cupcakes were quite good.
I love the modifications. I went ahead with the pecans even though we typically prefer desserts without nuts as well. I never would have came up with a way to leave them out. Thanks for the cupcakes! They are really cute!
These are so cute! The whipped cream looks delicious!
I love your orange whipped cream! I’m glad you were able to modify this so that it didn’t take over your life. Thanks for baking with me this week!
Awesome adaptation Tracey 🙂
Adoro il sapore e il profumo dell’arancia nei dolci, questi cupcakes sono davvero fantastici!
These look great. How did you frost them so perfectly? Please share the secret!
Love the cupcake liners!
Nice job adapting the recipe to make it work for you! The cupcakes look delicious. The batter made me a little nervous, I couldn’t tell if I was overmixing or not.
Wao what a nice cupcake and i like it so much. thanks for sharing it.
El – Thank you 🙂 I frosted these with my mechanical pastry bag from Williams-Sonoma and the large star tip that comes with it. I don’t know what the equivalent Wilton tip would be or I’d share.
Jessica – I used a standard cupcake pan for these. They came out of the oven with a more traditional cupcake shape but shrunk as they cooled. I find that tends to happen with cupcakes like these that include meringue.