Zero Bar Hi-Hat Cupcakes

You may have noticed by now that I tend to use any major and minor holiday as an excuse to indulge. Valentine's Day is no exception and because the only presents my husband has on his wish list are big ticket items we skip giving each other gifts and I bake him something sweet every year instead. This year I got my inspiration when he bought a few of his favorite candy bars a couple of weeks ago. Many of you probably have no idea what a Zero bar is. Understandable. They're one of the few white chocolate candy bars out there so, like me, you probably pass them up in favor of something more, well, chocolaty.

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Candy Blog described the essence of the Zero bar far better than I ever could. "It looks like a bar of the future. Something that robots would eat. Or maybe robots would bring them to us. They’d enter the room through the shooshing automatic door with a tray full of snacks that we munch on while watching TV beamed directly into our optic nerve." It's a white fudge-coated bar filled with almond, peanut, and caramel in some sort of nougat-like configuration. Not bad but wouldn't those flavors be even better as a cupcake? A cupcake covered in a ridiculous amount of frosting and then dunked into chocolate? Heck, wouldn't anything be better with that particular treatment?


Thus was born the Zero Bar Hi-Hat Cupcake: Light and fluffy almond-flavored cake filled with both peanut nougat and caramel, a blend of white chocolate and peanut butter frosting piled high on top, then dipped into a white chocolate coating. Even I thought I was going a little overboard with this one.

Despite being a bit of a Herculean task to eat one of these cupcakes the flavors all shine through nicely. I had to interrogate my husband to see if it was at all reminiscent of a Zero bar and he confirmed that it is. Mission accomplished!

As a side note, I noticed while mining previous blog posts for frosting recipes that many of the cupcakes I make are absurdly complicated. To the point where they probably put off most of you readers from ever attempting any of them. I think I should point out that if you're not feeling as ambitious as I you could usually make substitutions to save a few steps. For example, with these cupcakes there's no reason why you couldn't use store-bought caramel or even just stick a piece of a chopped up Zero bar into the middle of each cupcake instead of making the filling. Believe me, there are plenty of recipes I look at online and think I would never be skilled enough or want to put that much time into baking something. I don't want my recipes to be the kind that get ignored for that reason.

Almond-Flavored Cupcakes
Recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour

1 cup granulated sugar
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons soft unsalted butter
2/3 cup milk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 large eggs

1) Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2) In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt.

3) Add the butter and beat with an electric mixer at low speed, until the mixture looks sandy.

4) Combine the milk, vanilla, and almond extract and add, all at once. Mix at low speed for 30 seconds, then increase the speed to medium and beat for 30 seconds. Scrape the bottom and sides of the mixing bowl.

5) With the mixer running at low speed, add 1 egg. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 30 seconds. Add the second egg, again beating for 30 seconds.

6) Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl, and beat briefly, just until smooth.

7) Scoop the batter by heaping 1/4-cupfuls into the prepared muffin tin. A muffin scoop works well here.

8) Bake the cupcakes for 23 to 25 minutes, until they've domed, and are a light golden brown around the edges. They'll spring back when pressed gently on top, and a toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean.

9) Remove the cupcakes from the oven, cool in pan on a rack for ten minutes. Then remove cupcakes from pan and cool completely on the rack.

Caramel Filling:
Recipe adapted from Sprinkle Bakes

1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed
Pinch of salt
1/8 cup plus 1 1/2 teaspoons heavy cream, at room temperature

1) Melt the sugar over medium heat in a large pot. With a wooden spoon, stir the sugar as it melts and cook until it becomes a deep amber color.

2) Add the butter and salt and stir it in until melted.

3) Pour in the heavy cream (mixture will foam) and whisk until you get a smooth sauce. You may have some lumps but keep stirring until they have melted. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Pseudo Nougat Filling:
Recipe adapted from Cake Central

1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup marshmallow cream
1/4 cup malted milk mix
1 teaspoon vanilla
2-3 tablespoons heavy cream or milk
1/4 cup chopped peanuts

1) Cream butter, shortening, and marshmallow cream together. Add malted milk, vanilla, and cream or milk and continue to cream until well incorporated. Beat on high for a minute until fluffy. Fold in the chopped peanuts.

2) Using the cone method fill each cupcake cavity half with caramel and half with nougat filling. Be sure to trim the excess cake off the bottom of each cone and replace just the top portion to cover the filling.

Peanut Butter Frosting
Recipe from 125 Best Cupcake Recipes by Julie Hasson

2 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
2 tbsp heavy cream or milk

1) In a bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together confectioner's sugar and butter until creamy. Add peanut butter, beating well. Add milk and beat until smooth and creamy.

White Chocolate Buttercream
Adapted from BBC Good Food

90 grams white chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 to 2 cups powdered sugar

1) Melt the chocolate over a double boiler, stirring often. Cool.

2) Beat the butter and powdered sugar until creamy. Beat in the chocolate and continue to beat at medium-high speed until fluffy.

3) Using a spatula "paint" white chocolate frosting on one side of a piping bag and peanut butter frosting on the other side. (I found that my frostings kind of blended together despite this method working with other recipes in the past, so there's really no need to be precise here. You won't be getting that two-tone effect anyway from the frosting so feel free to just jam it all in there.) Pipe onto cupcakes using a large round tip in a tall spiral pattern.

4) Put the cupcakes in the freezer while you make the white chocolate coating.

White Chocolate Coating
Adapted from Martha Stewart

2 cups white chocolate, chopped
3 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil

1) Combine chocolate and oil in a medium heat-proof bowl set over a medium saucepan of barely simmering water; stir until melted and smooth. Transfer to a small bowl, and let cool about 15 minutes.

2) Holding each cupcake by its bottom, dip cupcake in the chocolate to coat frosting, allowing excess to drip off. Transfer to a baking sheet fitted with a wire rack. Spoon more coating around edge of cupcake and any exposed frosting; none of the frosting should show. Let cupcakes stand at room temperature 15 minutes before eating.

French Madeleine Cupcakes

I've been brainstorming for over a month trying to come up with French-themed cupcakes ever since my mom commissioned me to make some for her book club meeting. While France is known for its impressive pastries and elegant desserts my specialty is cupcakes so I wasn't sure my limited skill set could handle something so advanced. Instead why not translate the delicious flavors of traditional French desserts into cupcakes?

For the first flavor I decided on another batch of the Opera Cake Cupcakes I made back in September. Sponge cake made with almond meal, soaked with coffee syrup, bittersweet chocolate ganache filling, and coffee buttercream on top. Somehow these turned out even better than I remembered the first batch being with the bottom layer nicely saturated with the coffee syrup. Although the origins of opera cake are a bit unclear I stuck with the musical theme from both the name and from the book being discussed and piped out some treble clefs using melted chocolate. I simply printed out an image of one from the internet, stuck it beneath a sheet of wax paper, and piped on top. They look more impressive and difficult to make than they actually are.

I struggled to come up with a second flavor and it wasn't until I re-read the book to be discussed that I got the idea to make madeleine cupcakes. Madeleines are light little cakes made in a specific type of pan, usually with almond and citrus flavors. My trusty 125 Best Cupcake Recipes book happened to have a recipe for madeleine cupcakes made with orange zest and powdered sugar in place of granulated. My real moment of genius came when choosing the frosting to pair with the cake. I happened to have gotten two gourmet teas as a prize when I won Sweetest Kitchen's tea-themed cupcake competition and one of those teas was an Earl Grey lavender tea. What could be more French than lavender? Even better that it has hints of bergamot to bring out the citrus flavor of the cake. Following Cupcake Project's tips for infusing butter with tea I was able to make a pure-looking frosting nicely infused with the tastes of Earl Grey tea, lavender, and bergamot. It worked perfectly with the cake, which, in its traditional form, is something I imagine is often eaten with a nice cup of tea on the side.

The cupcakes were a hit and everyone couldn't stop raving about them. Wish they'd enjoyed the book half as much.

Madeleine Cupcakes
Recipe from 125 Best Cupcake Recipes by Julie Hasson

2 1/4 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 eggs
1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 12 cupcake wells with paper liners.
2. In a bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together sugar and butter until well combined (this might take a few minutes). Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add orange zest, vanilla, and almond extract. Add flour and salt, beating until smooth.
3. Scoop batter into prepared pan. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until tops of cupcakes spring back when lightly touched. Let cool in pan on rack 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on rack.

Lavender Earl Grey Buttercream

9 tablespoons unsalted butter
10 teaspoons loose lavender Earl Grey tea
1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons heavy cream

1. Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add loose tea and continue to cook for five minutes.
2. Remove pan from heat and let sit five minutes. Pour through a fine strainer, pressing on tea leaves with the back of a spoon to squeeze as much butter out as possible.
3. Let butter sit until it comes to room temperature and solidifies. If you're in a hurry you can place in the refrigerator but make sure butter is at room temperature before the next step.
4. Using a mixer, beat the butter and powdered sugar until combined. Mixture will be dry.
5. In half tablespoon increments, add heavy cream until frosting comes together and loses the dry, crumbly texture. Beat until smooth.

Opera Cake Cupcakes

My mom has commissioned me to come up with some French-themed cupcakes for her upcoming book club discussion of The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Weirdly, despite the fact that France is known for its delicious desserts, most of those are difficult to translate into cupcakes. Their fruit tarts are delicious but the defining element is the tart. Napoleons are tasty morsels but without the crispy pastry layers it's just a bunch of pastry cream and icing. And so it goes. To add to the challenge, these cupcakes need to be freezable so things like chocolate mousse are right out as the liquid would separate upon thawing. Time to get my thinking cap on.

I'd had my sights set on recreating Opera Cake as a cupcake for a while now because the full-size version is too intimidating for a baking neophyte like me. Once I remembered that it's a French dessert I knew I had my first book club cupcake candidate. A traditional opera cake is an almond sponge cake soaked with coffee syrup layered with coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache. While I couldn't do anything nearly as fancy and elegant as the full cake, I could at least capture those flavors in miniature.

I tried two variations to see which way brings the flavors out the best. Both begin with a version of the Princess Cake Cupcakes I made a few weeks ago but with the substitution of almond meal and almond extract. I poured coffee syrup into each after scooping out a cone and then filled half with coffee buttercream and half with chocolate ganache, using the opposite flavor as frosting on top.

The cake has a spongy texture so it soaks up the coffee syrup nicely. There's just a hint of almond although I'm wondering if the final batch couldn't do with more. Just as I expected from the coffee buttercream recipe's rave reviews, it was perfect with the right amount of bitter coffee flavor to offset the sweetness. It was hard to stop myself from eating it all with a spoon!

Still waiting for feedback from my lovely co-workers as to which arrangement they prefer, but my vote goes to the ganache filling with coffee buttercream on top. I think that helps separate the flavor of the coffee syrup in the bottom of the cake from the coffee buttercream on top and is truer to the original with the layered flavor effect. You're welcome to try it both ways as printed below in the recipe, or try whatever variation appeals to you. You can't really go wrong. Whatever you choose you'll experience a fantastic symphony of flavors that's sure to please you. Bon appétit!

Almond Cupcakes
Recipe adapted from 125 Best Cupcake Recipes by Julie Hasson

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup almond meal
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
6 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 egg whites
1 tsp almond extract
1 cup buttermilk

1) Preheat oven to 350 F and line 15 cupcake wells with paper liners.
2) In a small bowl, mix together flour, almond meal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3) In a bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together sugar and butter until well combined. Add egg whites, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in almond extract. Alternately beat in flour mixture and buttermilk, making three additions of flour mixture and two additions of buttermilk. Beat until combined.
4) Scoop batter into prepared pan. Bake 22 to 27 minutes or until tops of cupcakes spring back when lightly touched. Let cool in pan on rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on rack.

Coffee Syrup
Recipe from The Splendid Table

1/4 cup water
2 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 3/4 teaspoons instant coffee granules

Stir everything together in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Cool. (The syrup can be covered and refrigerated for up to 1 week.)

Chocolate Ganache

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon butter, at room temperature

1) Place chocolate in a bowl and set aside.
2) Heat cream and in a saucepan over medium heat until it just boils. Pour over chocolate and let sit for one minute. Stir until smooth.
3) Add butter and stir until smooth.

Coffee Buttercream
Recipe adapted from 125 Best Cupcake Recipes by Julie Hasson

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
Pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 tablespoon instant coffee granules
1 teaspoon hot coffee

1) In a small bowl, mix together coffee granulates and hot coffee. Stir until coffee granules are dissolved. Let cool completely.
2) In a small bowl, using an electric miser on low speed, beat together butter, sugar, and salt until well combined. Increase speed to high and beat until light and fluffy. Add vanilla, beating until frosting is smooth.
3) Add cooled coffee to butter mixture, beating until smooth, creamy, and well mixed. You will need to scrape down sides of the bowl several times while mixing.

To Assemble

1) Using the cone method, cut a cone out of each cupcake. Spoon approximately a generous amount of coffee syrup into each cavity. Try to coat both the sides and bottom of the cavity to help spread the flavor around.
2) For half of the cupcakes, fill with chocolate ganache. For the remaining half fill with coffee buttercream. Replace cone tops.
3) Let the remaining chocolate ganache sit for approximately 30-40 minutes until no longer runny. Beat with a mixer for 1-2 minutes until it's the right consistency for piping. Be careful to not overbeat.
4) Pipe ganache onto the coffee-filled cupcakes and pipe coffee buttercream onto the ganache-filled cupcakes. Conduct your own taste test to determine your favorite!