sublimesweets.com

Citrusy Sunflower

Citrusy Sunflower Cupcakes - soft cupcakes flavored with freshly squeezed orange and lemon juices and crunchy poppy seeds. Iced with semisweet chocolate glaze and decorated with marshmallow petals dipped in yellow sugar. With a sprinkling of mini chocolate chips in the center. Price available upon request.

more flavors to come!

It slipped my mind that this blog just turned a year old this August. Wow. And I thought I would have ran out of cupcake ideas within a year’s time. The truth is, I have a growing list of cupcake flavors that I want to try. One of my recent successful experiments was the atis (sugar apple) cupcake. I am still improving on it though and I still haven’t thought of an appropriate frosting so stay tuned. My niece M._, the middle of our family’s tres Marias, also requested a ginger cupcake so this flavor is in the queue as well.

I have been working on citrus flavors lately. I was happy with my orange cupcake and calamansi cupcake. Next up, the tried and tested orange and lemon combo.

Most of the recipes for citrus cakes call for poppy seeds so I decided I want those in these cupcakes as well. I just didn’t know where to get them. The bakery supply store I go to has stopped stocking it. What to do, what to do? Since my search was becoming futile by the day, I put this project in the back burner and started on other flavors in my list. After several months or so, I chanced upon a blog that mentioned that poppy seeds are available at Santis Deli—wonderful!

I used my orange cupcake recipe (an iteration of a sour cream cupcake that I have been using to create other flavors as well), replacing half of the orange juice and zest with lemon juice and zest. While the baked cupcakes were flavorful and moist, they didn’t rise as much. I never had this problem with the orange cupcake so I was bewildered. What worked after several tests was an adjustment in the amount of baking soda—I doubled it. For the chocolate glaze on top, I used semisweet chocolate which perfectly complemented the citrus flavor of the cupcake.

I could not find any yellow marshmallows to make the sunflower petals so I just dipped the white ones in yellow sugar crystals. A better alternative I should say as the sugar added a nice sparkle and shine to the “flower.” If you don’t have any colored sugar on hand but have food coloring, you can make your own. Put enough sugar in a small, clear plastic bag such as a ziplock bag and add small drops of food color (liquid or gel are fine). Seal the bag and massage the sugar until the color evens out. I thought of using chocolate sprinkles in the center to resemble the sunflower seeds but the mini chocolate chips look better and taste better.

* * *

the poppy seed drug test

Hold that poppy seed bagel if you are applying for a job or a driver’s license and have a scheduled drug test coming up. That inocuous treat can show up in the test as—gasp!—morphine.

Poppy seeds used in culinary dishes come from Papaver somniferum, aka the opium poppy. Yes, it is the same plant from which opium is extracted. Although opium is produced by “milking” the seed pods rather than the seeds, all parts of the plant can still contain opium alkaloids such as morphine and codeine. Therefore, if you still insist on eating that poppy seed bagel prior to your urinalysis, it can result to a false positive. In the US people have been fired, job applicants rejected and lawsuits filed because of poppy seed influenced-drug test results. To weed out the false positives, the test threshold for morphine and codeine have been raised from 300 nanograms (ng)/milliliter (mL) to 2,000 ng/mL. I just don’t know if these problems have been encountered here in the Philippines. Probably not as poppy seeds-studded food are not exactly staples here.

Wait, since the seeds have traces of opium alkaloids, can that poppy seed-covered bagel make you high? No. The seeds have very low level of opiates and because they are contained in food, there is no danger of you suddenly bursting into a giggling frenzy even if you eat a whole poppy seed cake.

Sources: The Straight Dope, Wikipedia, Snopes.com

Add comment September 6th, 2009

Calamansi Cloud

Calamansi Cloud Cupcake - buttery cupcake intensely flavored with real calamansi juice and zest. Iced with calamansi curd cloud cream and topped with a glittering calamansi gelee. Price available upon request.

a healthy dose of vitamin c

After successfully creating an orange cupcake, I was inspired to do a calamansi-flavored one. This cupcake has lots of freshly-squeezed calamansi juice and finely grated calamansi rind. This is a bit heavier than my orange cupcake but it is moist and has a melt-in-the-mouth quality.

I iced the cupcakes with calamansi curd cloud which is heavy cream whipped with calamansi curd. I made my favorite lemon curd recipe but subbed the juice with calamansi. While some do not add the zest to the strained curd, I always include it to intensify the tang. The tiny green specks also contrast nicely with the yellowness of the curd.

The topper is a calamansi gelee which I adapted from a recipe that used lime juice. I got the recipe from a candy book that our neighbor S._ gave me several Christmases ago. It is very easy to make although sometimes books do not really give detailed instructions and one must rely on visual and olfactory cues to know if you’re doing things right or bungling the job. Lesson I learned from this candy project: cook over low heat. I found out that even with a candy thermometer, the sugar syrup can burn if one is not careful.

This cupcake is definitely different. Those who are partial to sweet desserts might not like the tart kick. With loads of calamansi flavor, savoring this cupcake almost seems like taking your daily dose of vitamin C!

* * *

the little gadget that could

One of my favorite kitchen gadgets is the microplane zester. Its sharp teeth grate citrus rinds so fine that the zest is not a distraction to the palate. Originally a woodworking tool, it has found a permanent place in the kitchen after a homemaker in Ottawa used her husband’s new tool to zest an orange needed for her cake.

The microplane can also be used to grate spices and cheeses and even shave rock salt. I’m sure you are all familiar with beauty experts’ advice to look to the kitchen for some quick, effective fix for skin care emergencies (cucumber slices to soothe the eyes, a mixture of cocoa, honey and olive oil to create a color reviving mask for dark hair, and so on). Add the microplane to that list as there is a new range of models that can be used to exfoliate cracked, dry skin of the feet. Seriously. You can check it out here. Just remember, if you use one for zesting, don’t use it for any other job!

Add comment July 24th, 2009