Cupcakery Review: Cako

Cako - visited February 2, 2015

I first heard of Cako when I saw their little kiosk at my local shopping mall. It was set up in the center, a square formation of display cases showing cupcakes, regular size and mini. I didn't try it the one at the mall though as these days I only go shopping when I'm on a mission to find something and I didn't have time for cupcake dawdling. Gone are the days when I browse or do retail therapy. My wallet thanks me; my closet does not.

Anyway, last week I was in San Francisco for a conference and lo and behold, near my hotel was a Cako cupcake shop. I didn't even know they had an actual shop and for some reason only kept picturing them as mall kiosks.

Since I was there, I had to try it, right? The shop itself is rather small but cupcake shops don't need a lot of retail space. I would think they'd want more room for the kitchen so they can bake onsite and ensure fresh cupcakes daily. As a consumer, I know I would.

Although not very big, the display cases held a nice assortment of cupcakes. It's always hard to choose just one so I went for two. Ha. The first choice was easy - Samoa. Not only is it one of my favorite flavor combination (chocolate, vanilla, coconut and caramel - what's not to love?) but I have fond memories of the Samoa cupcake I'd had from Sift and was hoping for something similar.

I waffled over the second choice. It was a toss up between the Salted Caramel and the Snickers but the Snickers cupcake won: a chocolate cupcake topped with caramel buttercream, drizzled with caramel and topped with a chunk of Snickers.

There was a Maple Bacon cupcake but I've never been a believer in bacon in my desserts and am indifferent to bacon in general so that was easy to pass up. My bacon-lovin' friends just gave me the side eye, I know it.

The packaging on my two cupcakes was cute and exactly like the one from Minicakes by Tasha - both cupcakes anchored in a plastic shell that fit inside a cellophane bag, folded over and stickered with the cupcakery's logo. Cute.

I have to admit, when I bought the cupcakes, it was after dinner and I was full so I didn't actually eat them that night. If I'd been thinking properly, I shouldn't have bought them until the next day so they could be as fresh as possible but my Pavlovian response as soon as I saw the Cako shop was typical - must buy now.

So I did what was normal for me. Got up early the next morning, ran 4 miles in the hotel gym and had the Samoa cupcake for breakfast. It was good although I have to give the nod to Sift's Samoa cupcake as being better. The frosting from Sift that I raved about was better than Cako's and so was their cupcake. In fairness, that could be because I had the Cako one when it was technically "day old" but I still think Sift's was better.

Since even I tend not to eat 2 cupcakes for breakfast (I'd run only 4 miles after all, not 14), I waited even longer to try the Snickers one. It held up pretty well. I'm still not a frosting person so I ate mostly the cupcake. It was good but I think it was like something I could make. In a blind taste test, I'm not sure I could distinguish it from the chocolate cupcake from Crumbs Cookies n Cream mix. Which still makes it a good cupcake, just not one that would particularly stand out in the sea of cupcakes I've eaten and will likely continue to eat.

Each cupcake was $3.50 and Cako also offers mini cupcakes for $2 each so their pricing is in line with other cupcake shops. It always amazes me how many cupcake shops there are. Less amazing is I will likely try every one I come across.

Peanut Butter Cup Butterscotch Brownies

Peanut Butter Cup Butterscotch Brownies - made January 31, 2015, recipe adapted from Extreme Brownies by Connie Weis, originally called Connie's Today Show Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

If you think I have a one-track mind when it comes to baking and that track seems to be "brownies", you wouldn't be wrong. Truth is, whenever I get a new baking book, I'm like a kid with a new toy. I play with it often in its early days, captivated by new recipes I "have" to try.

So far, I've been 2 for 2 with good recipes from this book and I went for #3. The original recipe called for making the brownie batter, pushing the peanut butter cups into the batter so it would bake into the brownie and sprinkling the top with chopped peanuts and chocolate chips.

I didn't have peanuts though but I did have mini peanut butter cups from Trader Joe's to use up and peanut butter chips so I decided I'd make the brownie batter then sprinkle all the add ins on top for maximum prettiness. For the most part it worked. The brownie base is very similar to the base I'd used for the Triple Chocolate Brownies and you know how well I thought those had turned out.

I dutifully sprinkled the mini peanut butter cups on top, followed by semisweet chocolate chips then what I thought were peanut butter chips. Only as I was sprinkling the last of the chips did I finally realize they didn't smell like peanut butter. Which shows there's nothing wrong with my nose as it turned out I was sprinkling butterscotch chips instead. Oops. There was no way to rectify the mistake so I decided to brazen it out and simply rename these as Peanut Butter Cup Butterscotch Brownies. Like I had meant to make that flavor combination all along. Sometimes you just have to bluff it.

Fortunately, when I brought these into work the next day, no one knew what they were originally supposed to be and the large plate disappeared in good order. So you can make these with peanut butter chips if you're a purist or throw in butterscotch chips if you want something a little different. Either way, the brownie base is moist and fudgy and the brownie itself is delicious.

1 12-ounce package miniature peanut butter cups (I used the pack from Trader Joe's)
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
4 1/2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 1/2 cups (9 ounces) 60% cacaro bittersweet chocolate chips
6 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 cups (10.5 ounces) granulated sugar
1 1/2 packed cups (12 ounces) light brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (6.8 ounces) bleached all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup butterscotch chips or peanut butter chips, your choice
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13 pan with aluminum foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Melt butter, unsweetened chocolate, and bittersweet chocolate chips in the top half of a double boiler set over hot water. Whisk until smooth and completely melted.
3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs together. Add granulated sugar, brown sugar and salt; whisk until just combined. Add melted butter-chocolate mixture and stir until combined. Whisk in vanilla.
4. Add baking powder and flour and stir until just combined. Pour batter into prepared pan and smooth top with a small metal spatula.
5. Sprinkle top evenly with peanut butter cups, butterscotch (or peanut butter) chips and semisweet chocolate chips. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with a few moist crumbs. Transfer pan to cooling rack and let cool completely before cutting and serving.

Bakery Review: la PanotiQ

La PanotiQ - visited on January 30, 2015

There’s a new bakery in town and you know I had to check it out. Or maybe I should call it a patisserie as it’s meant to be more high end. Not quite as high end as Alexander’s but definitely more fancy than Icing on the Cake. It’s called la Panotiq and appears to be part of a small chain. It’s definitely a welcome addition to the culinary lineup on Castro St in Mountain View. While Castro is known for its abundance of various cuisines, it’s been sadly lacking in the desserts arena. Two bakeries is still a bit lopsided compared to the number of restaurants but two is better than one is better than none.

I went to la Panotiq when I was killing time before meeting with my monthly dinner club for our second foray at Doppio Zero. When I walked in, I was greeted with a full display case of various dessert offerings. That already put them a cut above my first visit to Alexander’s Patisserie with its empty shelves.

There was a wide variety of desserts. I mean wide. From fruit tarts and caneles to macarons, cakes and cookies to tiramisu to cream puffs, cobblers, tarts and pies. So of course I had to take pictures of it all. Prices were slightly less than Alexander’s, not quite as homey as Icing on the Cake but somewhere in the middle.

The counter folks were very friendly and helpful, I must say. When I asked one person for a recommendation, she suggested the tiramisu. I’m not fond of creamy desserts so I filed that away for later and kept on perusing. She went to help someone else and another counter person later asked if I needed help. By that time I had narrowed my selections a bit and asked him for his recommendations. He also went with the tiramisu. Huh. That must be some good tiramisu, right? Especially considering the second person hadn’t heard what the first person had said. Either that or they’d been instructed to push the tiramisu. But I’m more trusting and think better of people than that so I let myself be persuaded to try the tiramisu. My friend Sun also recommended what looked like a chocolate covered hazelnut pastry ball called a chocolate tresor so that went into my box as well.

Since we were going to dinner and I would likely end up full from that, I restricted myself to just those 2 choices in the interests of being a grown up instead of a kid with a sweet tooth and no impulse control. It turned out to be a good decision as I didn’t have room after dinner to try dessert so I waited until the next day to sample my purchases.

My takeout box

The chocolate tresor turned out to be like a little cream puff filled with mousse and dipped in chocolate. Kind of like a Beard Papa cream puff but Beard Papa’s is a bit better. It could be because I ate it the following day but the pastry had become soggy due to the mousse filling. It wasn’t bad but mousse/custard desserts aren’t my favorite. I think I was expecting a filling more like fudge or a truffle than a mousse. My bad for not reading the description more closely.

Tiramisu

The tiramisu was a better choice. I’d made tiramisu from scratch once when I was in culinary school. And by scratch, I mean we even made the ladyfingers from scratch as I still remember piping out the soft batter for the ladyfingers. I don’t eat tiramisu very often because of my preference for non-custard desserts. I can’t say this was so amazing that I’ve developed a love for custard-creamy desserts but it was pretty good. If you like tiramisu at all, the one from la Panotiq is a good choice. The espresso and mascarpone combination was just right, not too heavy handed with the espresso soaking the ladyfingers but still enough to moisten the layer and have the espresso flavor shine through. It was complemented perfectly by the mascarpone layers as well. The counter people didn’t steer me wrong.

Given the wide array of desserts on offer at la Panotiq, this won’t be my last visit. Clearly, I have many more things to try and evaluate.

Product Review: Crumbs Bake Shop cupcake mixes

Crumbs Bake Shop Cupcake Mix - Red Velvet and Cookies n Cream - made November 16, 2014 and January 18, 2015

Just to "mix" things up a bit (haha), I like to throw a product review in here and there. Disclaimer that I don’t work for these companies, don’t know anyone who works there, am not being paid for this and my opinions are my own. And I’m not shy about sharing them.

So….let’s get the “but it’s a box mix” thing out of the way. Yes, I’m prejudiced against box mixes. BUT, not all box mixes are created equal so I do occasionally make an effort to be open-minded about their use. There are the mass produced ones you can find at the grocery store that have an inferior list of ingredients, none of which will ever be found in my pantry (imitation vanilla extract, I’m looking at you). Ooh, see how quickly that snobbery kicked in? Then there are the ones that are a bit more high end, have real cocoa, flour, sugar and all good things blended together and placed in the same package for ease of use. I typically try out those mixes when they represent a less expensive option to the real thing.

Case in point, I love the cupcakes I once received as a gift from Crumbs Bake Shop in New York City. They were gorgeous and delicious. I looked them up once to either order for myself or send as a gift but once I got a gander at the shipping cost, I hurriedly closed that browser window before my mouse finger did an inappropriate and expensive twitch over the shopping cart icon. I was rather resigned to not having a Crumbs cupcake again until or unless I visited NYC. But, the same friend who once sent me the Crumbs cupcakes surprised me again for another birthday with a Crumbs cupcake mix. They make cupcake mixes! Turns out you can find these at Target in the baking aisle for $10 a box. Yes, that may seem expensive for a packaged mix that makes 12 cupcakes but it beats $90+ for 12 cupcakes shipped from New York to California. Just sayin’.

She had given me the red velvet one and when I made them, they were actually pretty good cupcakes. Enough time had lapsed that I couldn’t quite compare them accurately to the ones from the Crumbs Bake Shop itself but still, it was a good cupcake. It didn’t taste like a mix, it had good flavor and great cakey texture so I was happy with it.

Subsequent trips down the baking aisle at Target started showing the prices for the Crumbs cupcake mixes coming down recently and, depending on the Target, they started having clearance price stickers on them. At first it was a regular price reduction to $7.99. Then I found one with a clearance price of $5.68. At that point, I splurged on the Cookies and Cream one. They also had a Peanut Butter Cup cupcake mix as well as a Birthday Cake mix which I interpreted to mean vanilla cupcakes with colorful sprinkles. I’m not fond of sprinkles, colorful or otherwise, and I’m indifferent to peanut butter so I stuck to the Cookies and Cream.

The package comes with a packet of Oreo-cookie looking cookie pieces that you mix into the frosting and then you’re supposed to add your own Oreos to the top of the frosted cupcakes. I didn’t want a big hulking half-Oreo dominating the top of the cupcake so I bought a pack of mini Oreos to delicately place on the highest mound at the center of each cupcake. As with the red velvet, I thought the Cookies and Cream cupcakes tasted good. Each Crumbs cupcake mix comes with Crumbs Bake Shop cupcake liners, the packaged mix for the cupcakes and the packaged mix for the frosting. For each mix, you generally just need to add your own oil, mix, eggs, and, depending on the frosting, cream cheese and more milk.

While still a bit pricey to me at $10 for a box mix sold at Target, it’s more reasonable at the sale and clearance prices. I don’t know if Target putting them on clearance signals the beginning of the end for them carrying the line so if you want to try them, I wouldn’t wait too long to snag a box.

Kahlua Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies

Kahlua Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough January 24, 2015, modified slightly from Jenn's Food Journey

I need to do some virtual decluttering on my pinterest boards. I go through periods of wanting to either delete all the pins on my boards and start over or make them all so they’re not a constant reminder of the baking I intended to do at one point and still haven’t done. Some of the pins are so old and still unmade that the original link that the pin goes back to is no longer active or has moved and I’ve lost the recipe.

With that risk in mind, I’ve been turning my attention to some older pins that represent recipes I really want to try so I could at least capture them on my blog. I loved the chubby look of these because we know how I feel about the chubby – good on a cookie, not so good on me. I like the size and thickness of them in the original blog picture from Jenn's Food Journey so I thought I’d take a stab at them for myself, especially as I needed cookies for my next book club meeting. Easy to make the dough on a weekend then bake off the night before.

This was a good marriage of chocolate and espresso. The coffee taste wasn’t too pronounced but you could definitely taste it. Make sure you use a good dark cocoa so the chocolate can hold its own against the coffee which tends to be a dominant flavor. I used Pernigotti cocoa and it resided in perfect harmony with the espresso in this cookie. But alas, the Kahlua was a casualty as you can’t really taste it. Jenn's Food Journey had the same observation and I was tempted to up the Kahlua amount but ended up keeping it as is since I didn’t want the dough to have too much liquid and potentially spread more. As it was, it didn’t bake up quite as thick as the original blog. If hers was chubby, mine was slightly pudgy. Still, they tasted good and were decently thick enough. They also had a nice, soft, chewy texture the next day when I brought them in for my book club meeting.

2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 Tablespoon instant coffee (original recipe calls for espresso powder)
1 Tablespoon Kahlua
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-2 cups chocolate chips

1. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and cocoa; set aside.
2. In a small bowl or measuring cup, add the instant coffee and Kahlua; stir to combine.  Allow to sit and let the coffee granules dissolve.
3. In a bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, cream together the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy.  Scrape down the sides and add the eggs, one at a time, beating until just incorporated.  Add the vanilla and beat until just combined.  With mixer on low, slowly add in the dry ingredients until just combined.  Remove from stand mixer and fold in chocolate chips.
4. Portion into golf-ball-size dough balls and freeze for several hours or overnight. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until slightly browned on the edges. Remove and allow to cool for 5 minutes.  Finish cooling completely on a wire rack. 

Triple Chocolate Brownies

Triple Chocolate Brownies - made January 10, 2015 from Extreme Brownies by Connie Weis

This was the first brownie recipe I made this year before the pms'ing buttercrunch one and it's just as good. Actually, I'm 2 for 2 from the Extreme Brownies baking book so I'm pretty pleased with that investment. Not that I don't already have a bunch of great brownie recipes to fall back on but, like workout DVDs and books, you can't have too many.

The first  three pictures were taken when the brownies had barely cooled to room temperature so they look a bit gooey (nothing wrong with that). Connie's directions say to chill these overnight. I never did the chilling thing though. I don't mind freezing brownies and thawing them as they keep just fine with no ill effects. But I've been conditioned from culinary school that refrigerating baked goods dries them out. Lord knows I've had enough bakery items from refrigerated display cases to bear that out. So I simply left these, covered, overnight on my counter.

The bottom two pictures were taken after the brownies had cooled completely and were cut, er eaten, the next day. You can tell the texture is more firm, closer to fudge than gooey chocolate cake. Fudge-like is how I like my brownies so this is one of the few times that something completely cooled and set is better than gooey warm from the oven. But that's a personal preference. Either way, these are fudgy goodness if you want a shot of chocolate in your system.

Brownie batter
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter
4 1/2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
1 1/2 cups (9 ounces) 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips
6 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 cups (10.5 ounces) granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) light brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (6.8 ounces) bleached all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Chocolate drizzle
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
1/4 cup (1.5 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon very hot water

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13 pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Cut the butter into 1-inch slices. In a small, heavy saucepan, melt the butter pieces over the lowest setting. While the butter is melting, chop the unsweetened chocolate into 1/4-inch pieces and add to the melted butter along with the bittersweet chocolate chips. Use a small whisk to speed the melting process. When the chocolate is melted and completely smooth, turn off the heat but leave the saucepan on the burner while proceeding with the recipe.
3. Using a large whisk, lightly beat the eggs in a large mixing bowl. Place the sugars and salt in a separate small mixing bowl, then whisk into the eggs until just incorporated. Briefly whisk the melted chocolate mixture, then gradually whisk into the egg mixture until just combined. Briefly whisk in the vanilla. 
4. Place the flour and baking powder in a small mixing bowl; whisk together to combine. Sift through a medium strainer directly onto the batter; stir in with a spatula until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly with a small offset spatula. Bake for 34 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and let cool at room temperature for at least 15 minutes.
5. Chocolate drizzle: Melt the butter and corn syrup over low heat in a small, heavy saucepan. Remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate chips; stir with a small spatula until the chocolate is melted and smooth. Stir in the hot water to thin it out. Using the spatula, drizzle thin, random stripes over the top of the cooled brownie slab. Let the drizzle cool at room temperature for 30 minutes, then refrigerate the pan for 7 to 8 hours or overnight.