The Alaska

Ahh, summer. A time when all structure and well-laid plans go out the window.
It took me much longer than expected to even bake this second cupcake project, even though I had the concept nailed down weeks ago. And after the stress of attempting the Alabama cakes while filming, I decided to NEVER DO THAT AGAIN. This went much more smoothly.

My experience with Alaska comes from secondhand sources, but I do have a fascination with the wildness of it.

My maternal grandmother, whom we call "Grammie," developed an affection for Alaska after traveling there using her accumulated frequent-flyer miles out of sheer curiosity. She returned many times, once taking my older brother along on a trip to Barrow, the northern-most point in the U.S. She told us passionate stories of her experiences with the native people, excitedly detailing the Land of the Midnight Sun and cementing it into my childhood mythology as a place where improbable things happen.

Enter the Alaska cupcake.

Or, more accurately, three miniatures.

I kind of love them, improbable as they are.

The base is a sturdy rhubarb and oat cake cradling a scoop of wild berry swirl ice cream, crowned with a toasted swiss meringue, "Baked Alaska"-style.

Yes, I know. You don't have to remind me. Baked Alaska has no origins in Alaska.
I have a very reasonable explanation for why I chose to include this non-native element. I wanted to. The ice cream was the perfect vehicle for including a wild berry flavor in a way that complimented the rhubarb-oat cake and created a bit of a sauce as it melted, and the Swiss meringue was dreamy and marshmallowy on top.

I regret nothing.

Alaska is a land of wild flavors with a culinary tradition that centers more on survival than flashy cuisine. Which is totally fine with me. I like to keep it simple -- in real life anyway. This got a bit more complicated.

As I discovered through my research, Alaska's culinary traditions are focused on not dying. Use what's around, make it through the sunless winter: solid survivalism. While there isn't much room for dessert in such conditions, there are definitive local flavors that include rhubarb, wild berries, and wild game and fish. Settlers brought hardy grains like oats along, too. 

Oh! And there's something called birch syrup! Much like maple syrup in its manufacture, but with a different flavor. I couldn't find a local (within 50 miles) source, and opted not to order it online for this round, but it's on my radar now. Birch syrup, you're on my bucket list. 

The impetus for the Alaska cupcake was to embrace the wild flavors, the survivalist cuisine, and also the not-from-Alaska-but-still-associated Baked Alaska concept. 

Here's another reason I chose to do a Baked Alaska cupcake: Aqutak. 

It needs to be dressed up like this for tourists.

Also spelled "agutuk," this is the closest native Alaskan version of ice cream. It's made with rendered animal fat, wild berries, and fresh snow. That's it.

I was NOT about to order reindeer fat online, no matter how authentically Alaskan that would make my cupcakes. Modern versions of aqutak/agutuk use vegetable shortening instead of rendered animal fat, but I still wasn't entirely convinced that this would be delicious.

So actual ice cream was a stand in, swirled with a homemade wild berry sauce and refrozen. The necessary freezer time made this my first step.

If wild berries are your thing, Alaska has you covered with nearly 50 different varieties. The native people have been harvesting them for generations, and I felt that any dessert claiming to be a tribute to the state's food traditions needed to have a wild berry element.

Where I currently reside in California, there are decidedly fewer varieties of berries available to the average home baker. While Alaskans can enjoy such exotic wild fruits as salmonberries and cloudberries, we have to settle for their domesticated cousins, with the most exciting choices available only as jelly. I wanted to get the most tart-sweet berry bang for my buck, so I chose blackberries and currants as the local flavor stand-ins.

That's a LOT of seeds that will never be stuck in my teeth.

To make my totally-not-wild berry sauce, I pureed about a cup of blackberries with a bit of water, then ran the whole shebang through a sieve to achieve a smooth, seedless sauce. I combined this with 1/3 cup currant jelly in a small saucepan and stirred it to an even consistency. Since a steamy sauce would liquify my vanilla ice cream, I chilled it in the freezer before combining the two.

Working into a wide freezer-safe container with a lid, I layered in about 1/3 of the ice cream (1/2 gallon size container), topping each layer with sauce until both were gone. Lid on, and back into the freezer. Done!

Note: This makes more than you'll need to top the cupcakes, but is delicious on its own or on top of a warm brownie. I'm sure you'll think of something.

Verdict: Using a pre-made vanilla ice cream and adding the wild berry sauce swirl simplified this step. I'm SO glad I opted to remove the seeds from the blackberry puree -- that would have been a detrimental texture. The punch of berry flavor from the currants and blackberries was exactly the effect I was going for. Success! 

Alaska's favorite plant: Rhubarb. 

They say it grows easily and is prolific in the Alaskan climate, much like zucchini in the lower states. Which means everyone and their mother has a favorite recipe for rhubarb __________. 

Me? I'm a rhubarb virgin. We had some growing in our back yard when I was young, and I knew people made pies with of it, I could even sing you the "Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie" jingle. And yet, I was intimidated to bake with it for the first time. Also, this was California supermarket rhubarb I was working with, so I'm not sure if it was the right rhubarb or the best rhubarb. I can proudly sniff out a good cantaloupe, but choosing rhubarb from a basket of loose stalks truly seemed like gambling. 

I found a recipe for rhubarb cake to use as a guide, grabbed my fistful of rhubarb, and got busy. 

Surprisingly greenish.

The recipe I chose was for an upside-down rhubarb cake and called for slicing the rhubarb into 1/2-inch cubes. My teeny cupcakes couldn't possibly handle chunks of rhubarb, I reasoned, so I used my food processor and obliterated it.

I also wanted to incorporate rolled oats, which appeared in every recipe for Alaskan cookies, crisps, and other modern-day-Alaskan desserts I came across in my internet searches. To use rolled oats in the batter, I first ground them into a coarse flour, also using my food processor. Much better than the mortar-and-pestle method. Such a time saver.

Coarse flour of rolled oats, ready to jump in the pool.

The rest of the batter came together easily, with minor modifications to the original recipe that included skipping the ingredients (brown sugar and 1/2 stick butter) and procedure for making the caramel sauce. Not making an upside-down cake, just cupcakes. I also swapped in one cup of the above oat "flour" for one cup of the called-for cake flour. The other cup was all-purpose flour. These are hearty cakes we're making. The full 1.5 cups of sugar went straight into the batter as well.

While the rhubarb waited to make its entrance, I let it hang out in a bowl with the called-for two tablespoons of powdered sugar, just to make it good and juicy. 

I experimented by putting a spoonful of the rhubarb mixture in the bottom of several cupcakes, before adding the rhubarb-less batter on top. Then I stirred the rhubarb mixture fully into the batter and filled the remaining cupcake papers. Once they were baked, there was very little noticeable difference between the two methods.  

I was expecting the rhubarb to be more pink after baking, but it's clear from the pictures that no pink hue appeared. And since I'm not sure what rhubarb should taste like, I'm probably not the best judge of how my cakes would rate as a rhubarb dessert. 

Verdict: I found them moist and delicious, not too sweet, with the intended hearty texture from the oats. More like a muffin. But aren't all cupcakes just muffins with frosting?

Well, I'm not done yet. These muffins are getting an upgrade. 

I'll admit, my first thought when brainstorming my Alaska cupcake was, "Baked Alaska, of course!"

Imagine my disappointment when I discovered the non-native origin of the acclaimed dessert.

Baked Alaska is just the most widely recognized American version of a dessert that goes by many names. Norwegian omelette, glace au four, flame on the iceberg. These are all essentially the same: cake, topped with ice cream, topped with meringue and baked/flambeed. The popular American folktale is that a chef in New York created the dish to honor Alaska as a new U.S. territory, but the chef himself first called the dish "Alaska Florida," referencing the contrast in temperatures. Versions in France refer to Norway instead of Alaska, and Hong Kong just goes with "the iceberg."

Alas, no Alaskan origin.
UNLESS...

Snow and ice are integral parts of the native societies in Alaska, so it only makes sense that they have multitude varied descriptors for the two in every dialect. Now, imagine the meringue atop the ice cream (or faux-agutuk) as a different kind of snow. The crunchy top layer that stays intact after the snow beneath has melted away. I'm sure they have a word for that. That's what I'm honoring.

When making Baked Alaska, or whatever we're calling it now, I'm told Swiss meringue is the meringue to use. I had never made a nationality-specific meringue, so I searched and found a recipe.

Martha to the rescue! Simple ingredients: four egg whites (room temp, fresh cracked), one cup of sugar, and one pinch cream of tartar. Combine in the top of a double boiler over medium heat and whisk constantly until sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and whip until stiff, glossy peaks form. Then add vanilla extract and whip to combine. Easy peasy, right? 

The ingredients and the methods were familiar and generally easy to execute. The most laborious part was the whipping. Ten minutes of whipping. That's a long time with a hand mixer. Martha even specified a stand mixer in her recipe. If anyone wants a gift idea for my birthday, a stand mixer is a safe bet.

Luckily, I had help.

Mixing and tasting.

Finally, the meringue was finished. It made a TON. My taster was happy to eliminate some of the excess while I wasn't looking, and I didn't even miss it. We scooped some into a piping bag and prepared for assembly.

The cooled cakes were topped with a scoop of the wild berry ice cream and returned to the freezer for optimal coldness.

Before pulling the ice cream-topped cakes from the freezer, I preheated the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. As quickly and neatly as I could (I can usually do one, but not the other), I piped the meringue over the ice cream. Then, it was into the oven!

This was the first time I had ever intentionally put ice cream into a hot oven.

From previous experience, I knew that meringue can go quickly from pale to black, with a teeny little window in between where it is perfectly golden brown. I watched like a hawk to hit that sweet spot and avoid the cremated look.

Once they were toasted to perfection, I pulled them from the oven and started snapping photos. Because ice cream.

Verdict: Because I followed a proven recipe without modification, the meringue turned out beautifully. Once baked, the marshmallowy texture had a bit of a crisp exterior, which is exactly what I was going for -- that "crust" atop the creamy meringue and ice cream. Perfection!

Final Results: I (sort of) learned my lesson with the Alabama cupcakes, and tried to experiment with recipes a little less this time. It seems to have paid off, with the resulting Alaska cupcakes full of the native flavors that capture the essence of America's last frontier.

The toasted meringue's crisp outer layer imparted a pleasant initial texture, while the cloudlike interior melded with the ice cream below to become one delicious über-frosting. The [domesticated] wild berry swirl ice cream and tribute to the indigenous agutuk was the flavor punch this creation needed, and it melted down into the cake and infused every bite with creamy, sweet-tart berry goodness. The rustic rhubarb and oat cake experiment was successfully tangy, moist and hearty in texture, albeit surprisingly golden (and not pink) in color.

If I attempt an Alaska cupcake again, the only things I may change are to add something crunchy to the cake for added textural interest. Or possibly order some authentic wild berries to see if it makes a significant difference in flavor.

Cheers, Alaska!




Are you an Alaskan? Do you know an Alaskan? How did I do? Tell me!

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Tune in next time, where I'll be turning up the heat on an Arizona cupcake. 

These cupcakes are dedicated to a real-life adventure hero, Nancy Stoops.

Earlier this month, Grammie celebrated her 89th birthday, and shows no signs of slowing down. She has thus far lived an amazing, full life that includes many accomplishments (passing the bar at 70!) and great stories (a wedding at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, multiple cross-country moves with small children in tow) and is an inspiration, no doubt, to her eight children, their many progeny (myself included), and I daresay anyone who has been touched by her kind and vibrant spirit.

Love you, Grammie! ~M

The Alabama (aka Cupcake Zero)

Wow.

When I imagined this project unfolding, I really had no clue. My candy-colored vision was all blissful mixing and frosting of perfectly perky cupcakes, each one more delicious than the last. The reality has been a bit more stressful than that, including cupcakes that go KER-flop and frosting that stings my throat with its cloying sweetness. Add to this mix my adorable and enthusiastic "kitchen helpers," and I barely made it. Props to you, test bakers and risk takers. This ain't easy.

But, this week's attempt was not without merit. I have discovered for myself the delicious combination of crumb crust + cupcake. And I now know that incorporating chopped nuts into frosting (while visually reminiscent of sausage gravy in softer frostings) is an excellent foil for textural blandness, adding just enough bite to combat smooth/creamy overload. My life has forever changed.

And now, allow me to introduce my first-ever cupcake in the U.S. of Cake project:

Ladies and gentlemen, the Alabama!

Cupcake Zero.

This sweetie had the honor and the burden of setting the bar for the other 49 states, and I think it holds up its end of the deal.

This is my black-bottom, "Crimson Tide" velvet cake, topped with pecan-studded peach-cream cheese frosting, all crowned by the Southern-fried crunch of buttermilk-coconut fritters.

It sounds nuts.
It is.

But allow me to explain.

I spent a week researching Alabama's food, desserts, regional specialties, food festivals, and history. I took notes. Lots of notes.

Through the magic of social media, I even found a few willing Alabamians to help steer me in the right direction. In particular, Melissa Kendrick of Birmingham ("we call ourselves 'Ham-sters") was invaluable in helping me distill the essence of Alabama's flavors. Peach cobbler and pie, buttermilk-battered-and-fried dishes, pies (à la mode), fried pies, BBQ dishes and sides, gravy... "If it's fried, it's Alabama," she summarized.

Armed with this firsthand insight and my copious notes from the web, I pieced together what would become my original Alabama cupcake.

Before you say it, I know, Alabama does already have a cake mascot. The Lane Cake.

Inspired by a passage in "To Kill A Mockingbird," Lane Cake is indeed "loaded with shinny."

This is a grandma cake.

It's a multi-layered butter cake with a rich blended filling of custard, chopped raisins, pecans, coconut, and a healthy dose of bourbon. The flavor improves the longer it sits, with a handy tip in one recipe indicating it should be made "the week ahead."

Ain't nobody got time for that.

As an homage of sorts, I decided to borrow the pecan and coconut elements from this idea, inspiring the inclusion of pecans in the frosting for texture. We'll get to that. Back to the kitchen.

The black bottom crust of my cupcake was inspired by the appearance of "Black Bottom Pie" on several lists of Alabama's famous foods.

The pie recipe has variations, mainly in the type of crust used -- gingersnap, graham, pastry, or chocolate crumb -- but is essentially a layered custard pie or "icebox pie" if you're retro-cool. The Alabama page on Wikipedia also mentions the "rich black soil" of the state. This cemented the idea for a dirt-like black bottom crust as the foundational element of my creation.

For my crust, I didn't even bother with a recipe. We threw 16-20ish Oreos into my food processor (my daughters clamored for the honor), whirled them into full-crumb submission ("I want to push the button!"), then drizzled in 1/2 cup of melted butter. I probably should have remixed by hand at the end, because there were dry patches and oily patches, which made for inconsistent crusts. I used a scant tablespoon of crust mixture per cupcake, pressing slightly (another great kid task) to keep it at the bottom when it came time to pour the batter.

Verdict: The easiest step, just be sure to mix thoroughly. Elevates both visual appeal and flavor.

The "Crimson Tide" velvet cake was the first stroke of inspiration I had regarding Alabama, because I'm surrounded by sports fans and that was essentially all I knew about the state's culture.

Upon conferring with my local ('Ham-ster) sources, they appreciated the color theme and agreed that the University of Alabama is indeed part of their regional culture. Score one for my brain!

I used this recipe for the cake batter, which conforms to my inconsistent ideals about baking from scratch. I used only one ounce of red (the recipe calls for up to 2), and it was plenty. Next time I'll reduce the sugar to 1.5 cups.

Verdict: Not a fluffy cake, but not too dense either. Sticky crumbs, good flavor.

When it came to the frosting, I knew I wanted to incorporate peaches and pecans (Lane Cake homage!), and the red crimson velvet cake typically calls for a white frosting. I chose to use a cream cheese frosting for the tang-factor against the sweetness of the peaches, but a traditional boiled white icing would have been more authentic.

My execution of this element went terribly awry, as I chose an untested recipe (why?!) and then modified it (no!) by adding more sweetness with the juice of canned peaches. (My preference would have been to use fresh peach puree, but the available fresh peaches were like stones in both firmness and aroma.) The result was syrupy goo. I'm fairly certain it was the addition of the peach juice (several tablespoons) that ruined the flavor for me. The already-sweet frosting took on the kind of stinging sweetness that makes your tonsils vibrate.

NOTE: I take full responsibility for ruining what is probably a totally fine recipe for cream cheese frosting.

Typically, I'll taste and modify as I go, but I was on camera with small children and flew blindly into the frosting storm. I whipped the dickens out of it, hoping by some miracle it would become fluffy. No dice. The pecans were stirred in and I hoped and prayed that refrigeration would help the gloppy texture, since the flavor could already be described as "saccharine suicide."

LATE EDIT: Now that some time has passed and I'm a bit more sane, I'm pretty sure I could fix it with a cooked milk+flour thickener. (1 cup milk + 1/3 cup flour + pinch salt, cooked in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until thick, then cooled completely.) That could disperse the sugar a bit and give it more structure. Will attempt and report back.

---

Nope, it's still cupcake gravy. Though slightly less sweet, so I'll call that a half-win.

(UPDATE: It makes a great fruit dip!)

In the end, using a smallish dose of the frosting/cupcake gravy worked fairly well. It still drooped over the sides of the cake and had the consistency of thick syrup, but the sweetness wasn't as overpowering as I feared it might be.

Verdict: Gooey, needs tweaking. Good in small doses. Cupcake gravy!

The crowning touch on my franken-cakes was the buttermilk-battered and fried coconut. Buttermilk battered because that's how my 'Ham-ster told me they do fried everything in Alabama, with the coconut element borrowed from the iconic Lane Cake.

Creating this bit seemed to be a simple matter of combining a batter recipe (omit the onions, please) with sweetened flaked coconut, then frying to a golden hue. It was that simple, but I had to fry in smallish batches, which was time consuming.

I dropped single handfuls of batter-coconut mush into hot oil, keeping a close eye as they took forever to turn that perfect color before rapidly becoming overdone. One 7 ounce package of sweetened, flaked coconut with one batch of buttermilk batter made mountains of fritter goodness. Once I had made what seemed like enough to top two dozen cupcakes, there was still batter+coconut left in the bowl.

Verdict: Not complicated, just labor intensive. Totally worth it for the delicate crunch against the frosting "gravy."

Final Results

As the first cupcake in the project, I'm overall pleased with the outcome.

The black bottom crust looks as good as I imagined, and the flavor pairs with the moist cake perfectly. Yes, I struggled a bit with the frosting execution, but once I let go of the idea that it needed to look a certain way, I was able to find its merits. It looks like a slightly-lumpy sausage gravy (southern style staple), but it's frosting! Ta da! The coconut fritters worked well as a recipe and a topping, adding mildly-sweet crispness and a bit of height on an otherwise flat cake.

I know I'll be mentally tweaking this one for a while, but it won't get another shot officially until the other 49 states get their first.

If you decide to give it a try, let me know what you think!

Next week: Alaska! Stay tuned!
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Monica Joy is plotting the next frankencake in her secret lab. Chase her with torches and pitchforks on Twitter @USofCake.

The U.S. of Cake Project: Inspiration and Obstacles

I, Monica, hereby swear that I will bake 50 unique cupcakes that capture the essence, the flavor if you will, of each state in the union.

If I stick to my self-imposed schedule of one cupcake combo per week, it should take about a year.

The concept for this project struck me as most insane great ideas do, as I lay in bed. Not my bed, but the bunk bed my daughters share. I always snuggle my youngest to sleep, and if I don't actively fight it, I'll easily fall asleep too. I was mid-thought, replaying a mental catalogue that traced the geography of my life: seven states in ten years, with another one bookending my life, before I even had memories. Then, my mind naturally went to my favorite subject: food. Desserts, specifically. Lately, it had been all cupcake-related, as my home bakery business had a spike in orders for graduation parties. My brain attempted to keep a common thread by putting the geographic history and desserts together, and the kernel of inspiration was born.

What happens when I doodle a cupcake without looking.

There, in the bottom bunk, I was mentally crafting cupcakes to represent the iconic flavors of each state on my life list. And then, epiphany. A calling. Why stop at seven (or eight) states? There are so many flavors; so many states that would be left out. And I'm not one to neglect a flavor. Once the idea struck me, I couldn't shake it. I was engulfed by it, impassioned, suddenly panicked to create. Think of the potential! I had to make notes.

Both daughters were now sleeping, so I slipped out and immediately shared my hysteria stroke of genius with my unsuspecting husband, who had been reading or watching something -- I honestly didn't notice because my new idea was obviously the most important thing in that moment.  Upon his (characteristically) supportive response, I found the nearest notebook, nabbed a pen, and flipped to a blank page.

Such a handy song to know.

My first step was to silently sing, "the fifty, nifty United States," while writing out an alphabetic list of said states. I had to sing it very slowly and write fast, which was faster than usual thanks to adrenaline. I was that excited. After I got to "Wy-OHHH-ming," I started filling in the more obvious flavor-associations: key lime for Florida, dairy-something for Wisconsin, Vermont maple syrup, and then...

Obstacle #1: Some states stumped me.

First, there were those states that didn't have an apparent cuisine-identity. (What flavor is Connecticut?) Others had "famous flavors" that just didn't translate well to cupcakes. (Maryland's crab cakes = Ew.) Once I had depleted my own mental resources (that was fast), I knew I would have to do some digging. Dear Google, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Obstacle #2: Project identity crisis.

As you can see from my notes over there (or perhaps you can't at all because my handwriting is terrible), my impulsive working title for this project was "The United Cakes of America" -- so clever, right? Alas, the gifted Warren Brown agreed, and published his book by the same name... three years ago. Back to the drawing board. But I was not about to sacrifice cleverness or thematic succinctness. Google to the rescue yet again.

Obstacle #3: No photogenic kitchen tools.

A blog about cupcake making needs gorgeous pictures, and my kitchen is not gorgeous. It is a tiny, Bay-Area rental with zero natural light and fewer drawers. My Kitchen-Aid mixer does not coordinate with a thoughtfully chosen centerpiece. In fact, I do not even own a Kitchen-Aid mixer. My hand mixer is a Huntington Beach bargain-bin special, and though it has served me well for going on nine years, it is decidedly not photogenic. Neither are the oddball cake decorating tips I nabbed for a dollar at a rummage sale. I only ever use three of them, because when am I ever going to need three flower nails and whatever shape this #190 Wilton tip makes? Never, that's when. (I just looked it up, and apparently it makes flowers, too. There are also three other similar tips in my collection. They all make flowers. I do not need that many unitasking ways to make flowers out of frosting.)

I do happen to have several friends who own photogenic kitchens with pretty mixers and natural light, however. Perhaps I can borrow them.

Obstacle #4: Where to start?

There are so many deserving states with enticing flavors. I can't decide. Should I go alphabetical, like my list? Or would it make more sense for me to start with my home state of Ohio? Perhaps the "13 original colonies" should get first crack. I need a plan. Until then, I'm paralyzed by indecision.

I'm yearning for simpler times, when I only had three obstacles to overcome.

But this former news anchor knows just what will get me started, plan or no plan. I need a deadline. First cupcake, whatever it may be: June 7, 2015. I'll be there.

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Monica is standing between two cupcakes, each of them calling her to see which one she loves the most. Choose a side on Twitter @USofCake.