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.

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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.