A Year of Daring Baker Challenges!

Perhaps I'm a complete dork, but sometimes marking special anniversaries make me a little loony. Okay, I am definitely a complete dork, but that may have more to do with telling every single family relative I've encountered over the holiday that my terrific husband bought me a Super Peel. It's a seriously cool thing.

So yes, anyway, I find anniversaries to be pretty cool. And this month will mark my one year anniversary of being a Daring Baker. My mom even made me this cute little cupcake pincushion. This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand

Yeah, I had no idea what that was either. I thought we did it last December. But apparently the French have two logs and this one is more of a frozen dessert. Actually this one was WAY more complicated than the first one. There were six elements to my "log": A coconut daquoise, a dark chocolate ganache, a dark chocolate mousse, a white chocolate coconut crisp layer (that there was a teensy error in the recipe resulting in what is best described as white chocolate and coconut coated Special K), a vanilla creme brulee, and a dark chocolate glaze. Make sure you check out the rest of the Daring Bakers to see what flavors they came up with. Everything went really well except that I'm a rebel and just made the whole thing in a 9 inch springform pan. The glaze then didn't really cover the whole cake.

And I have to say, we taste tested today after spending the day celebrating Christmas with my dad and stepmom. So there we were. My sister M., Super G and the Tummy, me and the Brain, my mom and my stepdad. And really by this point in the holiday celebrations (I've already had 3 separate, but equal, Christmases) none of us really wanted to eat yet another sweet thing. So we were kind of dreading the cake. But it was REALLY REALLY tasty! I did leave it up at my mom's, but all of us tasted it and not one of us had anything negative to say about it. It was rich and chocolaty and the coconut was subtle. I will definitely make this one again. But probably not after a week of feasting on approximately 9 million Christmas cookies.

I'm not emotionally stable enough to get on the scale after the past week and a half.

Cupcake Shipping part 2

My sister Super G, is a high school math teacher in Brooklyn. She calls frequently and most often if she's upset it's because of her job. See apparently there are a lot of politics involved in our school systems. Just listening to my sister's trials and tribulations makes me think that all high school teachers should get an hour at the bar with reduced drink prices. You know, like Ladies Night, or Happy Hour. I mean she really puts up with a LOT.

One night she called and was telling me about this student. Now this student happens not to like women, non-Jamaican people, or learning. Whatever. He can like what he wants. Except then he starts picking a fight with this other little girl because she's not Jamaican. So my sister sends the girl out of the room and the boy student with the list of dislikes just kept going. SO she sent him to the dean. The dean proceeded to send the boy back. I don't think the dean likes to do her job. But that's beside the story. So this boy was returned to class and proceeded to invade my sister's personal space and yell at her. My sister is a great teacher because she did NOT 1) Punch this idiot in the nose. It would have been my first choice and thus I'm not a teacher. 2) Laugh at the boy and ridicule him in a manner to relieve him of some of his feelings of self importance. or 3) Walk over to her desk and pull out a fifth of bourbon and drink it straight from the bottle. My sister is a much better teacher than I ever could be.

Once she calmed down and told me about the incident and she said that at least she wasn't teaching this boy every day, I decided to include her in the cupcake shipping project. She was pretty excited about it. I also called my brother B and asked if he would like to participate in the cupcake shipping project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. SO I packaged up two sets of delicious Jamaican Me Crazy cupcakes and sent them off.

Super G had trouble getting them from the post office because I made a silly mistake in addressing them to her. But she said that one of the cupcakes had been smooshed (I did that in the packing), one was perfect, and the remaining two were all right. She didn't take pictures because her husband had the camera. I don't think he got any cupcakes. I haven't heard from my brother about his cupcakes. And frankly I keep forgetting to ask.

Oh and I forgot to point out in my last shipping cupcakes post that the reason the frosting is protected in an upside down disposable cup is because the cup gets narrower as it reaches the bottom. So the cup will no longer be wide enough to allow the cupcake far enough towards the bottom to squish the frosting, if it were turned upside down.

Jamaican Me Crazy Cupcakes

Cupcakes:
1 3/4 cup cake flour
grated zest of 1 orange
1 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 medium very ripe bananas, mashed
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp rum flavoring
1/2 c. shredded sweetened coconut

Combine flour with soda, salt, and zest, set aside. Add lemon juice and buttermilk to bananas and set aside.

Cream the butter and add the sugar gradually. Beat well. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the rum flavoring. Alternate adding dry ingredients with banana mixture. Starting and finishing with the dry ingredients. Fold in coconut. Spoon into paper lined cupcake tins and bake at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes or until they test done. Let cool on racks before frosting.

Frosting:
2 Tbsp butter
1 cup powdered sugar
2 Tbsp rum
2 Tbsp milk

Beat butter and powdered sugar together. Add rum. Then add enough milk so that frosting is spreading consistency.