Chocolate Almond Cupcakes with Chocolate Orange Frosting

I'm currently working as a personal chef for a wonderful family that is gluten-free and dairy (milk)-free. The other day, for a family birthday, they asked me to bake a special treat. and I chose these Chocolate Almond Cupcakes with Orange Frosting that I adapted from an Italian Jewish recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks,  Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food.

There are myriad gluten-free cooking and baking blogs and cookbooks out there these days, using all sorts of alternative flours like tapioca, coconut, teff, garbanzo, quinoa, rice, and potato starch in various combinations. While I'm no longer eating gluten-free, I have a lot of friends who do, and some of my go-to recipe blogs are Gluten-free Goddess and Gluten-Free Girl. It's surprising how close the texture of gluten-free baked goods can come to a regular wheat cake crumb.

Commercial gluten-free flour blends and baking mixes are available from companies like Bob's Red Mill, King Arthur Flour, and Cherrybrook Kitchen. However, the best results often come when you create your own blends of flours depending on the type of cake crumb you're looking for, and they can get quite expensive. Also, a lot of gluten-free, dairy-free mixes and recipes also eliminate eggs, which isn't dietarily necessary for many of us. Eggs are a wonderful binder and leavening agent. Without some sort of protein like eggs or wheat gluten, there's nothing to hold flours together, so a binder like xanthum gum (also very expensive!) has to be added to keep the ingredients from falling apart.

So what's a girl to do? I think a lot of gluten-free bakers forget that Jews have been baking without wheat for thousands of years at Passover. The Sephardic peoples of the Middle East and Mediterranean region make delicious baked goods from almond flour, eggs, and sugar that have a wonderful rich flavor, nutritional value, fluffy texture, and are extremely easy to make. They're also relatively economical compared with other gluten-free ingredients.

These Chocolate Almond Cupcakes have a tender crumb interspersed with gooey chocolate. If you use good quality cocoa powder, the frosting is like a rich chocolate ganache. They'll please anyone, gluten-free or not. Since they're made from almonds and chocolate, they're relatively rich, so I like to make them small, but you can also bake them in standard-sized muffin cups and increase the cooking time slightly. They'll keep for a couple of days in an air-tight container.

For about 18 mini cupcakes, you will need:

1 cup almond flour, lightly packed (also called almond meal - Bob's Red Mill's is widely available)
3 large eggs, separated
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons rum, amaretto, Grand Marnier, triple sec, or other flavored liquor
7 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips, about 1 heaping cupful
2 tablespoons water

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F, with the rack in the middle. 

Line a mini muffin pan with baking cups. (I made my own cups with small squares of parchment pressed into the muffin pan.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the almond flour, egg yolks, sugar, rum, chocolate, and water. Pulse until well combined, and the chocolate chips are broken into small pieces. Place the mixture into a large mixing bowl.

In a separate, very clean bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Gently fold the egg whites into the almond and chocolate mixture until just combined. It's ok if there are a few small streaks of egg white: It's better to undermix than overmix.

Using a tablespoon, fill the baking cups to just under their rims. Bake for 20-25 minutes, rotating the pans after about 12 minutes. When done, the cakes will be moist and springy to the touch, and a toothpick will come out clean of batter. (Melted chocolate is ok.) Wait until cakes are room temperature before frosting.

CHOCOLATE ORANGE FROSTING

For enough frosting to generously frost 18 mini cupcakes, you will need:

2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons good quality cocoa powder (I like Guittard or Valrhona for a rich, dark chocolate color and flavor. If you use a Tollhouse or Hershey's quality powder, you'll get a milk chocolate flavor.)
3 tablespoons butter, room temperature (If you're milk/dairy free, you can use Earth Balance or another butter substitute.)
4 tablespoons milk (Any kind of milk is fine, including soy, almond, and coconut.)
1 teaspoon orange extract (You can use any flavor extract you like - almond, vanilla, raspberry, and coconut are also nice with chocolate.)

Directions:

Using a stand or hand mixer, cream the butter, milk, and extract together. Gradually sift in the sugar and cocoa mixture, and mix until smooth.

Plum Clafouti

A clafouti is a French country dessert of a very egg-y pancake batter poured over stone fruit and baked in the oven. It came into popularity in the States with Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the 1960's, when my dad became obsessed with it. Now, when cherry season hits in early summer in California, our family is required to make a sweet Bing cherry clafouti, pits left in for bucolic authenticity. As kids, we were always warned not to bite down to hard, because the French knew how to eat around the pits, and so should we.

While sweet cherries are the traditional fruit of choice, tangy plums go beautifully with the sweet batter. And since plums appear later in the season, they allow us to enjoy clafaoutis all summer long. (PS: Peaches, nectarines, apricots, berries, apples, pears, and even pineapples are all delicious in this dessert, too.)

For a 10"-12" clafouti, you will need:

4 cups halved,  firm-fleshed, tart plums, pits removed. (I used a mix of small, deep purple Italian prunes and red and yellow plums. Avoid sugar plums or other soft, very sweet varieties, which will turn to sauce when cooked. I didn't bother to peel mine; plum skins are generally tender and edible, and the skins help to keep the flesh of the fruit intact when cooked, preventing the deep colors from bleeding into the batter.)
3 eggs
2/3 cup sugar, divided in half
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk (If you like - I like - replace the extra 2 tablespoons of milk with a fruit or nut liqueur such as Grand Marnier, triple sec, amaretto, or Calvados.)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Powdered sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with the rack in the middle.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs into the salt and 1/3 cup of the sugar. Add the flour and mix well, then add the milk, vanilla, and liqueur and beat until smooth.

Butter a well-seasoned cast iron 10-12"skillet, or other oven-safe non-stick skillet - you can also use a stainless steel pan if you grease it very well - over medium heat on the stove. Pour in 1/4 inch of batter, and let it set for a minute or so until it reaches the consistency of a loose custard. Arrange your plum halves in a single, tight layer, cut side down, over the batter. Sprinkle on up to 1/3 cup sugar, depending on the sweetness of the fruit, and top with the remaining batter. Place in the oven and cook for about an hour, until puffed and brown and a knife comes out clean when poked through the center. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve warm or at room temperature. Your clafouti will sink as it cools and develop its thick, custard-y potential.

Radishes with Horseradish Cream

I've been enjoying a fair bit of entertaining this summer - small gatherings on the roof with beers and appetizers - and it's nice to be able to throw together some easy, light finger foods with things I already keep in the fridge or grab from the farmers' market.

This simple appetizer was inspired by my uneasy relationship with radishes. I think they're beautiful, and I normally like spicy foods, but something about their sharpness has always thrown me off. I've usually had them served with a dip or dressing that is very mild, and the bright radish spiciness can sometimes be overpowering. So I had the idea to serve them with a sauce that is spicy in its own right, to balance out the radishes' own bite.

Radishes with horseradish might sound like too much radish, but tempered with sour cream, the result is spicy and cool at the same time. I cut the radishes into slices, like chips, for easy dipping, and garnished the sauce with chives and some red and black sea salt for color. You could also use this dip as a salad dressing on sliced cucumbers and sliced red onions, or as a sauce for barbecued steak.

For about 1 cup of dip, you will need:

1 large bunch of radishes, cleaned, trimmed, and sliced into "chips"
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons refrigerated white horseradish (Find one with no added sugar. The Ba-Tampte brand is widely available and contains just horseradish, vinegar, and salt.)
2 tablespoons of finely chopped chives, plus more for garnish
Salt to taste (The prepared horseradish already has salt, so I found I didn't need to add any extra if I garnished with some coarse sea salt.)

Directions:

Mix together the sour cream, horseradish, chives, and salt. Garnish with coarse sea salt and more chives.

Grandpa Fred's Rhubarb Sauce

My Grandfather Fred was not a stranger to the kitchen. His mother was a hotel cook in Michigan in the late 1800's before she married. She was famous for her flaky puff pastry that she made in a country kitchen without electricity or refrigeration, only an ice box to keep her butter cold. She transferred a love of good quality food to her son.  According to my mother, Fred made an excellent steak tartar, ground at home because he wouldn't trust the cleanliness of the butcher's grinder. He made fresh egg nog at Christmas, excellent strong coffee that he clarified with egg whites and shells, and this rhubarb sauce.

This recipe calls for only a few ingredients and takes less than 10 minutes to prepare. It has many uses: An ice cream, tapioca, or Greek yogurt topping, as a spread on waffles or toast, and as a filling for crepes. It could also be interested on roast pork. It's sweet, tart, and tastes like early summer. I slightly adapted Grandpa Fred's recipe, as written in his own hand, adding some lemon zest for its brightness.

For just over 1 pint (2 cups) of sauce, you will need:

1 quart (4 cups) rhubarb, cleaned, not peeled, all leaves removed, and cut into 1/2 inch pieces.
1/2 cup water
1 to 1 1/4 cups sugar, depending on your desired sweetness
1 teaspoon Angostura Aromatic Bitters, to cut the sweetness and add some depth of flavor
Zest of one small lemon
A few drops of red or pink food color, optional (I was skeptical about this at first, but it really did made the sauce look more appealing.)

Directions:

Put the water and sugar into a large saucepan over high heat. Dissolve the sugar for a minute or two, then add the rhubarb pieces.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium. Cook for 5-10 minutes, watching carefully and stirring occasionally. (Cooking time will depend on the thickness of your rhubarb stalks.) When the rhubarb is tender, remove from heat immediately and stir in the lemon zest and bitters. The rhubarb will go from undercooked to disintegrated in a matter of minutes, so if you want a chunkier sauce, remove from heat when your rhubarb is still slightly al dente and place the saucepan in a bowl of ice water to cool. You can also puree the rhubarb into a smooth sauce, if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Rustic Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

I recently started a new job, and with everything that was going on, I thought I'd missed this year's rhubarb! Rhubarb season comes and goes in a flash and coincides with the first crop of strawberries in late spring. It does well when the weather stays in the 70's and 80's...once it reaches 90 degrees, like it has in New York the past few weeks, the rhubarb wilts and the season is usually over. So yesterday,  I was very happy to discover a vendor at the Union Square Greenmarket who still had some fresh rhubarb. (I also discovered that it keeps really well in the fridge - I had some in my vegetable drawer for over two weeks before I was able to get to it, and it stayed firm and crisp.)

Strawberries and rhubarb make a perfect sweet/tart paring. I wanted to put together an easy, casual dessert to show off the tangy rhubarb to its best advantage, and a rustic tart seemed like the perfect choice. "Rustic" means that the tart doesn't use a pie plate or tart pan. You simply roll out the dough, pile on the fruit, fold the edges of the dough back towards the center, and bake on a cookie sheet. (By the way, you can easily make this tart on a pizza stone, in your oven or on a gas grill in the summertime.)

Because the fruit is so delicious, I wanted a crust that tasted good, but was sturdy enough to hold in the rhubarb's copious amount of juice that cooks out during baking. (It's so disappointing to a eat a pie featuring delicious fresh fruit in a tough and flavorless crust!) Cream cheese adds flavor to pie crust, but it tends to make the dough very delicate and lacks flakiness. So in my crust research, I came upon Rose Levy Beranbaum's amazing Flaky Cream Cheese Pie Crust on Epicurious.com. Rose has combined the the delicious flavor of a cream cheese dough and the sturdiness of a typical pâte brisée or shortcrust made with butter and/or shortening, flour, and water. (If you're not familiar with Rose Levy Beranbaum, I highly recommend her The Pie and Pastry Bible. She is the queen of baking chemistry, her recipes are well-tested, and she explains her methods in great, but highly accessible, detail.) I adapted Rose's recipe to fit the needs of this tart and my penchant for simplicity, but the inspiration is Rose's.

NOTE: Because Rhubarb has so much water, a rustic tart with no pan support won't be able to contain a great amount of fruit.  Too much filling, and you'll have massive spillover onto the floor of your oven and a soggy crust.  If you would like a juicier dessert with more fruit filling, simply double the below filling recipe to make a "rustic pie." You will need to use a 9" or 10" pie plate under the crust to support the weight of the fruit.

For the  CRUST of a 10" rustic tart or an 8"-9" inch pie, you will need:

8 tablespoons, or 1 stick, unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 1/2 inch cubes, and put in the freezer until ready to use.
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling out
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
3 oz cold cream cheese, cut into 1/2 inch cubes and chilled in freezer for up to 1/2 hour before using
1 1/2 tablespoons ice water
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons sugar, plus more for dusting

Crust Directions:

Combine the ice water and lemon juice and set aside in the fridge to chill. Pour the flour into a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar, baking powder, and salt, and mix well. Add the chilled cream cheese and butter cubes, toss in the flour, and, working quickly, break apart the pieces of fat with your fingers until you have a mixture the texture of raw oats. Spring the lemon juice and ice water over the flour mixture and stir and squeeze the dough with your hands a few times until the dough holds together when you press it firmly. The dough will be crumbly, and that's ok. However, if it doesn't hold together easily when you press firmly, sprinkle on a bit more water with your fingertips. Dump the crumbly dough on a large piece of plastic wrap and, using the plastic wrap to help you, form a tight ball of dough, then flatten into a disk shape. Pop into the freezer until you're ready to roll it out. If you can let it chill for an hour or more, all the better.

To fill one rustic tarte (double this recipe for a rustic pie), you will need:

1 1/2 cups trimmed rhubarb (Look for bright red, sturdy, plump stalks. Stay away from any that are limp or dried out.
8 oz (1/2 of a 1lb box) strawberries, hulled and halved.
3/4 cup sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons cornstarch (if doubling the filling recipe for a pie, use 1/3 cup cornstarch)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Filling directions:

Put the strawberry halves and rhubarb pieces in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle on the sugar and gently toss until coated. Add the zest, cinnamon, salt, and cornstarch, and toss again. Set aside.

Assembly directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

On a well-floured surface, roll out your pie crust into a rough circle until it's about 1/4 inch thick. It should be about 14 inches across. Using your well-floured rolling pin, gently transfer the dough to a cookie sheet covered with a large piece of parchment paper. If there are holes or tears in your dough, simply patch them up. Dump the filling into the center of your circle of dough and spread it out in an even circle 9-10" circle, about 4 inches from the edge of the dough. Sprinkle the filling generously with a couple of tablespoons of sugar. Fold the edges of the dough in towards the fruit,  and sprinkle everything with another 1-2 tablespoons of sugar.

Put the tart on the center rack of your oven, and put a large piece of tin foil on a lower rack in case of spillover. Check your tart after 45 minutes. Rhubarb should be tender,  and the crust deeply golden, which should take between 50 minutes to 1 hour. Remove from oven, sprinkle with another tablespoon or so of granulated sugar, and allow to cool to room temperature before serving to allow the filling to set.