Bourbon Beans and Baking Problems

You may have a baking problem when, after going a few weeks without pulling something sweet-smelling out of the oven, people begin to ask questions.  Not only have I not been baking much lately, but I've been blogging about it even less.  In reality this is probably a good thing; less procrastibaking (at least in theory) means more working.  Nevertheless, I feel well overdue for a post or two, and I've got a bit of a backlog of bakes.  That, and I can't have the last post up be a commemoration of the time I blew chestnuts up all over my oven...

Back in January (so long ago now!) I baked some cupcakes.  Bourbon vanilla bean cupcakes with salted caramel buttercream, to be exact.  Cupcakes can be tedious little things, especially if you're making a few dozen of them and even more especially if they need to be decorated in any elaborate way.  They're small and fiddly, that's the nature of cupcakes.  These were not so bad, however, because I was only making one dozen and because they were going to be topped with buttercream leftover from a batch my sister had made and frozen.

I found a recipe for plain vanilla cupcakes on Joy of Baking, and adapted that to make them bourbon by replacing the milk in the recipe with - you guessed it! - bourbon.  My version of the recipe can be found in the Recipe Box.

Another reason that cupcakes are fiddly is that they are easy to over-bake and become dried out.  I've also had them inexplicably fall flat coming out of the oven, but fortunately there were no issues with these.  I set the timer a bit early at 15 minutes and checked them then, but they weren't quite ready.  By the low-end estimate of 17 minutes, however, they were good to go and I popped them out.  As with any cake, be careful not to over mix the batter, and try to pour them into the tray and get them in the oven with a bit of speed.

Let the cupcakes cool before icing them with the buttercream.  My sister had made swiss buttercream of the type that can be found in the Recipe Box, except that she used salted butter.  Salted buttercream can be very good on its own (as a flavour, not on a spoon... although to each his own), but I felt like adding something else to it - caramel.  Salted caramel is delicious, and with bourbon... yes.  Plus I had time to make caramel since I didn't actually have to make the buttercream.  For the caramel I used the recipe for Salted Caramel Whisky Sauce in the Recipe Box, but substituted bourbon for whisky.  I had left the buttercream out to defrost - and I should mention now that swiss buttercream does keep very well if you freeze it in ziploc bags or an airtight container - and once it was soft I beat it in the kitchen aid with a paddle attachment.  When it was at its smooth, light buttercream consistency, I continued to beat at a low speed and added caramel to taste.

I piped the buttercream onto the cooled cupcakes using a star tip, and then drizzled them with some of the leftover caramel sauce.  As a finishing touch, I sprinkled some demerara sugar on top.