The Best Passover Cookies Ever

So remember back in my previous post when I said I wasn't really planning to make any new desserts this year?  Well, I just can't help myself...and you shouldn't either.  These are, hands down, the best Passover cookies I have ever tasted (and they rank up there with non-Passover cookies too).  A friend brought these to our seder and everyone devoured them in an instant.  It is great to have a recipe where people eat it on Passover and say how great it is, not just great for Passover.  Be sure to use really good chocolate, since that is the primary flavor of the cookies.  I also used matzah cake meal instead of matzah meal, since it is ground a little finer, but I think either would work.  The good news is that there are four more days of Passover, so you can make these!  You can find them on Martha Stewart's website.

MSC: Orange Vanilla Bean Cupcakes with Candied Oranges

It has been a long time since I baked in the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club, but when I saw this recipe, I knew I had to try it.  It required two things that I have never worked with before -- candying citrus and vanilla beans.  For some reason, I have always had a fear of vanilla beans, but they are much less scary than I thought!  I don't know if I got all the seeds out, but it was not that hard to slit it and scrape the seeds out (and I put the rest of the pod into some vodka and am making homemade vanilla extract, which I will post about in a month when it is done).  Now, for candying citrus.  All you do is make some simple syrup (water and sugar) and float the orange slices in it and 20-30 minutes later -- candied orange slices.  I haven't tried to eat one, but they smelled so delicious that I am sure they will be good.


I joined this baking group both to try new baking skills and also to try my hand at some decorating.  These candied orange slices are so pretty and so easy and I am glad I learned this trick for decorating future baked goods.  If you want your house to smell amazing, I would highly recommend baking these cupcakes.  The combination of the orange and the strong vanilla bean was heavenly!  Thanks to Jamie from Cookin' with Moxie for a choice that allowed me to expand my baking horizons!  

Birthday (Key) Lime Pie

As I may have mentioned before, we have a tradition of celebrating birthdays in our office with yummy treats.  Usually a few days before, I ask the birthday person what they would like, and then I make it.  No problem.  However, one of my office-mates had a birthday last week (during Passover) and I was away.  Upon my return, I agreed to make this pie, but I was a little nervous about pulling it off because I knew there were a number of late evenings in front of me.

I should not have worried.  This pie was a snap to make.  Crush some graham crackers, mix with a little bit of sugar and butter (or buy a pre-made graham cracker crust -- I won't tell) and bake for about 15 minutes.  Then, juice some key limes (or limes in this case, because I could not find key times) and mix them with a can of sweetened condensed milk, lime zest and egg yolks, pour into the crust and bake.  Easy as pie (sorry).

I topped this pie with some very lightly sweetened whipped cream, which I think is necessary to cut the tartness a little bit.  It was delicious.  Everyone in the office raved about it and it was hard to keep them away from the last slice so I could bring some home to my husband.

You can find the recipe here, on Martha Stewart's website.  I made it just as it was.

Spring Comes Early

Maybe it’s to make up for the utter lack of spring we had in the northeast last year, but it has been an incredibly mild winter. And I’m surely not complaining! Two days ago on my walk home from work, it was so warm that I got frozen yogurt! At night! In February!

In the spirit of this joyous and unexpected warmth in the depths of winter, I set out to make these beautiful Spring Cupcakes from Martha Stewart. I had seen them in my cupcake cookbook long ago and fallen in love with their exquisite elegance. I decided that I was going to put them aside and make them when my friend Rocio got engaged, because a) they are so pretty, perfect for an engagement, b) purple is Rocio’s favorite color and c) they’re kind of complicated so they called for a special occasion. But she is taking an awfully long time to get engaged. It’s so annoying when other people don’t plan their major life decisions around my cupcake-baking schedule.

I was beginning to despair that these cupcakes would ever get made when I got a message from my friend Sarah – she was having a Downton Abbey-themed birthday party, and all were welcome to bring baked goods! I could totally picture the Crawley sisters nibbling on these cupcakes and – added bonus! – purple is Sarah’s favorite color too! So I set to work, feeling rather like Mrs. Patmore and wishing I had a scullery maid to yell at. The brownie base was straightforward enough, and sooo tasty, although the tops were not quite as flat as I had hoped. I found the lavender for the icing at Fairway. Maybe I didn’t steep it for long enough, or maybe I don’t know what lavender is supposed to taste like, but I thought the frosting mostly tasted like milk and confectioner’s sugar. I was also having trouble getting it to not run off the sides and create unsightly rivulets (Mr. Carson would not approve). What I ultimately ended up doing was pouring on spoonfuls of icing from the Pyrex cup and then holding the cupcake over it, rotating so that any extra icing ran off back into the cup. You can do this a few times over if you want a nice thick layer of icing.

The edible flowers are what makes this recipe complicated, so I took the easy way out and just bought some sugar flowers instead of candying pansies or whatever the hell Martha wants you to do. Guess I’ll save that task for when Rocio gets engaged. You can find the recipe here.

MSC Club: Raspberry Swirl Cheesecakes

These almost didn't happen (I realize this is often a theme with baking groups).  In fact, I made them yesterday morning beginning at 6:30am.  Often, if I have all the ingredients, I feel guilty not baking, especially if one of my fellow bakers is hosting.


Anyway, this month's selection for Martha Stewart's Cupcake club was raspberry swirl cheesecakes.  The last mini cheesecakes we made for this club, the oreo ones, were so delicious, that I knew these would be good too.  They were easy to put together -- graham cracker crust, quick cheesecake batter and raspberry puree swirled in before they went in the oven.  However, this was a case of read the whole recipe before starting because I learned that they have to be baked in a water bath.  I don't have a roasting pan big enough for my cupcake tins, so I lowered the temperature and baked them without the water.  They puffed up beautifully, but once they started to cool, the majorly sunk, which I assume was related to my baking method.


I haven't had a chance to try them yet, but I assume they are delicious.  Cheesecake and raspberry -- what could be bad about that?  Many thanks to Gem of Cupcake Crazy Gem for hosting.  Check out the MSC website for all the other bakers.

MSC Club: Mint (and Caramel) Filled Brownie Cupcakes

Martha Stewart Cupcake Club is back...on this blog anyway.  I have been absent for the last couple of months, but when Rachel of Simple Girl posted a chance for people to pick new flavors, I jumped on it.  I really enjoy being part of baking groups and I wanted to get back connected to this one, so I got to make a pick.  

I chose Mint Filled Brownie Cupcakes from page 122-123 of Martha Stewart's Cupcakes.  I really like a cupcake where there is a little surprise in the middle and I have had my eye on these for a while.  While I was in the store buying peppermint patties, I saw rolos and thought that they would also go well in the cupcakes.  My little one and I had a great time making these together.  These are a great pre-school baking project.  We mixed the batter and he had a great time pressing the candy into the cupcake tins.  We made half with peppermint patties and half with rolos and I enjoyed both.  

The mint ones infused the brownies withe a nice mint flavor throughout and the caramel ones had nice caramel chunks studded throughout (I used two rolos, but I think I would use three in the future).  The brownies had a nice texture, between fudgy and caky and were definitely chocolatey.  

I hope everyone enjoyed baking along with me.  I look forward to seeing how everyone else's turned out.  I am looking forward to next month's raspberry swirl cheesecake.

Cupcakes for a Sweet 2012

Happy New Year from the Baking Sisters! It's a fun and festive holiday that gives me an excuse to dress up, wear my awesome sparkly headband from J. Crew, and of course bake like a maniac! Tonight, I'm headed to a party, and when I saw these clock-themed New Years cupcakes in the Martha Stewart Cupcake Cookbook, I was intrigued. They are holiday-appropriate and not too tricky to make, although I have to warn that melted chocolate is not really amenable to being poured neatly out of a pastry bag, so I used a chocolate-dipped toothpick to make all the numbers, which was a pain, but whatever. For the cupcake recipe, I used this recipe, which is excellent! It's extremely fluffy and silky; my friend and co-baker Emily said that the batter was more the consistency of mousse, and I agree. I used the Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but as always, I used three sticks of butter instead of four, and it was still plenty buttery. Then I just melted an ounce of chocolate, and after several failed experiments with the pastry bag, I discovered the toothpick trick and all was well. Emily so kindly cut out the clock hands you see above, and I put foil on a cake plate to make the clock face. We're going to bring it to the party and reassemble the whole thing, cause we're ridiculous, in a good way. The Baking Sisters wish you a happy (and sweet) New Year!

These Cupcakes Are So Good, It's Scaaaaaaary!

a) I'm thinking of changing the name of this blog to The Baking Sarah. Time to pull your weight, sisters.

b) Tomorrow is Halloween! I had a long-simmering plan to make these delicious cupcakes for Halloween, but with the special limited-edition Halloween Oreos with the orange cream filling. Unfortunately, last year I simply could not find said Oreos in Providence, and so I had to be content with making regular ones. I was very content, though - they were delicious! All the rich, satisfying creaminess of Oreo cheesecake, all in a convenient cupcake-size package. What could be better? Anyway, the plan continued to simmer in my mind, and when I saw the orange Oreos at my local supermarket here in the Greatest City on Earth, I nabbed them! (Never mind that Halloween was more than three weeks away - in my cabinet they sat until they were ready to meet their delicious, delicious fate.) I brought them in to work for a special Halloween edition of Baked Goods Fridays. I have to say, I feared that I was pushing the limits of what people in my office were willing to eat at 9 a.m. with these babies, but they came through, and all the cupcakes were gone by lunchtime!

There's one thing I must warn you about. I probably should have caught on to the fact that a recipe containing two pounds of cream cheese would make a LOT of cupcakes, but I naively believed Martha Stewart when she said it would make 30. Try 60. After I had filled all the Oreo-bottomed cups with batter, I still had half the batter left over, so I made 30 more without any Oreos at the bottom. They were still good, but the crunch of the Oreo (not to mention the special color) combined with the smoothness of the cheesecake is what makes this cupcake a winner. So next time I will halve the recipe. Or buy more Oreos!

You can find the recipe here. Happy Halloween!

Cutest Cupcakes for the Cutest Birthday Boy

Simon is three! Can you believe it? What an old geezer. Because he is supremely loved/spoiled, he had to have a whole bunch of birthday parties, including one with his grandparents, aunts and aunts/uncles/cousins once removed. It was a sublime excuse for his grandma to buy lots of farm animal-themed crap, as this was a farm animal-themed birthday party. And it was an equally sublime excuse for his aunt Sarah to make him the adorable animal cupcakes from Martha Stewart!

After much agonizing, Simon went with the pig

These cupcakes are really pretty straightforward; just make sure you set aside a lot of time to make them, as they are time-consuming to decorate. Since I was only making a couple of each kind of cupcake, I used pink jelly beans instead of Bubble Tape for the pigs' ears, and I used buttercream instead of fondant for the monkey. Amazingly, I had never made Swiss buttercream before! If, like me, you are a novice, I would advise that you not worry too much about the buttercream coming together. I thought mine was really lumpy but I let the mixer work on it for a while longer and soon it was nice and smooth. Timesucking aside, these were a lot of fun to make; I think the mouse was my favorite!

For the monkey click here.

For the mouse click here.

For the lion (bonus lamb included!) click here.

For some reason, the pig recipe is not on the Web site, but luckily it's the simplest one to duplicate. Just make some dark pink frosting and some light pink frosting; spread on the dark pink frosting, pipe a large circle of light pink for the snout, then add two dollops of dark pink on top of that for the nostrils. Add brown mini M and Ms for the eyes and either pink jelly beans or triangular pieces of bubble gum for the ears. Voila! An adorable pig. (Funny side story: my dad asked if it was okay for me to make a pig cupcake, as pigs are not kosher. I pointed out to him that they are no less kosher than lions, mice and monkeys, and in any case it doesn't matter because they're all cupcakes. Silly.)

Baking Sisters: Graduation Edition

One week ago today, I graduated college. Such things happen, and when they do, you should commemorate them with cupcakes. Still, I'd advise anyone still in college to stay there as long as possible, because cupcakes aside, graduating blows. It is almost as awful as making the tiny diploma-shaped cookies on top of these cupcakes, except that at the end of that process, you get a cookie, whereas at the end of graduation, you get a useless degree and legions of adults saying, "I know I shouldn't ask you this, but..." Happy fucking graduation, Class of 2011.

MSC Club May: Tiramisu Cupcakes

I'm back with the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club.  After taking the last few months off (there was a lot going on around the 15th of March and April, with Jewish holidays), I'm back and I'm really glad it is for tiramisu cupcakes.  I love, love, love tiramisu.  Whenever I am in a good Italian restaurant, I will usually order it for dessert.  I have never actually made tiramisu at home, although I have heard it is not so hard, but I have made Dorie's Tiramisu Cake (amazing -- you should totally try it!) and now these cupcakes.

The recipe for these looks really complicated, but they were much easier to put together than it would seem from reading the recipe.  I made 1/3 of the recipe and got 5 cupcakes. I made the frosting and the coffe syrup (minus the marsala wine) this morning.  As you can see in the cupcake cross section, I didn't let the syrup sink in enough.  As a result, the coffee flavor was really concentrated in the top of cake.  The frosting was delicious -- very light, with a little something extra from the mascarpone cheese.  Theses tasted a lot like tiramisu, and I think they would have been even better if I let the syrup sink into the cupcakes.  I may try one in a few hours and see if it made any difference.  Thanks to Jen at The Rookie Baker for the great pick!

MSC: Chocolate Chip Cupcakes (My Pick!)

Yay!  This month Martha Stewart's Cupcake Club pick is mine!  I am super excited about this (in case you couldn't tell) because, while I have enjoyed making all the different cupcakes, sometimes it is fun to make something I choose myself.  And obviously, if I was going to choose something, it was going to be chocolate.  

Anyway, enough about that.  Welcome to the Baking Sisters if you are visiting us for the first time.  We hope you'll stay, look around and read some posts by Sarah, who is really the funniest of the Baking Sisters.  I also hope that, if you baked along with me, you enjoyed these cupcakes.  I tried to pick something that would be delicious, but not to difficult to make.  These cupcakes really fit the bill.  They were light and fluffy (from the addition of whipped egg whites) and had little bursts of chocolate from the chips.

The only thing I didn't love about these was the frosting.  Even though I reduced the butter, I still thought it was too buttery and heavy in comparison to the lightness of the cupcakes.  I think I would either do these with a chocolate glaze or a lighter chocolate frosting.

You can find the recipe here, with chocolate chip frosting.  Maybe I'll have to try that next time.

Thanks so much for baking along with me!  I have had a fantastic time being part of this group and getting to see everyone's blogs and I look forward to making more yummy treats with all of you in the coming months.

MSC: Black Forest Cupcakes

Martha Stewart Cupcake Club is back (at least for me).  After taking last month off, I bring you Black Forest Cupcakes, chosen by Janine at Janine's Crazy World.  When I think of Black Forest Cake, I think of chocolate, cherries and whipped cream.  These had pastry cream instead of the whipped cream.  I was a bit apprehensive about making these cupcakes because I am not a huge fan of Black Forst Cake, but I thought the replacement of pastry cream for whipped cream was really great and I ended up enjoying these.  Don't they look like ice cream sundaes?

These were easier to put together than they looked.  The cupcakes were pretty standard and both the pastry cream and the ganache were straightforward.  I always seem to cook pastry cream about 30 seconds past done and then it gets lumpy, but it didn't matter in this case, since the pastry cream was not the star. I know pastry cream seems scary, but if you follow the directions and watch closely, it is not too bad.  I used flour as a thickener because I didn't have corn starch and it was a totally fine substitute.  The ratio is about 2 tablespoons flour for every 1 tablespoon the recipe called for.  I didn't make any other changes, except that I didn't have cherry liquor, so I just left it out.

I quartered the recipe and got 7 cupcakes.  I didn't turn them all into black forest because there was really no one around to eat such huge cupcakes.  These are something I would make for an event, but they are not exactly your "I think I'll whip up some cupcakes today" cupcakes.  They are more involved than that.  Also, these are best the day they are put together, even though you can make the parts in advance.

Thanks to Janine for a great pick!  The recipe is here.  Next month is my pick, so tune in!

**This blog is going up on the 14th because we don't put up posts on Shabbat.  I look forward to commenting on everyone's blogs on Sunday.**

Golden Lemon Cake for Nikhita

I find myself staring into the maw of my second semester of senior year, and you know what that means - time to find a job. If you were going to ask me very politely what I'm thinking about doing, you may very politely shut your mouth. It's not a nice question to ask a senior in college. I went to a career fair in October and it was the most dispiriting hour of my life. I even invented a drinking game. Take a shot every time someone asks you if you're a software engineer and then his face falls when you say you aren't. By the end of it, you'll be drunk enough to go the career fair and not come out of it believing that you're never, never going to be employed. Apparently, at the February career fair there's more variety, but only companies with massive hiring needs know that they have the funding to recruit at places like Brown at the beginning of the year, so the only people there are Web- or tech-related companies like Amazon or Facebook, do-gooders like Teach for America or the Peace Corp, and financial sector firms.

Which brings us to cake. I mean duh. My friend Nikhita recently received a job offer from not one but two financial firms, and in the end she picked the Big Bad Goldman Sachs. Exciting stuff! I promised that we would bake a congratulatory cake in exchange for my being her trophy wife and lounging around her apartment baking all day, since she'll never be in said apartment when she's working 27-hour days. Her parameters were that it not be chocolate and not be too complicated. Nikhita is a fantastic cook, inventive and intuitive, but she has no confidence in her baking ability. We decided on a simple Martha Stewart lemon cake recipe with whipped frosting, which I had originally picked out because it was golden, like the vast amounts of money Nikhita will soon be making.

I don't think we could have made a more perfect choice. This cake was a dream in every way. It was so easy to make, not to mention forgiving - I accidentally added an additional egg yolk and it didn't mess things up at all! It baked to a perfect even hue and not only came out of the pan whole, but remained whole when I placed one layer on top of the other. As avid readers of this blog know, that NEVER happens to me, so major points for the cake. The whipped frosting looked lovely, although I'm more of a buttercream kind of gal. But most importantly, a) it tasted amazing, fluffy and delicately flavored and b) it gave Nikhita the confidence to believe that she too can bake delicious treats. She said that she would try this recipe, which was always one of her favorites when we were in Cambridge together. We'll let you know how it goes!

The proud baker with her creation

You can find the recipe here. (We didn't make the candied lemons.) This is definitely going to become one of my go-to cakes.

MSC November: Marshmallow Turkey Cupcakes

Double post day!  It is Martha Stewart Cupcake posting day for November and National Bundt Day, and I am posting in support of Mary the Food Librarian and her quest to make 30 bundts in 30 days.  You can see that post here.  But on to the cupcakes...


When I saw that these cupcakes were the selection for November, I groaned inwardly.  You see, these cupcakes combine many elements that I am not that interested in... coconut, gummy fish and marshmallows (which are fine, but hard to find kosher).  As readers of this blog know, coconut is up there with foods that I really do not enjoy, so when I read that these cupcakes were covered in coconut and involved coconut covered marshmallows (hard to find kosher when its not Passover), I debated not making them.


But, now I have to thank Rachel at Simple Girl, because these cupcakes were really fun to make.  I joined this club because I love cupcakes, but I also enjoy learning new decorating techniques and it was a fun activity to make the turkeys.  I'm not sure how much they actually look like a turkey, but I think they are kind of cute anyway.


I made a few changes to this recipe.  First, I made 1/4 of the One Bowl Chocolate cupcake recipe and got 4 cupcakes, which was prefect because I had no where to bring these.  Second, I could not find coconut covered marshmallows, so I just used orange ones.  I did not use sprinkles for the eyes and instead I used dots of black food coloring.  Finally, 10 minutes was way to long to toast the coconut (burned the first batch and almost burned this one too).  I think I would do a much shorter amount of time, maybe 4 minutes.


You can find the recipe here.

The Shabbos Kallah, Part 3: Chocolate Mint Cupcakes

When I ask Miriam what she wanted for her Shabbos Kallah, the only thing that she said was "chocolate." The cake that I made was pretty much all chocolate (except the marshmallow frosting), so I wanted to do some more interesting variations. Voila, in comes Martha Stewart with these bee-youtiful cupcakes. Of course, they look nicer on her Web site - they always do - but they've still got the wow factor because of the chocolate-covered mint leaves. Said leaves appeared to be everyone's favorite part of the cupcake, or at least what pushed them over the top; no one could stop talking about the intensity of flavor or prettiness of presentation.

The leaves were kind of a pain to make but in the end they were worth it. You can either dip one side in chocolate and paint the other side (you can't really dip both sides, it ends up making the leaf too limp) or paint both sides, which means you're more likely to get the pattern of veins on the leaf but also takes a long time and leaves you exposed to unsightly green patches. Your choice.

Also, I don't know why - maybe I just didn't heat the whites hot enough or beat the meringue long enough - but this frosting absolutely did not work for me. I ended up having to shovel spoonfuls of confectioners' sugar into the mixer just to get it to achieve the correct consistency, but I think it spoiled the "fresh mint flavor" she was talking about, so then I had to add a lot more peppermint extract. Anyway, it ended up tasting good but I could have just made a simple buttercream and it would have tasted the same with a lot less effort. So let that (whatever "that" is) be a lesson to you all.

You can find the recipe here. Also, the pretty cupcake wrappers I used for both these and the maple cupcakes were bought at Zabar's, on 80th and Broadway.

MSC October: Snickerdoodle Cupcakes or Yay for Cinnamon

I love cinnamon, so I was super excited to make these snickerdoodle cupcakes.  Katie from Katiecakes picked these cupcakes for October for the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club.  I really liked these cupcakes.  The only issue I had with them is that I had no cake flour, so I had to make a substitution, which made the cupcakes slightly gummy, but they still had good flavor.

I served these cupcakes two different times (I intended to make half the recipe, but forgot when I went to cream the butter).  One time, I used Martha's fluffy white frosting, sprinkled with cinnamon.  I served them on Sukkot and they were a hit with everyone in our very first sukkah.

Then, I put unfrosted cupcakes in the freezer, figuring I would deal with them before the October 15th posting date.  And then, we went to New York for an amazing wedding -- the bride is like our 4th sister -- and when I got back on Monday, I realized it was time for single-mommydom, which is not great for baking.  However, the other day I was finally able to whip up a new frosting.  This time, I decided to make cinnamon, to compliment the cinnamon flavor in the cupcakes. I'm sure there is a recipe out there somewhere, but I just made the fluffy white frosting and tossed in a bunch of cinnamon until it tasted right.  I really liked the way the cinnamon frosting tasted.  I also experimented with piping.  I haven't gotten it exactly right yet, but I'm working on it.

We took the cupcakes to our friends Mike and Kim's house, since they just had a new baby.  We had a yummy (but meat) dinner, so I didn't get to taste the cupcakes, but hopefully everyone there enjoyed them.

You can find the cupcake recipe here, on Martha's website.

MSC September: Cookies and Cream Cupcakes that Almost Didn't Get Made

Imagine for a moment that you just started a new job, and it is at a synagogue, and Rosh Hashanah is 2 days after Labor Day, and the kick-off for the religious school you are running is one day before Rosh Hashanah.  As you can probably imagine, I was super busy and didn't have a lot of baking time.

Then, I saw that this month's Martha Stewart Cupcake Club selection, by Nina from Nina's Cupcakes, was cookies and cream cupcakes -- also known as oreo cheesecakes with oreo cookie crusts.  Yummy.  And, they seemed fairly easy.  I decided I would take some of these to my office and give some to my friend Mike for his birthday.

We had to work on Labor day this year because of the holidays and the start of school, so I thought these would be a nice treat, even if it didn't totally make up for being in the office on a holiday.  The people in my office don't often eat that much.  They eat lunch and everything, but cookies and other baked goods don't seem to hold the same allure as they did in my husband's office.  I thought I would have a bunch left over and would drive them to Mike after work on Labor Day.

The best laid plans...these were devoured in an instant.  There were none left for Mike (sorry Mike!).  I guess people liked these cupcakes a lot.  They weren't too heavy, even for cheesecake and the oreos stayed pretty crunchy on the bottom, which was a nice contrast.  Nina, thanks for the great pick and the people in my office thank you too!

You can find the recipe in Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. 

MSC August: Triple Citrus Cupcakes

Welcome to the August edition of the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club, featuring Triple Citrus Cupcakes.  Marthe, of Culinary Delights, chose these cupcakes, which seem just the thing for hot weather (not that we are having any in LA these days, but in theory).  They were tart, with a delicious glaze and you really tasted the orange, lemon and lime.

These cupcakes are a snap to make, especially if you have a micro-plane zester.  As we all know, Sarah loves zesting, so these are perfect cupcakes for her, and anyone else who enjoys that activity.  The one change I made to this recipe was to rub together the sugar and the zest before creaming them into the butter (a trick learned from Dorie Greenspan), which I think added to the flavor.

These had a really good citrus flavor.  I found them to be more like muffins than cupcakes, especially without the glaze, so I think you could be justified in eating them for breakfast.  I made the glaze with less sugar than Martha suggests and they were really tart with the glaze on, but in a good way.  I made lime flavored glaze, but you could make lemon or orange and I think it would be delicious.  I would definitely make these again and may try grapefruit too!

Thanks Marthe for the great pick.  You can find the recipe in Martha Stewart Cupcakes or here.

MSC: Flourless Chocolate Cupakes

Can I just say that I love being part of a baking group?  Although I wish I could commit to something like Tuesdays with Dorie, I just can't make that kind of commitment to bake every week.  That is why I love the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club.  You only make one per month, but you get to see lots of new blogs and, best of all, I get to try things I might not have otherwise.

That is the case with this month's cupcakes, chosen by Lauryn of Bella Baker.  Her blog is really cute and she makes such beautiful stuff.  She chose flourless chocolate cupcakes, which I probably would never have made if it were not for this group.  I have made numerous flourless chocolate cakes before, especially during Passover, and they have all be fine, but nothing special.

Let me tell you, these were special.  These were so good.  They were rich and chocolately, but just the right size to eat without being overwhelmingly rich.  I think these would be just as good parve and they are totally Kosher for Passover, so I will be adding them to my list of Passover desserts.

These were not very hard to make, although folding in egg whites can be tricky. My only advice is to be gentle and don't worry if there are a few streaks of white in your batter.  My cupcakes pulled away from the wrapper as they baked, but it was not a big deal.  I would just plan not to serve them in the wrappers.

Martha suggests serving these with ice cream, which I didn't have, so I used whipped cream instead.  They were very good with the whipped cream and I liked the contrast of the light cream with the rich cake.  I guess this wouldn't work if you wanted to make them parve, but you could probably use raspberry sorbet and it would be delicious.

Thanks Lauryn!  This was a great pick and I am excited to make them again.