Caramel Cupcakes

When I saw the post asking people in my congregation to donate baked goods to be used as prizes for a bingo event held last night, I thought about making a King Cake.  Then I realized the difficulty to explain to a northern (and really, Yankee) Jewish congregation about such things and remembered the reaction when I'd suggested having a chili cookoff (which some believe is impossible to make kosher, which would be a huge surprise to my old community in Dallas), and decided to make other things.

Because there are always people who want something gluten-free, I offered to make chocolate cookies.  They did not come out as pretty as the recipe promised, but seemed edible.  They probably did not flatten out as much as the recipe said they would because I was a little short of confectioner's sugar and made up for it with cocoa, then used regular-sized chips instead of mini-chips.

Since I am allergic to chocolate I could not test them, and I was glad for an unexpectedly warm day that allowed me to open the windows while they baked.  I ended up with twenty-six so wrapped up two packages of a baker's dozen each.

The cookies used only egg whites so I looked for a recipe to use up the yolks.  I thought of making more cookies, maybe to donate to BiCi Co's Earn-a-Bike crew.  I had planned to use one of my Pampered Chef packets to make a quick Apple Cider cake with cider drizzle, because I have apple cider to use up, or a Caramel Latte loaf.  I thought if I made the Caramel Latte mix into cupcakes, I could add caramel frosting and use some to fill the cookies into pairs.

Then I found a recipe for Golden Cake in one of  my old (1930) cookbooks, and plans changed!

As you can see, the recipe uses only egg yolks - and exactly the number left over from the cookies!

I also had cream left from making biscuits last weekend, and it would be just enough for the cake and frosting.  So I made this, substituting vanilla and imitation black walnut extracts for the orange, because I thought those would work better with the caramel.  I baked the recipe as eight cupcakes, luckily using large decorative papers because it rises nicely.  One cupcake quickly disappeared as quality control.

While the cupcakes baked, I made the caramel frosting, from a 1957 recipe.  I don't have a Mixmaster, I have a Kitchenaid, but I love how this little booklet offered so many ways to use the machine:

The tedious parts were basically no-work, just the occasional stirring as the caramel came to the boil, and waiting for it to cool.  To speed that I poured most of the caramel into the bowl of my Kitchenaid.  I used the whisk attachment.  I worried about the amount of confectioner's sugar (see above - I thought I had more than the new package, but I didn't, and it was just under four cups) so I put a small slick of the caramel on top of the cupcakes, under the frosting.  And quality control got a taste, too.

This was the end result:

I had a bakery package for four cupcakes, so I made six and selected the ones I thought looked best.  They have a huge pile of frosting on top, over a very light cake, with that slick of caramel, and just barely fit.  Hopefully people were attracted and took them as an early prize.  I have the other two cupcakes in my freezer, to doorbell-ditch for a friend, or take to my mother for her birthday.

All the Twos

Of course, this doesn't work if you write the month first, unless you use only the two year numbers and drop the century.  But who's counting?

Is this a good time to talk about Resolutions and Progress and all that?  I did get the ends run in for the mitts finished, and am almost to the end of the thumb gusset of the first Gift Box Mitt.  Dark (in patches) yarn and US#0 needles and having to track a stitch pattern make for less speed than I often accomplish.

I meant to post something over the weekend, but did other things, and then I took most of yesterday off as it was a corporate holiday and my boss said I should.  So I did only meetings that didn't get cancelled because the other person (usually at a customer) didn't have the day off and was working.  We had a surprisingly warm day and it was sunny, so I managed to get out a bit and that felt nice.

Just a few things.

I'd planned to post this weekend - tribute to Abraham Lincoln, his birthday was Saturday, so I wore this shirt:

Sunday was the Super Bowl®, as well as "Superb Owl" Sunday, and while I didn't really have a dog in the hunt, as they say, I wanted the Bengals to win.  The Rams managed to pull it off very well in the last of the fourth quarter, so overall it was a good game, and now football is done until autumn.

I finished the mitts (except for running in ends) and size-wise they fit me adequately, so they might be small for the intended recipient.  If so, she can give them to somebody.

These came out definitely fraternal, almost no matching except in the final rows.  If I'd continued to full mittens they might be closer, but I wasn't sure I have enough yarn, and when giving something away fingerless is easier to do than worrying if the length is correct.

This is the next pair:

They are a Leading Men Fiber Arts KAL from a few months back, and I didn't get them done at that time (obviously), but still want to make them for the intended friend.  She does box office at local theatre shows, including an occasional drag show, and the colours are perfect for her.  I wanted to have their "Drama Queen" colourway as the accept (flip-top mitts require a bit more than the skein at left) but they were out, and I thought "Royalty" is an appropriate substitute.

The finished leaf-yoke sweater

I finished the sweater on Wednesday, having added to the collar because I prefer something higher, not feeling as if it's halfway down my shoulders.  This is unblocked but I wore it to the knitting group Zoom meeting tonight and it fits well:

Closeup of a leaf.

   

This is much closer to the
actual colour.

     

Yarn is Lion Brand Woolspun in "Moss Mix" which I keep thinking of as "Swamp Mix".

The KnitTalk group is doing a very easy challenge during the Olympics:  State that you will do something, and do it.  Unlike some groups, you don't have to try to make something from start to finish during the two-weeks-plus timeperiod (February 4th through 20th), for which I'd end up declaring a hat.  It can be as simple as "five rows of a shawl" or as complicated as "three pairs of socks" or "finishing a UFO" or whatever a person wishes.

I said that I would make some mitts, which have been percolating in my brain and needed to get OTN.  This is the first pair, for which I am working from alternating ends of the cake:

The yarn is from Lithuania and is scratchy in
the ribbing but soft in the stockinette part.

These will definitely be fraternal because you can see that one is more purple and the other more blue.  I pulled the ball in half and flipped them for the second one, so the fingers part of the mitts should match, or be close.  Time will tell.