Persistence of Memory

This is a double chocolate cake with cream cheese and blueberry filling. And as usual, it is eggless and the base is a boxed cake mix.

Ingredients:
1 box of Duncan Hines Devil Food cake mix
1 tub of whipped cream cheese
1 small basket of blueberries
1 large handful of chocolate chips
chocolate frosting
cream cheese frosting
sugar
milk
cooking spray
flour

Directions: Separate out the cake mix into two halves. Bake two separate layers from each half of the box mix. For each, mix 7/8 cup of milk with half a box of cake mix and half of the chocolate chips. Oil your cake pan, and sift flour over the oiled surface. You do not want the thin layers of cake to break when you are removing them from the cake pan/stacking them. Bake each layer at 350 degrees F for 20-25mins. The cream cheese filling is 8oz of cream cheese mixed with 3-5 tablespoons of sugar to taste. To make the blueberry filling wash the blue berries and cook them at medium heat over the stove with a few tablespoons of water. Mash the berries as they cook. Add 2-3 tablespoons of sugar to taste. Cook until the berries have reached a jam-like consistency. When the layers and jam have cooled, you are read to stack. Spread a layer of cream cheese over the bottom cake layer. Then spread a layer of the blueberry jam. Finally carefully stack on the top layer, and frost. Here, I was inspired by Dali.

Kiwi Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Last week, I used some cream cheese to make enchiladas. I had leftover cream cheese, and the best use for it I could think of was cream cheese frosting! Coincidentally, I walked into the breakroom earlier this week to see these:


Home-grown Santa Cruz Kiwis. I decided to try making cupcakes with the kiwis. I decided to modify a banana cupcake recipe (from Martha Stewart), because kiwis are acidic and high in water content, as bananas are. I halved the recipe, replaced the all purpose flour with white whole wheat flour, and omitted the baking soda.

Makes 12 small-medium cupcakes
INGREDIENTS
For the cupcakes
3/4 c white whole wheat flour
3/8 c white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
3 Tbsp butter, melted
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
6 small kiwis
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

For the frosting
4oz 1/3 fat cream cheese, softened
5 Tbsp butter, at room temperature
~1 c confectioner's sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 12 small-medium muffin cups. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
2. Coarsely chop and puree kiwis
3. Make a well in center of flour mixture. In well, mix together butter, oil, pureed kiwis, eggs, and vanilla. At this point, Linda said to me "Now, all you need is ham!" To go with my seemingly green eggs hahaha
4. Stir wet ingredients to incorporate flour mixture (do not overmix). Dividing evenly, spoon batter into muffin cups.
5. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan; cool completely on a wire rack.
6. While the cupcakes are baking and cooling, cream the cream cheese and butter together with an electric mixer until smooth. While still mixing, sift in confectioner's sugar. Begin with ~1/2 cup, and taste. Keep adding sugar until you get your desired sweetness.
   
7. Once the cupcakes have cooled completely, frost with as much frosting as you like! The frosting recipe made about twice as much frosting for my taste.
   

I noticed that the cupcakes were not green at all despite the kiwi, and so I decided to experiment with some food coloring to get green frosting. But it turned out more tourquise-ish...regardless, the cupcakes turned out reasonably tasty. The kiwi flavor wasn't very strong, but it just added a sourish, interesting taste. They definitely needed the cream cheese taste in the frosting to complete the package. The cupcakes did turn out incredibly moist and soft, despite the whole wheat flour. They were also a little dense, I think because of the high water content of the kiwis. Can't say I'd make these again, but they did go quickly when I brought them to a friend's house.