Maple Caramel "Beavertail" Cheesecake

Even though this recipe was meant to make you think of Winterlude, it all began at Costco. 

Mini Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecakes

This past weekend was Thanksgiving here in Canada. I knew I wanted to make something with pumpkin (shocking I know) and when I saw the Share Your Sweets theme for this week was cheesecake, I knew pumpkin cheesecake was it. I had never made any kind of pumpkin cheesecake before so I went looking for the perfect recipe. Turns out I couldn't find one that had all of the things I was looking for so I mashed a bunch of them together and came up with my own. 

I'm dying to make a "real" cheesecake but there are two main things stopping me: 1) they're really expensive to make because most call for at least three packages of cream cheese, and 2) I try to share my treats with as many people as possible and walking to work with a whole cheesecake seems daunting. Therefore, I made minis. A quick note - I actually made 12 super huge minis. I wrote the recipe below for 16 to 18 because there was more than enough crust and filling to make more than 12.

Mini Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecakes
makes 16 to 18

For the crust:

1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons sugar (brown or white)
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 tablespoons melted butter (measured after melting)

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and put 18 liners into your muffin tins.
• Mix together all ingredients and put about one tablespoon of crust mixture into each liner and pat down to compress.
• Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until golden brown.
• Let the crust cool a bit while making the filling.

 For the filling:

8 oz cream cheese (I used light)
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2/3 cup of pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/3 cup caramel or dulce de leche

• Using a stand or hand mixer, combine cream cheese, sugar, maple syrup, and pumpkin puree until combined.
• Add the eggs, vanilla, and pumpkin pie spice.
• Fill prepared crust about 3/4 full.
• Add about one teaspoon of  caramel to the top of the filled crusts and swirl through the batter with a toothpick or skewer. 
• Bake at 350 degrees for 22 to 25 minutes until just slightly jiggly in the middle.
• Let cool on a rack and then refrigerate for at least two hours before serving. 

Crust

Batter

Dulce de leche from Costco - only $3.99! Find it near the peanut butter and jam

Adding the dulce de leche

After the swirl

Out of the oven

These were delicious. The crust was a bit too crunchy for my taste but otherwise, fantastic! I think that the crunchiness might have had something to do with the maple syrup and extra sugar in the crust. I haven't had anyone else taste test them yet but I anticipate they'll be a hit. These are a great alternative to pumpkin pie if you're not a huge fan. The texture is a bit firmer than pumpkin pie and I know that texture is an issue for some people. I'd never thought of combining pumpkin and caramel before but I'd certainly try it again.

Fellow Canadians, what did you have for dessert with your Thanksgiving dinner? 

Share Your Sweets: Apples

The theme for Serious Sweets this week is apples. Since I don't have a go-to apple recipe in my repertoire I did a little search for something new and I came up with these - baked caramel apple doughnuts.

This recipe (available here) came from Tracey Benjamin's website, Shutterbean. I had never really checked out her site before but was familiar with her stuff from her podcast with Joy from Joy the Baker. The recipe called for apples and a doughnut pan so it seemed perfect. 

To begin, peel and then shred up three apples with a box grater. It goes reremarkably quickly once you get started.

Mix the wet ingredients in one bowl and dry in a second. Mix the wet with the dry until just combined. 

Add the apples and combine.

Into the pan and bake for about 18 minutes. 

Too quick trying to get one out of the pan

Since I only have one doughnut pan with six holes, I got impatient and also used a muffin tin so I could bake more than six at a time. It's basically just a sweet muffin batter anyway, so no real difference. In fact, if you don't have a doughnut pan, there's no reason not to make these. Almost everyone has a muffin tin.

While I was waiting for the doughnuts to cool I started getting the caramel topping together. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take any pictures of this step. It was extremely simple. Unwrap the caramels, put into a microwaveable bowl or large measuring cup and add the milk. Microwave at 10 second intervals until everything is melted.

I think the final result turned out really well. I took a cue from a comment Tracey made in her post and added a little bit of fleur de sel to the top of a few of the doughnuts and it was amazing.

I only made half the batch of caramel because I thought it was going to make too much. I was wrong. For the rest of the doughnuts, I mixed up a bit of cinnamon and sugar so they wouldn't be left naked. 

I would certainly make these again. If I did, I think I would add the salt to all of them. It was interesting to see that the caramel completely soaked into these overnight. So I would suggest, if you're planning to make them for company, make them the same day or you'll lose the visual appeal. They were just as tasty the next day. 

What's your favorite apple dessert?

Review From the Road: Georgetown Cupcake

Last weekend I got to join one of my friends (hi Lyndsay!) in Washington, DC. Given my love for all things baked, I was curious to check out a famous cupcake shop in town - Georgetown Cupcake.

Georgetown Cupcake (@GTownCupcake) has risen to international fame through their TLC reality show, DC Cupcakes. Friends kept telling me I had to take in Georgetown while I was in DC. Since I was going to be in the neighborhood anyway, I checked out their website to see what they had to offer. I was officially sold when I saw I could order ahead and skip the line. They are notoriously busy (ironically, not on the day I visited) and the opportunity to skip the line was the deciding factor. We also had a belated birthday to celebrate and cupcakes just seemed to make sense.

The shop

The cupcakes

I opted for an assorted half dozen. There are a number of standard flavors they carry every day, some rotating daily flavors, and a few seasonal flavors too. I'll be honest. I had my doubts. I had yet to be even mildly impressed by any "professional" cupcakes I'd tried anywhere so I really had no expectations. I was especially doubtful because, in my experience, foods and restaurants that get the most public hype are the most likely to disappoint. I will admit it...I was wrong. These were absolutely delicious. I kept thinking the next one would be crap, but they just kept getting better.    

Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl

Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl was the first I tried. I bit in expecting it to be dry and tasteless like most cupcakes I've tried. It was moist and chocolatey and delicious. The ganache topping had a great taste and texture and the peanut butter filling seemed to be straight up peanut butter possibly mixed with a bit of icing sugar to stabilize it. I could have eaten a dozen of these. 

The rest were equally delicious. All were nice and moist, almost on the verge of under done which is so much better than being overdone and dry. The texture was great and the frostings were all delicious. Not too sweet and definitely made with real butter and not shortening like some bakeries. 

Caramel Apple

Apple cupcake with dulce de leche filling and cream cheese frosting.
 

Coconut

Coconut cupcake with vanilla cream cheese frosting and coconut on top. This was the only one I didn't love. I thought the coconut flavor was a little fake and I didn't like the stringiness of the shredded coconut in the cake. 
 

Pumpkin Spice

Pumpkin spice cupcake with maple cream cheese frosting. It tasted just like pumpkin pie. Somehow even the texture seemed right. 

Key Lime

The key lime cupcake with key lime frosting tasted remarkably like my own favorite lime cupcakes.

Milk Chocolate Birthday Cake

Milk chocolate birthday cake consisted of really good vanilla cake and perfect chocolate frosting. As always, the addition of sprinkles makes everything better. 

I'm happy to report that I was thoroughly impressed with Georgetown Cupcake. If you're in the DC area, I highly recommend you go and check them out. 

What's the best place you've tried after seeing it on TV? 

Island Fare: Cows Ice Cream

When I am home in PEI I am lucky enough to be less than five minutes away from the Cows Ice Cream Creamery. For those who aren’t familiar, Cows is an Island staple. They started selling their ice cream out in Cavendish (home of Anne of Green Gables) in 1983. Since then they have expanded their offerings to include more than 32 flavors of ice cream. There are currently 5 locations in PEI, one in Halifax, one in Niagara, one in Banff, and one in Whistler.

I’ll be honest…I wasn’t a huge fan of Cows until I spent my first summer working at the Cavendish Boardwalk. Over the summer I managed to make friends with a few of the people working at Cows and took full advantage of my access to $1 staff cones. I think I tried just about every available flavour that summer. I also used to think it was prohibitively expensive but, in my old age, I realize it’s really not that bad. A single cone (two scoops and up to two flavors) in a freshly made waffle cone comes in just under $5. The flavors also change daily depending on what runs out and what else they've got in the freezer. 

Flavors and prices

Freshly made waffle cones. I love that smell.

The Cows website claims there are three factors that make their ice cream so good:

1.    High (16%) butterfat content

2.    Minimum air creates a high density, slow to melt in your mouth ice cream

3.    Good ingredients like fresh cream, real eggs, sugar, pure natural vanilla, fresh PEI berries, and cocoa imported from Holland

Cows is also well known for their parody t-shirts and merchandise. These shirts were all the rage when I was in elementary school. I remember they were a very popular gift to give at birthday parties. They’ve evolved from generally funny word play to cowifying pop culture phenomena. Some of them are quite clever.

This is my current favorite. I think I want the mug.

This past visit had me trying out one new flavour and two that were definitely around last summer. Moo Henry (the new one reminiscent of an Oh Henry bar) is vanilla ice cream with gooey caramel swirl, brown sugar fudge, peanuts, and chocolate pieces. It was quite tasty. The caramel was a perfect consistency and the peanuts were a nice surprise. I didn’t come across them until I got into the second scoop. 

On my second trip I decided to maximize my scoopage and get two flavors in my single cone. Fluff ‘n Udder (fluffer nutter) is chocolate ice cream with marshmallow swirl and mini peanut butter cups. I had been disappointed by this one last year but, in this scoop, it redeemed itself. My second scoop was Peanut Butter Cup Cup - peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter swirl and mini peanut butter cups. Delicious! This scoop was also way better than I remembered it being.

Peanut Butter Cup Cup on top and Fluff 'n Udder on the bottom

All in all, if you find yourself in PEI, you should definitely track down a scoop of Cows. Even if you don’t like ice cream, the stores are fun to browse through and there's usually a large cow statue outside to take a picture with.

Do you have a favorite brand or flavor of ice cream that makes you think of home?

Getting Ready for Camp

In an effort to minimize the madness to come this weekend, I decided to start getting things together for the cupcakes a bit early. The goal for tonight was to get the chocolate frosting and caramelized sugar decorations done for my competition cupcakes. This frosting is kind of out of control. The ingredients include 2 1/4 cups of butter and a pound and a half of chocolate. It's a Paula Deen kind of thing but, surprizingly, it came straight from Martha. If you ever wondered what that much chocolate and butter would look like, wonder no more.

Next up was come caramelized sugar. This was something I didn't think I could possibly mess up...but I did. Boy am I glad I decided to get this stuff out of the way early. Here's what happens when you try to make caramel and the sugar doesn't dissolve. Rock candy!

Needless to say, that went straight to the garbage can. The second go round was much more successful. I added more water and made sure the sugar was totally dissolved before it got to a boil. I was a little too careful and it took forever for the water to boil off but ended up with a much better result. I decided to try my hand at forming the sugar in molds. I'd been reading about it online and it seemed easy enough. I pulled out my collection of woodland creature cutters from Ikea and some random ones from the drawer.

A couple of them turned out alright but none of them are fantastic. I think I'll end up breaking them up and sticking them in the icing. I also made some bubble sugar which I'd never heard of until today. You crumple up the parchment, cover it with some vodka, and pour on the molten sugar. The sugar and alcohol react and create bubbles. It was a pretty cool little science experiment.

The dry ingredients for both batches of cupcakes are measured and ready to go. Hopefully the rest of the prep will work out as well as tonight. I'm really looking forward to this weekend. Not only do I get to make cupcakes and witness what 20,000+ cupcakes look like in one room, but I also get to spend some time with a few of my friends I don't get to see too often. Yay! I'll be sure to update when I get back from the weekend. Wish me luck!