dessert | La Bonne Bouche

Time for October’s challenge for the Dulce Romanie project. This time My fancy cake came up with the idea of baking cupcakes.

I loved this idea, especially since lately I watched one of the Sex and the City episode where Carrie and Miranda were devouring some cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery.

After doing a bit of research on the internet I found the recipe for Magnolia Bakery vanilla cupcakes.

Oh yeah…I knew that was the winner, in combination with chocolate buttercream frosting.

The recipe is pretty simple and the results is simply amazing.

magnolia bakery vanilla cupcakes

makes 12 cupcakes

Cupcakes

171 grams flour

119 grams butter

225 grams sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cups milk

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

Start by lining 12 muffin tins with cupcake papers. Pre-heat the over to 175 C.

In a mixing bowl cream the butter until it reaches a smooth consistency, then add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time. Add the dry ingredients gradually, alternating with the milk and vanilla, mixing well after each addition. Make sure you don’t overbeat the batter. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake papers. Do not fill the liners otherwise the cupcakes will raise over the top of the papers – just fill them 3/4 to achieve an even top that can hold nicely the buttercream frosting.

Bake them at 175C for about 20-25 minutes or until they are cooked.

Chocolate buttercream frosting

2 egg whites

100 grams sugar

125 grams softened butter

100 grams chocolate

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Start by beating the egg whites with the sugar over bain marie. Whisk them until reaching 65 degrees C or until the sugar melted and the mixture is warm.

Remove from the heat and whip until fluffy and cool. Slowly add the softened butter. Meanwhile melt the chocolate over bain marie and allow it to cool to room temperature. Add the cooled chocolate and the vanilla extract to the butter mixture. Mix well, making sure the chocolate is well incorporated.

Pipe the buttercream over the cupcakes.

I kind of abandoned my blog lately, but I had a good reason for it – I was travelling around. The latest trip was in Paris. I always had a love – hate relationship with Paris. Sometimes I just love it, with all its great food, beautiful people, amazing buildings and delicious sweets. Other times it drives me crazy – there are too many people around, you can find terrible restaurants serving horrible food, the Parisians are too arrogant and I can go on for a bit.

My Paris is moody, crazy, lovely, colorful and always full of surprises.

This time I loved Paris, the weather was great, I went to one of the best concerts ever http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNj13LiGpG8&feature=related, the food was great…and the macarons heavenly.

I had an epiphany when it comes to food, I discovered this little gem thanks to http://johntalbottsparis.typepad.com/john_talbotts_paris/2011/02/dans-les-landes-in-the-5th-jeez-i-wish-i-had-a-place-like-this-around-the-corner.html. Dans Les Landes serves southwestern french tapas style food, some of the best tapas I ever tried. The dinner started with salade Landaise, some sort of insanely delicious spring rolls – rice paper encapsulating salad, duck breast, foie gras and asperges served together with an amazing sauce. Next were some crispy fried baby squid (chipirions) served in a clog, so good that we considered a second and third serving.

These dishes were followed by fried shrimp in coconut milk, clams cooked in an amazing greek artichoke sauce, fried quail breasts cooked in the best sauce ever (when I think of it I get hungry in an instant). After all these amazing dishes, we wanted more, even though our bellies were almost exploding and my taste buds were dancing with joy, so we ordered langoustines. I am not going to describe this dish anymore, all I have to say is – it is not fair to have such an amazing food only in this country, these kind of dishes should be produced on a large-scale and distributed around the world. I am sure good food is the answer to world peace 🙂The quality of my pictures does not do any justice to these dishes, next time I will try to do a better job, because next time I go to Paris, I know where I will end up for dinner or lunch:

Dans Les Landes

119 bis rue Monge,

Paris 5e.

Metro: Censier-Daubenton.

01.45.87.06.00.

Ah, did I mention – they serve some amazingly fruity and light Gascogne white wine…and as an added bonus the chef and the waiters are really cute and super friendly.

unfortunately, that evening there was no room for dessert, but next day I wanted to try some of the highly praised macarons. So, after seeing Sacre Coeur I was ready for a heavenly experience and I went to Christophe Roussel’s shop http://www.christophe-roussel.fr/.

The shop looks more like a high-end parfumerie rather than a macaron/chocolate shop. Luckily the guy behind the counter offered us little macaroons samples – I was lost the moment I tried the cheesecake one. Insanely delicious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ended up buying a box full of precious treasures – little crispy cookies bursting with lavender and apricot, coffee, caramel and banana, pistachio, raspberries, chocolate flavours . Forget about diamonds, macarons are the girls best friends.