Little Drops of Love

Baking is a special joy to me. 

Not every chef or cook enjoys baking...it is much more ordered and precise than some other cooking tasks and relies much more on specific formulas. You can't just throw in a dash of this or that in an impromptu manner and expect great results.

But there are specific joys to baking and life lessons to be learned from it as a practice. Baking is a miracle of the physical world. Throw together some flour, sugar, butter, eggs, various flavorings and maybe some leavening, and there’s a wonderful treat at the end of the process.

Baking teaches patience and provides a beautiful space in which to lose yourself and let go of anything and everything outside of the here and now. And while there is an instant gratification component to it, no matter how much I perfect my skills, there are still things which I can’t always control. So I learn to roll with the punches and, sometimes, to let go of the results. 

The only thing that gives me greater pleasure than baking some sort of delicious and "made from scratch" sweet treat...is doing it with a loved one and sharing with them the joy of baking. This past Sunday, my dearest friend Dawn Darby joined me in a baking adventure: Dark chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean icing...yummmmm. 

Now...this wasn't just any old baking occasion...these particular cupcakes were for our beautiful friend's birthday...the one and only Catherine Conway. When I think of Catherine, my whole being smiles and is filled with the warmth of this beautiful woman's friendship. Catherine is the kind of girl that leaves little notes of encouragement hidden in your work bag, makes you feel like a million dollars even if you haven't showered in 3 days, helps you appreciate the finer things in life, and will be the first to bust out into random song and dance just when you need a laugh. A gem of woman and a diamond of a friend. 

When you are baking for someone as a gift, like for our darling Miss Cathy Lou, you really want to try to pour all of the warm, fuzzy, loving feelings into your creation so that others can feel the love baked into every little morsel. And, I have to say, I think Dawn and I nailed it! 

After a long day of road biking, I could not think of a better way to spend my Sunday evening but sharing in the joys of baking with Dawn Darby...laughing, sharing stories from the week, teaching tricks of the baking trade, eating way too much cupcake batter until our stomachs could take no more and, most of all, pouring our hearts into these "lil drops of love" for Cathy. 

Thank you, Dawn Darby, for your joy of baking, your loving heart, and eagerness to learn. And to Miss Cathy Lou...may there be many more days filled with little drops of love and may you savor every moment of this new and exciting year of life!

Recipe (a tribute to one of my idols, Alice Waters)

8 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped

2 cups cake flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

6 Tbsp. cocoa powder

8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter, softened (*very important to note here that butter should be room temp and NOT MELTED)

2 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

3 eggs, room temp

1/2 cup buttermilk, room temp

1 cup boiling water

First things first...Set the oven to 350. 

Now, I am going to give you a few "tricks of the trade" that I shared with Dawn Darby that you can apply to most baked goods...this way you can simply look at the ingredients and have a general idea of how things should go.

1) Combine the dry ingredients: In a medium bowl, combine your flour, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder. This is usually your first step in any baking adventure. 

2) Cream butter and sugar: The usual next step in baking is to adequately cream your butter and your sugar together in a LARGE bowl. The part that is tricky here is that most people don't really know what it means to "cream" the butter/sugar and often spend too little time on this step. Creaming is important because it creates air pockets in the batter...causing the baked sweet to rise and giving it an airy, delicate texture and should take about 10 minutes...yes, that's right, 10 minutes of mixing (sometimes longer with a hand mixer). So, get out your kitchen aid or hand mixer and get to creaming until the butter is light and fluffy and very light in coloring.

3). Add eggs and vanilla to butter mixture: After creaming the butter and sugar, you are going to want to gently combine the eggs and vanilla in a small bowl (whisk with a fork usually) until just incorporated. Then...slowly add to the butter/sugar mixture...mixing in about 1 tablespoon of egg at at time.

These 3 steps are the main steps of most baking recipes...once you have completed these steps...it's time to:

4) melt the chocolate in a double boiler (If you don't have a double boiler, you can improvise by putting a small saucepan on top of a bigger sauce pan with water in it) 

5) Gently fold, with a spatula, the melted chocolate into the butter mixture

6) Add the dry ingredients into wet ingredients: Add 1/2 of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture and fully incorporate. Then mix in all of the buttermilk and fully incorporate. Finish with mixing in the remaining dry ingredients. 

7) And last, but not least, pour the boiling water into the batter and gently incorporate. 

Pour the batter into greased/buttered/lined cupcake pan...place in oven for about 13 minutes...and voila...lil drops of love! 

For the icing...feel free to be creative and combine some of your favorite flavors. For our treats, we mixed 12 ounces of cream cheese, 1 stick of softened butter, 1 tbls. of vanilla extract, the beans from 1 whole vanilla bean, and lemon zest from 1 small lemon. This particular icing is delicious and slightly tangy...which compliments the rich chocolate cake perfectly. 

Make sure to enjoy a few cupcakes straight out of the oven...they are always best the first day!