Who You Callin' Cupcake - Michelle Garcia [7]
YIELD: About 3 cups
KEEPS: About five days in the fridge
LEMON CURD
Fruit curd is a kitchen, or at least a baking, staple. A good recipe can yield many different flavored curds using the same ratio of ingredients. This one has always worked for me—hopefully it will for you. Curd can be used for many things, including like jam on toast!
1¾ cups sugar
1 cup lemon juice
¼ cup lemon zest
4 eggs
1 cup butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
HOW TO MAKE IT
1 Fill a large saucepan with several inches of water and bring the water to a boil. Set a metal bowl on top of the pot to make a double boiler. 2 Combine the sugar and the lemon juice in the bowl and stir until well-mixed, then add the lemon zest and the eggs last. Stir the mixture constantly so the raw sugar doesn’t touch the yolks for any period of time—sugar cooks yolks and you’ll end up with little pieces of overcooked egg that are pretty hard to strain out. 3 Cook the mixture over the double boiler, stirring often, until it becomes the consistency of ketchup. 4 Run the mixture through a strainer into a heatproof container. 5 Stir in the butter and then chill the curd in the refrigerator.
HOW TO MAKE IT MANGO
1 Follow the directions for the lemon curd, but substitute mango purée for the lemon juice and keep in the lemon zest for a little tang.
HOW TO MAKE IT GRAPEFRUIT
1 Follow the directions for the lemon curd, but substitute grapefruit juice for the lemon juice and leave out the lemon zest.
YIELD: About 4 cups
KEEPS: About a week in the fridge in an airtight container
PASTRY CREAM
Pastry cream is incredibly multipurpose. Honestly, the possibilities are endless, such as éclair filling, as a great base for vanilla mousse, and as donut filling.
1 cup whole milk
½ a vanilla bean
¼ cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons butter
HOW TO MAKE IT
1 In a medium-sized, thick-bottomed saucepan, place the milk, the vanilla bean scrapings, the vanilla bean pod, and the sugar. 2 In a small bowl, place the egg yolks and the cornstarch and whisk them together. 3 Bring the pot with the milk mixture to a simmer over medium heat. Once it’s heated, pour half of it into the egg yolk mixture while whisking. If you don’t whisk while pouring the milk, the egg yolks will just cook and you’ll have scrambled eggs. A good trick for how to keep the bowl from moving while you’re whisking is to wrap a wet dish towel around the base of the bowl. 4 Once half the mixture is poured into the yolks, pour it all back into the pot and slowly bring everything to a boil over medium heat while whisking. 5 Once you see the first few bubbles, pull the pot off the stove, whisk the mixture briskly, and put the pot back onto the heat. Stop cooking when you see bubbles in the middle of the mixture. That means it has come to a complete boil. 6 Toss in the butter and stir until it’s melted. 7 Place the cream in a heatproof container and cover immediately with plastic wrap. Leave the cream to cool for about 15 minutes before you put it in the refrigerator or you’ll heat up your fridge too much.
YIELD: About 2½ cups
KEEPS: About three days covered in the fridge
MARSHMALLOW
This marshmallow recipe doesn’t work well to just munch on—the flavor isn’t deep enough—but for the purposes of this book, it’s perfect and easy enough to make at home.
2 cups cold water, divided
2 cups sugar
2 (½-tablespoon) packages powdered gelatin
(see note)
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup cornstarch
HOW TO MAKE IT
1 Start the day before—Place 1 cup of water in a super-clean, medium-sized, thick-bottomed saucepan and then add the sugar. Make sure the sugar goes right onto the water, not onto the sides of the pot. Put the pot over medium heat. 2 In the bowl of a standing mixer with the wire whip attachment, pour the remaining cup of water and both