Date, orange and walnut muffins with caramel cream cheese frosting: Fathers day treats!

So we're not really big on fathers and mothers day celebrations in my family, we usually save all the big presents and fun for birthdays and holidays. In fact, dare i say i had completely forgotten it was fathers day until twitter graciously reminded me. I'd love to say i felt so bad about forgetting and that was the reason i had to whip up something delicious, but in all honesty with my slight baking obsession my thought process went a little like this: "Oh its fathers day tomorrow? i think my dad likes muffins, thats a legitimate excuse to bake i guess. Okay, i'm baking"I know i'm a terrible person, the starving children I know, but what else does one do on a lazy saturday? baking is productive and creative and... okay whatever, so these muffins are unjustifiable, but god they're good.
My mum bought me a huge box of dates the other day (my absolute favourite, with cream cheese and honey, at four in the morning. Don't judge me Nigella does it.) so i was so inspired to use them in some way. In my opinion they are one of the most underrated fruits for baking, i suppose thats because they were pretty much destroyed in the 80's by fruit logs shoved into terrine tins, but they add so much beautiful natural sweetness and flavour that sings when paired with any nut or citrus. I found the recipe for the muffin on joyofbaking.com, i couldn't go past the classic walnut pairing. But for me this wasn't enough, no no, not enough calories in this muffin just yet. So what dessert do you think of when you think of dates? luscious, moist, sticky fingers, sticky date pudding. This dessert has it made, and you know why? caramel. Dates need caramel like Sunny needs Cher, like Thelma needs Louise, like Oreos need milk, it is necessary. And that is why I will never apologise for the shameless decadence of the caramel cream cheese frosting addition i've made to this recipe, thank me later. Don't question it, embrace it.

Date, Orange and Walnut Muffins

To start preheat your oven to 205 Degrees C (400 Degrees F) with the rack place in the centre of the oven. Line a twelve hole muffin tin with paper liners.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ground cinnamon, and orange zest.
In a separate bowl, mix together the orange juice, buttermilk, egg, vanilla extract, and melted and cooled butter.

Add the milk and egg mixture to the flour mixture. Stir until just combined (best to not use the electric mixer for this recipe, the gluten in whole wheat flour can develop a lot easier and all of a sudden you'll have a tough muffin. No harm in a little wooden spoon action)

Gently fold in the dates and walnuts.

Evenly divide the batter among 12 muffin cups. Place in the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until very lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Place on a wire rack to cool.

Orange Date Muffins:

1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour

1 cup (130 grams) whole wheat flour

2/3 cup (140 grams) light brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon grated orange zest(The outer skin of the orange which contains the fruit's flavor and perfume.)

1/3 cup (80 ml) fresh orange juice

2/3 cup (160 ml) buttermilk

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

4 tablespoons (57 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2/3 cup (90 grams) chopped dates

2/3 cup (60 grams) walnuts, coarsely chopped

Orange Date Muffins:Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Place rack in the middle of the oven. Butter or spray, with a non stick vegetable spray, 12 muffin tins (or line with paper liners).

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ground cinnamon, and orange zest.

In a separate bowl, mix together the orange juice, buttermilk, egg, vanilla extract, and melted and cooled butter.

Add the milk and egg mixture to the flour mixture. Stir just until combined. Fold in the dates and walnuts. (Do not over mix the batter or the muffins will be tough when baked.)

Evenly divide the mixture among the 12 muffins cups.Place in the oven and bake for about 15 to20 minutes, or until very lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Place on a wire rack to cool. 

Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

Melt brown sugar and 4 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over medium heat, stir until sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil over medium heat, remove from heat. Whisk in cream and transfer to a heat resistant bowl and allow to cool to room temperature (you can put it in the fridge to speed up this process if you want) BE CAREFUL! caramel can get to very high temperatures.

 Place remaining 6 tablespoons of butter and cream cheese in a large bowl and beat with a mixer on medium-high until smooth. Beat in vanilla. Gradually add the cooled caramel mixture (it has to be cooled otherwise it will melt the butter and cream cheese). Add the icing sugar gradually until you have your desired texture, I ended up using less icing sugar because i wanted it to be more like a whipped cream consistency rather than frosting. 

Top the muffins with as much or as little as the frosting as you like. I found i had way to much frosting for the amount of muffins, so unless your doubling the muffin recipe i would half the frosting. I also had some extra dates so i garnished each muffin with one, bit of donna hay coming out there. 

Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 10 tablespoon butter, divided 
• 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened 
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Dash of salt
• 1 3/4 cups powdered sugar

A month of melting moments!

So after starting this blog I realised it was only a matter of time before i'd have to reveal my stance on the cookie slash biscuit world, after all cupcakes are wonderful but it takes a lot less to eat yourself into a cupcake coma whereas with biscuits and cookies you can munch away with out a care in the world until suddenly your jeans don't fit anymore. And for me there is one king in the cookie world that rains supreme, the melting moment. Two buttery biscuits lighter than shortbreads but more crumbly than a sugar cookie sandwiched together with a generous slather of buttercream and sometimes some form of jam or preserve. Some melbournians know them as Yo Yo's but my New South Wales influenced upbringing, I feel, gives the cookie a name that perfectly describes what it is, a melting moment. It has become tradition for me every time I go out for coffee with my mum to some new cafe to sample their melting moments, and let me tell you it has gotten to the point where in selecting a cafe a conversation like this often occurs:

My Sister: "Can we go to this cafe, i really like it"
Mum: "The Melting Moments are dry"
My Sister: "Okay, what about this other one"
Me: "They don't put enough filling in between the biscuits"
My Sister: "Oh my god..."

We've become melting moment snobs, its true. My mum believes her recipe can't be challenged and i've caught her on more than one occasion taking one of her melting moments to a cafe with her because she knows it will be better. But i still have faith! so i've made it my goal for the next month to judge as many of these melting moments as i can find. At the end of the month i will share with you my mum's brilliant recipe and let you be the judge. So here we go, lets kick off a month of melting moments!

Choclatte Camberwell

The first stop on our melting moment quest is choclatte, a popular cafe in camberwell. I have to say i'm biased here because I love this place, it has the rare perfect balance on the menu between cakes, cookies, lunch-y things and warming drinks, with the added bonus of being a specialty chocolate store. Whenever i'm there I pick up some of the quality cooking chocolate they sell, it takes brownies to a whole new level of fudge, I just can't resist. Plus the service has always been lovely, once i went there when my mum had a sling from a dislocated shoulder injury and they couldn't have been anymore helpful and nice to us. My one critique of this cafe is that it is in camberwell, one of my least favourite places to go purely because of the stigma attached to being a private school girl and sitting out the front of one of these quote unquote 'cool' cafe's (cough, moravia, cough, long black), but hey thats my pride talking not my stomach.

So we got there around the afternoon tea rush but managed to get a table inside. My mum ordered her customary strong cappuccino and my sister ordered a chai latte, which came in a very generous glass which is very uncharacteristic for a lot of these overpriced cafes, and I of course got this melting moment:

Technically a Monte Carlo because of the strawberry jam addition, but i maintain that they are the exact same biscuit and cream recipe. And I'd say a solid start. A good amount of jam and buttercream, generous but not sickly or overpowering. The entire thing was massive, a lot larger than the stock standard melting moment however the biscuits themselves were quite thin so it wasn't hard to get through the whole thing (as if i would have struggled anyway). The consistency of the biscuits was the main let down, despite that promising bright yellow colour the biscuit was dry and not quite buttery enough. The colour can be put down to a distinct type of industrial custard powder i'm sure many cafe's around melbourne are using, my mum summed it up best when she said "you can tell its not homemade". But that buttercream saved it, light and airy the way it should be, so all in all a promising first cookie.

I really can't wait to take this quest more inner city, the dungy alleys of the city, the humble storefronts of south melbourne and brunswick, THAT my friend is where you find melting moment gold, where you find bitter old ladies like my mother out the back of the store with angry vendetta's against margarine.

Just Vanilla Cupcakes? Yes.

The vanilla cupcake, fluffy and generous if done right, hideous false advertising if done wrong. A classic vanilla cupcake is the quiet achiever of the baking world. We scoff at its simplicity, lets be honest when you've got new, fruitier innovations like pina colada cupcakes dying to be tested, or the exotic mango sago I have fallen so deeply in love with from Cupcake Central, a vanilla cupcake seems a bit elementary. After all, you've perfected it right? vanilla cupcakes, they're so easy of course you have, and why spend the time making something so easy and unassuming, us young bakers have to constantly push the boundaries of our creativity! (and electric beaters). We need to stay at the forefront of the baking fads, there is no time to perfect that vanilla cupcake recipe. No young grasshoppers, wrong. Close your Adriana Zumbo cookbook, put away your brulee torch and sheets of gelatine, that vanilla cupcake recipe isn't as basic and boring as you once thought.

So what has given the vanilla cupcake such a bad rep? it comes back to my false advertising comment. How many times have you gone for that delicate little yellow cupcake with some form of non-descript coloured frosting with the highest expectations only to be shutdown by the following culprits: a dense bread like consistency, crusty icing-sugar-laden frosting, dry brittle sand cake and, my personal vendetta, the distinct preservative aftertaste that is unique to the dreaded box cake. If your going to take that route however i'd remain loyal to the white wings line, never admit thats its a box cake though, deny deny.... what? box cake? anyway moral to the story is that the simple cupcakes can be the most deceptive. My advice to avoid eating these disappointing cupcakes is simple, specialty cupcake bakery's and bake sales are your best bet in a cupcake drenched society, especially ones that advertise fresh baking EVERY day, thats pretty much a silent oath to never deliver hard, crystallised icing.

And what makes these cupcakes superior is clear to see when you eat the almost disgusting amount of cupcakes I tend to eat on a regular basis. Its all about the fluffy, light cake, the secret to that lies in the batter, and trust me when you have a perfect batter, you will know. You will also possibly have salmonella because its impossible to resist licking the bowl after a really good batter. The second crucial word you must know to make any good cupcake (also the most over used word in baking) is moist. But try and look beyond the realm of butter (hard i know, its butter) but sour cream, yogurt, vegetable oil, buttermilk: all valuable weapons in your baking artillery.

So without further ado, my vanilla cupcake recipe. And let me tell you, this is a true vanilla cupcake, not yellow, not butter cake, so i would recommend using vanilla beans. I know, I know, its extravagant, I hate spending the money for what seems like just black specks in my cakes, and if it were any other recipe i'd say a good pure vanilla extract would suffice, but for me, this is the ingredient that takes the boring tried and tested element away from the vanilla cupcake. I've taken this recipe from The Cupcake Project, however the original recipe had slightly too much milk for my liking, it weighed down the cake a little.
I've made this recipe twice in the past week and they were a hit every time, i've pretty much thrown away my old vanilla cupcake recipe. The recipe also makes 16 cupcakes, which is a little odd but i find theres always two or three that either get overfilled, burnt or just eaten before you get the chance to ice them, so its really the perfect amount for me.

Makes 16 cupcakes

•    1 cup (225 grams) granulated sugar

•    1 vanilla bean

•    1 3/4 cups (175 grams) plain flower

•    1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

•    1/2 teaspoon baking soda

•    1/2 teaspoon salt

•    1/4 cup (57 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

•    2 large eggs, room temperature

•    1/3 cup (75 grams) full-fat sour cream

•    1/4 cup sunflower oil (or any flavourless vegetable oil) (60 ml)

•    1 tablespoon pure (not imitation) vanilla extract

•    1/2 cup  whole milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C).

2. In a small bowl, combine sugar and seeds from the vanilla bean, or teaspoon of vanilla paste.

3. Using the back of a spoon, move around the bowl and apply pressure to break up any clumps of seeds and to better infuse the vanilla flavor into the sugar. Set aside.

4. In a medium-sized mixing bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, mix together plain flower, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

5. Add the vanilla bean sugar and mix until well combined.

6. Add butter and mix on medium-low speed for three minutes.  Because there is so little butter, you'll end up with a very fine crumb texture.

7. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sour cream, oil, and vanilla extract until smooth.

8. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined.

9. Slowly add milk and mix on low speed until just combined.  The batter will be liquid.  (Don't worry, you didn't do anything wrong.  It's supposed to be that way.)

10.           Fill cupcake liners just over 1/2 full. Use an ice cream scoop if your worried about them being all even, also don't over fill! its hard to hide with frosting around the edges. 

11.           Bake for 14 minutes and then test to see if they are done. They are done when a toothpick comes out without wet batter stuck to it. The original recipe said they shouldn't be golden brown, however i disagree because they are well undercooked until this point. 

When the cupcakes are done, remove them immediately from the tins and leave them on a cooling rack  to cool. Don't try and frost them yet, it'll end in melty tears. 

Frosting is really up to you at this point, i've tried this recipe with the simplest of simple buttercreams, which was delicious and easy to make for a large batch, and then i also used a swiss meringue buttercream frosting when i made these cupcakes for my french class, which was wonderfully rich a decadent its own right let alone of top of this beautiful cake. But thats the beauty of a vanilla cupcake, frosting possibilities are endless! maybe a peanut buttercream? salted caramel? now we can get all innovative again.