This Friday I am participating in the first SF Chefs Food Wine weekend in San Francisco.(Check out their website.) There will be cooking demonstrations, tastings and dinners all celebrating the Bay Area’s amazing culinary presence and diversity. My demonstration will be Friday afternoon at 3:30. Entitled Desserts and Sips, I will be sharing the stage with mixologist, Victoria D’Amato-Moran from Cent’Anni Cocktails. (We worked together years ago at Stars restaurant but that‘s another story.) This will be the first time I have paired my desserts with cocktails and I think it will be fun. Yes, I know desserts and cocktails are served at the opposite ends of a meal but they are the best parts of the meal so why separate them?
Here’s the inside scoop of what we are going to do. For our first demo, we are going to take the same ingredients (peaches and strawberries) and I will turn them into a dessert and Victoria will turn them into a cocktail. Same amazing local summer produce with different results. For our second demo Victoria will prepare a cocktail specifically paired to my Chocolate Chocolate White Cupcakes. They are white cupcakes filled with milk chocolate/bittersweet chocolate ganache, frosted with bittersweet frosting and garnished with cocoa nibs. The recipe for the cupcakes is at the end of this blog.
In addition, Friday evening I am being honored, along with three other San Francisco chefs, as Culinary Pioneers. (The other recipients are Joyce Goldstein, Judy Rodgers and Patricia Unterman). I have to say it feels strange to be recognized for a lifetime of work as I don’t think I have been around that long and feel I have a lot of baking left to do. I know we will have an amazing feast as it is being prepared by Loretta Keller from COCO500 and The Moss Room, Traci Des Jardins from Jardiniere , Gary Danko, from Gary Danko, and Terri Wu from Farallon.
I hope you can make it to the class or dinner but if you can’t here’s the cupcake recipe.
Chocolate Chocolate White Cupcakes
12 cupcakes
10 tablespoons (1 ¼ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sour cream
Preheat the oven to 350° F.
Cream the butter and sugar until light.
Add eggs one at a time, making sure to scrape down the bowl.
Stir in the sour cream.
Sift the cake flour, baking powder and salt. Add and mix just until combined.
Line cupcake pans with liners and fill.
Bake until skewer clean, about 15 minutes.
Cool to room temperature. Cut a hole in the center of each cupcake. Fill with the chocolate ganache (see recipe below). Frost with chocolate frosting (see recipe below.)
Two Chocolate Ganache
¾ cup cream
3 ounces milk chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 ½ ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
In a small saucepot bring the cream to a bowl. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate. Let sit for a couple minutes and then whisk until smooth. Refrigerate until pipeable.
Easy Chocolate Frosting
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup granulated sugar
7 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped or broken into 1-inch pieces
4 1/2 ounces (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into 1-inch pieces.
Heat the cream and sugar in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until small bubbles form at the edge. Remove from the heat, add the chocolate pieces and swirl the pan gently to make sure the chocolate is covered by the cream. Let sit a couple of minutes and then stir until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and cool to room temperature. Whisk in the butter a little at time. Let sit at room temperature until spreadable.
