Cranberry-Cardamom Vanilla Cupcake

Now that we’re heading into fall and then winter, jamming and canning are on a lot of people’s minds.  Mine, too — it sure would be great to enjoy summer’s ripe fruits in January!  I haven’t quite gotten up the nerve to jam or can full-tilt (although both are near the top of my to-do list), but I have figured out a way to do the next best thing: quick jamming.  The kind of jam you mean to consume within a few days, the kind that you know you won’t be hoarding through a blizzard or two.  Quick jams don’t have to be carefully preserved and sealed in jars because they’re going to be eaten in a few days.

The biggest perk of making a quick jam is that it’s quick, of course.  Another is that it’s nearly a chutney — in fact, if you keep the chunks of fruit big enough and throw some vinegar or extra lemon juice in towards the end of the simmering time, you can easily swerve your culinary course from a sweet dessert jam to a savory, tangy chutney.

While you can make jams with any kind of fruit, the best jams are made with pectin-rich fruits like apples, pears, and hard berries (cranberries, gooseberries, currants, etc.).  Once the jam has been allowed to cool and set for an hour, you can use it any way you’d like: spread it on toast, spoon it onto ice cream or yogurt, use it as a topping for cakes.  My favorite way to use jam is in muffins or cupcakes.  What a way to bite into a sweet surprise!  Just fill your muffin cups one-third full with batter, then scoop on a small teaspoonful of jam, then top it off with enough batter to fill the muffin cup two-thirds full.  This works with any of your favorite muffin or cupcake recipes.

Here’s a quick jam to get you started:

Quick Cranberry-Cardamom Jam

10 oz. bag of cranberries, fresh or frozen
Zest and juice of 1 lemon (finely chop the zest)
Spoonful of honey
4 cardamom pods

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan, then add just enough water to cover the berries. Simmer on low for 30 minutes or until thick, stirring occasionally. Resist the urge to turn up the heat! You’ll get plenty of tiny burbles on a low setting. Those suckers can froth up quickly, believe me, and you don’t want sticky jam on your stove top. (Yup, been there, done that, and had to use a lot of elbow grease to make my stove sparkle again.)

Towards the end of the 30 minutes, taste the jam to see if it’s sweet enough. Add more honey if you’d like.  Fish the cardamom pods out of the jam and discard, then mash the berries with a potato masher until you have a semi-smooth jam.

Remove jam from heat and let cool for an hour before using it.

Happy jamming!

Chocolate Chestnut Cupcake

I don’t know about you, but when I find an exciting new (to me) ingredient, I like to drop it into as many culinary settings as I can to see what happens.  Some ideas, like my “let’s make hot chocolate with red wine instead of milk!” notion, though, are rather ill-fated.  Random combinations are not always for the faint of fork.  But isn’t living on the edge fun sometimes?

My newest obsession — as evinced by the recent post on chestnut snickerdoodles — is chestnut flour.  (The next step is whole chestnuts.  I’ve already got my eye on the roasted and peeled ones on the shelf at Trader Joe’s.)  In that vein, I decided to make chocolate chestnut cupcakes.  With cinnamon and pine nuts.  What the heck — why not?

I’m happy to report that these came out a whole lot tastier than the red-wine-hot-chocolate debacle!

Chocolate Chestnut Cupcakes
(Both gluten-free and glutenized versions are provided here, though it would be a shame to scrap the lovely coconut in favor of the much-more-bland wheat. And remember — if you can’t find coconut flour, feel free to make your own by grinding unsweetened coconut flakes in a coffee grinder.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a standard 12-muffin muffin pan (or use paper cupcake liners) and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together:

1/4 cup cocoa powder, preferably un-Dutched (un-Dutched cocoa has a stronger flavor)
1/4 cup almond flour (you can grind sliced almonds in a coffee grinder to make your own flour)
1/2 cup chestnut flour
1/2 cup coconut flour (again, you can grind your own; see above recipe note)*
1 T. cinnamon
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup pine nuts (optional)

* You can substitute whole-wheat flour for the coconut flour.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together:

2/3 cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B
2 eggs, preferably from free-range hens
1/4 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup melted butter, preferably from grass-fed cows

Pour liquid mixture into flour mixture and combine with a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom of the bowl to make sure you’re combining everything thoroughly. Promptly ladle/spoon the batter into the waiting muffin tin and pop it in the heated oven. (Speed is of the essence when you’re dealing with gluten-free baked goods.)

Bake for about 25 minutes, then do a toothpick test to see if the cupcakes are done. If not, return to oven and bake another 3 minutes before checking again.

Enjoy!