A farewell to LOST

Sunday marked the end of one of the best television shows ever. Kevin and I are huge fans of LOST, and therefore we gathered our friends at our house to watch the finale. Of course, I made lots of food, which was almost completely gluten-free. One of my friends just recently was diagnosed with celiacs disease and I didn't want her to be surrounded by food that she couldn't eat. I was planning to make kebabs and sushi rice prior to her diagnosis. I wasn't worried about the main course.

Dessert was where I was worried. I had never made any gluten-free desserts. After doing a little research and some searching in the grocery store, I found GF oreos. I could make a cheesecake, I thought. I had been wanting to try this recipe I found in a magazine for a while, so it was settled. I was going to make a gluten-free cheesecake. After looking over the recipe, I found that it called for 2 tablespoons of flour. I realized that it was only in there as a thickener and stablizer. My initial thought was to subsitute corn starch, but on the day I used some tapioca flakes used in making fruit pies thicker. I flavored the cheesecake with white chocolate and used the GF oreos as the crust and topped it with homemade caramel. I love this flavor combination, which is why it's called the Cloud 9.

In addition to the cheesecake, Kevin wanted to decorate cupcakes with hieroglyphics and words significant to LOST. I had to make some sample cupcakes for a wedding cake, so it worked out well. I made vanilla cupcakes and red velvet. The bride really wanted to try the red velvet, but the groom really wants vanilla cake only. To top the remaining cupcakes, I made a white chocolate buttercream frosting and dyed some of the frosting black for the writing. They turned out pretty good.

Baking with Tea

After months of thinking about it, I finally made the vanilla cupcakes with lemon filling and earl grey frosting. I used a new vanilla cake recipe specifically designed for cupcakes. They looked like muffins when I pulled them out of the oven. I had never seen cupcakes dome that much. The cake was light and fluffy and the lemon filling piped in the middle made for a nice surprise.

As for the frosting, I was disappointed in the weak earl grey flavor. I first steeped the tea in some hot milk needed to thin the buttercream frosting making it spreadable. After tasting it and not tasting a strong tea flavor, I took the tea bag and steeped it in hot water for a few minutes. I added a 4 tablespoons of the tea to the frosting. I was afraid to add too much more liquid for fear of making the frosting too thin. In the end, I was still disappointed in the flavor, but I frosted the cupcakes anyways.

The next day I took them into work, where they were pretty much devoured. Everyone told me the frosting was the best part. It was just different than what I originally envisioned. I guess I am too hard on myself. It was really nice to hear that people would pay money for these cupcakes if they could.

Yesterday, I decided to pair chocolate with the earl grey tea. This combination I was much happier with. The tea enriched the chocolate flavor in the cake. It was not overwhelming or truly noticable, but I feel that if someone ate a piece of cake with the tea and one without, they would say the one with the tea had more chocolate flavor.

I decided to make the cake in bundt cake form and top it with cream cheese frosting and I drizzled over caramel. It was quite good and I hope to make it again soon.

Unfortunately, I failed to get any photos of the vanilla cupcakes, but here are some pics of the bundt cake.