Women's Appreciation Day Desserts

This entry was delayed for a few weeks, so here are the details at last. I made a red velvet cupcake and a sourcream cake with lemon curd, mini chocolate cups with chocolate mascarpone topped with raspberries. I've made my own chocolate cups before, but for this project, I needed more professional looking chocolate cups.

I don't remember the exact recipe I used for the red velvet cupcakes, but there are two elements that are critical to the great texture.

First, add a mix of baking soda and vinegar, their mutual neutralization gives a wonderfully fluffy and light texture to the cupcake. This is the same technique used in chocolate "crazy/wacky" cakes.

Second, fill each cupcake liner to no more than 2/3 full. Any further, and you risk the cupcake collapsing on itself.

Top the cupcake with a cream cheese icing and red sprinkles/shaved chocolate.

For my sour cream cake with meyer lemon curd, I used this recipe for the sour cream cake, baking one giant sheet cake, then I stamped out shapes using cutters.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Ashkenazic-Sour-Cream-Coffee-Cake-Smeteneh-Kuchen-103994

The lemon curd I made was one of the best ever; I credit that to the meyer lemons (on sale at Whole Foods) I used, which gave the curd a wonderfully bright flavor.

Basic lemon curd recipe (I think I decreased the amount of butter):

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Meyer-Lemon-Curd-102744

For the picture, I stenciled a cocoa powder line to subdivide the plate in half. I made a three-layer petit four from the sour cream cake, then I topped the petit four with a bit of cardamom vanilla bean whipped cream, and a strawberry slice. On the other side are two raspberry chocolate mascarpone cups.