Brownies and Bananas

Friends, it's been so long! I have missed you.

Alas, my real life has gotten in the way of my fantasy baking life again. The theme of August was the letter B: BUSY!, bonkers, bouncy, brownies, and bananas- and not just the fruit! But this is a baking blog so I'll stick with the last two items on my list, brownies and bananas.

Not too long ago, Willful kindly recommended the world's best brownie recipe, found on the back of King Arthur All Purpose Unbleached Flour, or here, on their website. Upon first glance my instinct was to nix the espresso powder and chocolate chips, and Willful enthusiastically agreed, saying she omits those things as well. Willful actually made these brownies a couple of weeks ago and added a cheesecake swirl... awesome idea, and one of my favorite brownies. I was feeling a bit creative as well, so I did a quick google for a few different peanut butter swirls and found one I liked. Basically you combine peanut butter, butter, powdered sugar and vanilla, drop them into the brownie batter-filled pan, and swirl in. Easy! But, Brad isn't into "complicated" desserts, so rather than make all of the brownies con peanut butter, I made one pan of regular brownies, and used my mini cupcake tin for the rest, dropping and swirling the peanut butter mixture into each little cup. I had never done this before so I was eager to see the results. The regular brownies were ready first, and boy were they perfection- chewy and shiny on top, just how I like them. Next, the peanut butter brownies came out. They had slightly caved in the middle, but I tried them, and even fresh out of the oven piping hot, they were fantasmical. Even though I had sprayed the tin, the brownies clung on to the pan for dear life, so removing them was a challenge. I ended up having to spoon them out and reshape them a bit.. but it was worth it. I packaged several up and sent them over to Willful in the land of enchantment, and received rave reviews. Thanks!!! Even Brad LOVED them, his only complaint being they went stale quickly and he suggested that I tell everybody to seal them up tight so they stay fresh. This recipe is definitely a keeper and highly recommended!!

On to bananas- the best way to describe the August Iron Cupcake in SF. I baked my version of a Kokomo Joe, based on a smoothie from Yumi Yogurt (detailed in another post). A banana-coconut-cinnamon cupcake with pineapple cream cheese frosting and cinnamon coconut on top. The banana cupcakes came out great. The frosting was a different story. Super runny this time around and I had trouble saving it and turning it stable. Also, rather than toasting the coconut, I shredded it extra fine. In order to keep the frosting still, I had put very little on and then pack on the finely shredded cinnamon coconut. JoAnna put it best when she said they looked like Twilight cupcakes.. the coconut was so finely shredded that along with the cinnamon, it glittered in the sun. Haha! The result was a very banana and not very coconut cupcake.. which was bad, considering they were being submitted for a coconut competition.
I didn't let this bother me much, until I arrived at Leland and saw the competition was extremely stiff this month. People went bananas on decorations.. one woman had fancy palm trees topping hers, another made a replica of those pink hostess coconut treats, other people had extra sweets to sample, the majority had fancy signs. It was insane! I missed last month, and apparently the new game is decoration!! So intense.. double rainbow ALL the way.
Not only that, judging changed entirely. Instead of rating each cupcake individually, we now had to text in one vote for our pick for most creative, and one vote for our pick for best taste & appearance. This confused a ton of people, and worried me because I usually like more than one cupcake and for different reasons.. how could I pick just one that should take home the "cake"?? We tasted and after that, things went pretty quickly and before we knew it, we had our winners.. and this is where the claws come out. First off, I did not win and I was very okay with it- I knew why and resolved to have a great time anyway. But the people who did win should not have won, with the exception of our second place winner- she had the best cake, frosting, and coconut overall (she should have won 1st). 3rd place went to someone everybody at our table had marked as "0" all around- not good, didn't look good.. it was just a bad cupcake. First place and most creative prizes went to the palm tree lady- okay, she made flippin' palm trees out of those chocolate filled tube cookies and basil for the leaves, it looked spectacular. But we all marked her "2" for taste- she just missed the mark. Needless to say, I was very disappointed with the winners. I could have easily picked 2 other cupcakes- not even mine, tear- that should have taken the top spots.
Text in voting sure has proven to be faster, but it troubles me for a few reasons: 1) people could confuse the numbers assigned to each cupcake and vote for the wrong one on accident, 2) it could turn into a popularity contest, and 3) it's just not as fun as going through and scoring each cupcake individually. Also, combining taste and appearance could mean that people with adorable yet spit-out cupcakes take the top prize, and that's just frustrating for the majority of us who take the baking seriously. I applaud the IC people for all of their hard work and dedication to finding a method that improves efficiency, but I think they might have missed the mark on this one. Well anyway, IC is still tons of fun and I'm sure they'll find a method that works! We will see at the October Challenge.. spice here we come!!