Chicken and Waffles Cupcakes

This weekend is the 46th NFL Superbowl featuring New York Giant and New England Patriots.

There you go that is my entire knowledge of the Superbowl in one sentence - mainly gleaned from Google.

The Giants appearance gave me the perfect excuse to make some cupcakes I've been planning to make for just over a year, when I first read about them on Blondie and Brownie's blog - my own version of New York bakers Robicelli's Chicken and Waffles cupcakes. Also any excuse to take pics of my gorgeous Statue of Liberty Hello Kitty.

Robicelli's cupcake is a waffle flavoured cupcake covered in vanilla buttercream topped with a pie of maple glazed fried chicken - mine is slightly different.

I went with a buttermilk cupcake - adapted slightly from a recipe in Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess. I added quite a lot of vanilla to this and omitted the lemon. This cake is perfect to make cupcakes, giant cakes, bundts etc as it's quite sturdy.

It's topped with some absolutely delicious maple syrup frosting. I was lucky enough to get some 100% pure maple syrup from my friend Dennis in Ann Arbor - how cute is this. And it tastes amazing.

The recipe is from Lola's - honestly you won't regret making it - but maybe make double, this doesn't make much.

65g unsalted butter softened
3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
65g light muscovado sugar
150g cream cheese at room temp

Mix the butter, syrup and sugar until light and creamy. Add the cream cheese and mix until just smooth. I can not explain how great this frosting tastes - honestly make it and see!

The fried chicken I made myself - just like regular fried chicken. You need buttermilk, plain flour and some paprika. Dunk the chicken in the flour, then the buttermilk, then the flour/spice mix and fry.

The waffles I'm afraid I bought in a fancy coffee shop as I don't have a waffle maker and thought buying one just to make some cupcakes a little extravagant.

Once the cupcakes were assembled we drizzled over some more of the amazing maple syrup and then tucked in. At first I wasn't sure but then I took a bit of everything at once and it worked. Honestly. The chicken got a lovely sweet taste from the maple, and the frosting brought everything together. Manny loved them and ate two (I only made 5) in one sitting!

I saw today that Robicelli's are doing a variation for the Superbowl - the original Buffalo Chicken cupcake, a carrot and celery root cake, Point Reyes blue cheese buttercream, citrus tinged Buffalo fried chicken. Not sure about the blue cheese frosting but I do love the sound of the Buffalo chicken on top - maybe next time!

Finally for those of you who can't stomach the thought of chicken on your cupcakes, the leftover mix was made into cute little bundt cakes which I filled with the leftover frosting!

58 days to go....

And I shall be in NEW YORK!!!!!!!!!!!! As you can tell I'm rather excited about it - and have been since I booked the trip :) Poor Manny's been putting up with my constant counting of the days and bombarding him with places to visit (mainly food/cupcake places I have admit!).

Blondie and Brownie's blog has been one of the many fantastic sources of great cupcake places in NY that I plan to visit. At the moment my list is nearing 40 cupcake places but I think we may have to chop that down a bit - we're only there for 8 days! This is where lists such as Blondie and Brownie's round up of the best cupcakes of 2008 REALLY helps me!

It's just a pity we can't taste some of their own baked cupcakes - I know Manny would love to taste the Elvis one (bottom pic) complete with bacon 'sprinkles' but thankfully Batch are serving some bacon ones at the moment so fingers crossed he'll get his bacon cupcake fix...shudder

The top pic is Crumbs' Baba Booey cupcake complete with peanut butter cream cheese, chocolate cake and frosting, and peanut butter chips.

Thanks to Blondie and Brownie for the pics!

Candy Cane Cupcakes

Further to my "where did the mint come from" post below about Outsider Tart's mint frosting on their holiday Red Velvet cupcake, I've just been reading Serious Eats New York (another of my obsessions!) and found this post about Blondie and Brownie (another fave blog of mine!) and their visit to the Treats Truck for some candy cane cupcakes!

How adorable do these look!!?

I can't wait to try something from the Treat Truck when I go to NY! I love how NY has all these trucks selling fabulous food on the streets - and ones dedicated to treats and deserts! We get those vile stinky hot dog sellers which I wouldn't eat from if I was starving! euuuugh..shudder! Although we do have Chocstar which I heart and shall be buying from again soon at Slow Food Market if they're there :)

The pics are from Blondie and Brownie and you can see more on their Flickr.