Eating In: Mmmm, Bacon (Cupcakes)
You know the feeling, dessert lovers. It’s mid-afternoon, or after dinner, or the middle of the night, and your sweet tooth is throbbing, begging you to indulge as your mind wanders into that delicious dreamland of rich chocolate, creamy peanut butter and ... crunchy bacon? Well lucky for you, pastry chef Josh Short’s mind is just as twisted as yours. He designed this month’s special cupcake at Buzz Bakery in Alexandria, a chocolate cake topped with peanut butter mousse sprinkled with crisped pieces of thick-cut applewood smoked bacon. Short, the bakery’s executive pastry chef, thought it up mostly out of boredom. “I have the attention span of a three year old,” he said. “I get bored easily.”
But ... bacon? Well, why not? “It’s one of my favorite things ever. And it’s good with everything,” Chef Short told DCist as we chatted with him at the bakery and café on Slaters Lane this week. “We already have bacon in the morning with pancakes and syrup and all this sweet stuff. Why not put it together with peanut butter and chocolate?” The cupcake has been well received at the bakery, where patrons have come to expect variety in the monthly special. “There comes the day you put on your red shirt, and you feel a little daring,” he said, describing the shop’s eclectic clientele—in baking terms—as “marbled.”
Sadly, the whole point of a rotating special cupcake is its short life, meaning you have exactly 10 days to haul it over to Buzz to try one of these masterpieces. OR ... you can do as I did and accept that you can’t live without them, and figure out how to make them yourself. Luckily, DCist saved you the trouble of having to beg Chef Short for his peanut butter bacon mousse topping recipe, and the batch I made as a test for this column came out strikingly close to the original. (Upon re-examining the pictures, however, it appears that I sort of skimped on the bacon... what was I thinking??) And don’t worry, next month’s special cupcake at Buzz won’t disappoint; Short let slip last week that a s’mores cupcake is currently under development.
For the cupcakes themselves, I used this recipe from Suzanne Lenzer via Mark Bittman’s blog. I had made them before and while moist and delicious, they’re not overly chocolatey, which is similar to the cake Buzz uses. The cakes usually come out moist and light, but this time they were slightly drier this time than usual, probably due to the fact that I somewhat inexactly halved the recipe. The cupcakes are simple, including ingredients that most bakers will already have at home: flour, baking soda, cocoa, sugar, butter, eggs, milk and vanilla. For the mousse, you’ll need to have on hand:
4 oz cream cheese at room temp (about half a standard package)
4 oz peanut butter
½ cup heavy cream
½ ounce butter, melted (about one tablespoon)
½ cup confectioners sugar, sifted
Applewood smoked bacon (or other high quality, thick cut bacon) to taste.
After making and cooling the cupcakes, begin work on the mousse.
1. Melt butter; set aside.
2. Cook bacon to the point of crisp but not burnt. Thoroughly drain the fat and then pat bacon with paper towels, trying to remove as much of the grease as possible. Allow to cool, then chop into pieces.
3. Whip cream to soft peaks; set aside.
4. Using a mixer, blend together cream cheese, peanut butter, butter and sugar until well combined. Fold in whipped cream by hand. Peanut butter mixture will seem too stiff before the cream, but once the cream is thoroughly incorporated, the mousse should be a smooth, homogeneous texture.
5. Then fold in the bacon, leaving out any pieces for cupcake toppers. Ice cupcakes immediately and top with bacon garnish. Inhale. Horde from others. Or share, if you’re nice.
NOTES: I used four pieces of bacon for 12 cupcakes, that wasn’t really enough to measure up to Buzz’s cakes, so if you want these really bacony, I would suggest using more. The mousse recipe produced enough for generous dollops of topping on 12 cupcakes, so the recipe will need to be increased if you’re making more 'cakes. Judging from how fast mine are disappearing, you'll probably need to make more.