Kitchen Chick

Pomegranate & Lime Cupcakes

The sad but true fact is that the end of pomegranate season is nearly upon us, but you don't have to have fresh pomegranates to enjoy these cupcakes. Originally, this was a sheet cake recipe published in bon appétit's 2008 Thanksgiving Special, but I wanted to bake something a bit more finger-food friendly and made cupcakes instead. They are tasty on their own, but I think they'd make great afternoon tea cakes.

Pomegranate cupcakes with lime glaze
12 cupcakes plus a bit extra

1.5 C all purpose flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 C sugar
1/2 C unsalted butter, room temperature (I used salted, and it was fine)
2 lg eggs
3/4 C pomegranate juice (divided into 1/2 and 1/4 cup portions) (Juice! Not the concentrated syrup. Not the molasses either.  Try a Middle Eastern store.)
4 tsp grated lime peel (divided into two 2 tsp portions)
1/2 C Greek-style yogurt (a thicker yogurt than American yogurt. I used an Indian brand of yogurt. Worked fine.)
1.5 C powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Toppings: the original sheet cake recipe called for scattering pomegranate seeds and mint over the top. Or, you can use extra lime gratings, which is what I did since I had neither fresh pomegranate or mint.
2/3 C pomegranate seeds
2 Tbs thinly sliced mint leaves

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line a cupcake/muffin pan with paper or silicon cupcake liners. I used a "normal" size cupcake pan, and not a jumbo-sized one.

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

Beat sugar and butter with electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Beat in 1/2 C pomegranate juice and 2 tsp lime peel. Mixture may appear curdled. Beat flour mixture until just blended. Stir in yogurt.

Drop batter into cupcake liners. I generously filled a 1.5 Tbs cookie scoop to measure out the amounts. (Worked fabulously.) Bake until tester comes out clean. ~25 minutes, possibly longer. Let cool for 15 minutes or so. After cooling, use a fork to poke small holes into the top of the cupcakes. This will allow the glaze to seep into the cupcakes.

Sift powdered sugar into medium bowl. Whisk in remaining 1/4 cup pomegranate juice, vanilla, and 2 tsp lime peel.

Remove cooled cupcakes from pan and carefully remove silicon liners. Place cupcakes on wire rack. Pour tablespoons of glaze over each cupcake until top is covered and glaze drips down the sides. Grate extra lime peel or top with pomegranate seeds and mint, or even silver dragees.

If you used paper liners, you may want to keep the cupcakes in the pan and glaze them there so that the outsides of the paper liners don't become gooey with glaze.

Kitchen Chick's notes:
The glaze is thin, so don't be thinking like I did that the holes for the glaze need to be large, or you'll have holey-looking cupcakes. If you'd rather make this as a sheet cake, use a buttered and floured 13x9x2 cake pan.

12 cupcakes use less batter than than one sheet cake. I put the extra batter into two small 3" wide soufflé ramekins (pictured above) and baked them up as special treats for the baker and her husband. :-)

Hey, there! What'cha been up to?

I've done another disappearing Kitchen Chick act. I have a lot going on on in my life right now  — doesn't everyone? For me, however, I think I've reached a saturation point, and I'm afraid that my blog is going to have to be lower on my priority list. But not completely forgotten.

I do want to share some wonderful food highlights from the past few months. First, I want to say that Misty Tosh at Big Sweet Tooth knows her Chicago. (And I think she has one of the coolest jobs in the world.) She recommended some of her favorite spots to me when Joe and I spent a few days in the Chicago area. If you're in Chicago, you must go to Afghan Kabob on W. Montrose. Review and food photo essay coming up in a few days.

We also managed to slide in to Alinea on someone's cancellation. Wow! Yeah, well else did we expect. And then on to Bonsoirée where we had another delightful dinner.

For Thanksgiving, I brined my turkey for the first time. Best Turkey Evar! It even made a white-meat convert out of me.

Which brings me up to the holiday season and our annual holiday party. We brought in Brendan and Jay of A Knife's Work to do a tasting appetizer menu. We gave them free rein to come up with something crazy fun. After our experience at Alinea, we were absolutely delighted when they proposed doing a molecular gastronomy tasting. Photos coming soon. By the way, as many of my local readers know, Brendan and Jay were the chefs (along with Chewie) at everdaylunch. They're now running their own catering and private dinner business and gourmet take-out meals. You can find their fresh ready-to-go meals in the chiller at everyday wines.

That's the short version. More coming soon.

Taqueria Tour 2008: La Barca Birreria y Taqueria

I've been remiss in finishing out our taco-tour. I did say "three empty stomachs and four taqueries", so time to finish this off because I have a ton of exciting restaurant reports from our not-too-long-ago trip to Chicago. (Amazing Afghani food! Bonsoiree! And Alinea!) So yeah, I'd better get writing. Okay, on to our last taco stop in Detroit's Mexicantown...

By the time we left the King of Chicken, we were getting pretty full, but we were determined to try one more place. It was a scorching summer day, and so it was with great relief that we entered La Barca Birreria's cool air-conditiioned interior. A set of booths line one wall, and a large take-out counter along the other side. We grabbed a booth. A small TV was playing a movie in the corner. Going by the menu board, they appear to do a lot of carry out dinners.

With a name like La Barca Birreria, we had to try the goat. I also ordered an Al Pastor for comparison. Unfortunately, we thought the goat was a bit bland. Though, to be fair, we had just eaten the very spice-ly flavor chicken tacos from Armando's, so that may have affected out taste buds. Also, I've never had a goat taco before, so I don't have anything to compare it to.

I did like the Al Pastor. The pork bits were nicely charred. I'd rank it as my 2nd favorite Al Pastor of the day, after the taco truck. (Joe might disagree.) Though this was our least favorite stop of the day, it takes a lot for me not to give a place a 2nd try. And just because a place advertises itself as specializing in goat, doesn't mean that goat tacos are the best way to sample their speciality. So if anyone else has tried La Barca Birreria, we'd love to hear from you.

 

We finished off with a bit of corn cake for dessert. Simple, nicely moist and not too sweet.

La Barca Birreria y Taqueria is located on Vernor Hwy, in Detroit's Mexicantown.

Taqueria Tour 2008: El Rey del Pollo

Stop #3: The King of Chicken

Joe spotted these guys grilling outside along Vernor Hwy, and said "we've got to check this out." It turns out that they were grilling chicken, and selling it by the half or whole chicken. Since eating half a chicken would have (a) been a departure from our taco theme, and (b) taken us out of the game for the rest of the day, we took the griller's advice and went into the attached restaurant for some tacos de pollo made with the pollo they were cooking on the grill.

A word of warning here:  yes, the restaurant is kind of run down. There's broken stuff, it's dark, and the tables don't match. The booth where we were sitting used to be a hood; we realized after a few minutes that we were surrounded by stainless steel and had fire suppression nozzles pointing down at us. This is not a tourist spot like Xochimilco's or Los Galanes, or even a more upscale authentic place like El Comal or Arandas. But it's clean (even the bathroom was immaculate), and when the tacos came out, we were stunned:

Huge, gorgeous, loaded with juicy red-sauced hunks of that grilled chicken, and so hot we couldn't even pick them up at first. The salsa was great too — spicy and way better than the table salsa they gave us — but the chicken!  The chicken was the real star. Moist, flavorful, not as spicy as it looks by a long shot (some of that red color is achiote, not chilies). We also had a chorizo taco:  equally huge, with a lot of spicy chorizo, and the same sauce.

While we were eating it, the guy on the grill (who may well have been Armando himself) leaned through the sliding window beside our table and asked what we thought. When Joe told him (in Spanish) how good it was, he passed us some chicken pieces straight from the grill as a free sample.  Heaven!

Highly, highly recommended. We'd also recommend you park your car where the grill guys (or you) can keep an eye on it, because there were some folks hanging out in the area drinking.

Armando, the king of chicken, is out there grilling most (all?) of the year. Just drive along Vernor Hwy and look his roadside tents between Lansing and Ferdinand St. in the Mexican Town.

Taqueria Tour 2008: Tacos El Primo

Stop #2: Tacos El Primo, the taco truck

"Hey, I've always wanted to check out that truck!"

One U-turn later, and we were parked across the street from Tacos El Primo. The menu is painted on the board. You give your order to one of the cooks through a small window, and minutes later they pass back tacos hot off the grill.

It was a bright hot summer day, and they must have been roasting inside their silver taco cart, but they sure were enthusiastic as they handed us our tacos. 

We all ordered tacos al pastor, and they were huge! and utterly amazing.  My favorite al pastor of the day, even if not the traditional trompo-style. They have a small table set up with traditional garnishes of radishes, roasted jalapeños and quartered limes. They offered me a small seared onion and told Joe in Spanish that I should squeeze lime juice over it. Oh my! That was delicious!

Across the street a church ceremony of some sort (a wedding? we weren't 100% certain) was just ending, and the guys in their suits and ties started trickling across to load up on tacos. This is clearly a locals' hangout, and it definitely helps to know a bit of Spanish, but if you don't speak any Spanish beyond "al pastor," don't let that stop you from trying their tacos.

The Tacos El Primo truck is located on a small parking lot on Junction St and just across the street from a large church, visible from Vernor if you are heading toward downtown. I don't know if the truck moves or if this is its permanent location, but look for them. They are worth checking out!

Rating:  awesome!