Tonight's Big Bake: Ultra Dark Chocolate Sourdough Cupcakes w/Cannoli Filling

Pictures, of course, will be forthcoming, once they are made:)

As referenced in my previous post, I've got a couple things I'm going to either bake or set up tonight. One of which is a batch of chocolate cupcakes with cannoli filling which I'll take to my housebound mom, in honor of her birthday which was this week.

The cake recipe I'm going to use as my "jumping off point" is the Sourdough Chocolate Cake from Pinch My Salt; however, I'm going to tweak the hell out of it due to my own needs/preferences and the fact my mom's a Type II Diabetic.

CAKE INGREDIENTS:
Wet Stuff
1/2 C Grapeseed Oil
1/2 C Coconut oil
1/2 C Coffee
1/2 C Yogurt
1 C Sourdough starter (I fed mine this morning, and it's not too funky)
1/2 C Granulated sugar
1/2 C Splenda
2 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla

Dry Stuff
1/2 C KAF Sprouted Wheat Flour
1/2 C Coconut Flour
3/4 KAF Black Cocoa
1 T Ovaltine powder or Diastatic Malted Barley Powder
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Baking Soda

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. I'm going to make cupcakes, so YMMV if you use a 13 x 9 inch cake pan or a BOONDT! pan. Prep cupcake tins with nonstick cooking spray.

(What's a BOONDT!? you may ask! For further reference check out this clip from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.) 

In a large mixing bowl add the wet ingredients in the order listed and blend thoroughly by hand or with a mixer. Then, one by one, gradually mix in the dry ingredients until completely blended (about two minutes).

Pour batter into the prepared, greased cake pan of your choosing and bake in center rack of preheated oven. If using a 13x9 baking pan, bake time will be roughly 27-30 minutes, and cupcakes will be roughly 22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. 

While cake is baking, make cannoli filling.

Let cake cool in baking pan. If you'll frost your cake, do so once it's completely cooled.   I plan on using a "cupcake corer" and fill the interior with cannoli filling--and love this recipe at Homemade Hooplah--but again, I need to tweak it!

CANNOLI FILLING INGREDIENTS: 

1 C Ricotta
8 oz Cream Cheese (Room Temp)
1/2-3/4 C  Splenda or Swerve (Note: I might use a combination of both)
1/2 tsp Vanilla
1/2 tsp Fiori di Sicilia
Pinch salt
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips (Note: Since I will be piping this filling into the cupcakes, I will merely garnish the cupcakes with the chocolate chips, as the chips will no doubt clog the piping bag.) 

This is pretty straightforward! I plan on mixing with a hand held mixer until well blended and somewhat fluffy. Set aside until cake is cool enough to pipe filling in.

Permutation, Prototype: Date Nut Bread/Cheese Cake Hybrid

Last week's food related daydream was a hybrid of date nut bread with a ribbon or tunnel of cheese cake filling, given most people I know eat date nut bread with a shmear of cream cheese.

I thought about it long and hard and found the recipe over at King Arthur Flour, which seemed a decent enough jumping off point, at least for proportions; however, I tweaked the shit out of that recipe.

My tweaks:

1. Instead of APF, I used 1 cup barley flour and 3/4 cup of buckwheat flour, thinking I'd lower the glycemic index, but boost nutrtition (next time, I might augment with almond meal, too);
2. Instead of brown sugar, I used granulated maple sugar;
3. I soaked the chopped dates in the hot coffee overnight*;
4. In lieu of vodka, I used Galliano's coffee liqueur;
5. I only had about 1/2 cup of walnuts on hand--and rounded out the cup with pecans as I had some on hand;
6. In lieu of 4 T butter, I used 4 T macadamia nut oil (as I haven't used up my supply and figured this would be a good use for the oil.

*My intent was to blitz this with my immersion blender to form a slurry, and in the end, I got lazy and did not--I believe this affected the moisture content of the date nut bread, somewhat.

All ingredients were room temp and ready to go and mixed in order

Oven pre-heated according to recipe. And a bundt pan was spritzed with oil spray and dusted with flour and set aside.

Cheeseycakey bit which I messed up by accidentally adding an additional egg (next time I'll go with 2 eggs and 1 T of cake mix):

1 8 oz pkg Neufschatel 
6 T Splenda
1 tsp Vanilla
pinch salt
3 Eggs
2 T prepackaged vanilla or white cake mix 

Mix on high for 2 minutes until foamy and well blended.

I baked for 55 minutes; next time I'll shoot for 50 minutes. I let it rest on my counter for 10 minutes, then wrapped in cling wrap and put out on my balcony to cool off (here, the temps are hovering around 6F, so much colder than my fridge). I let it sit there for one hour before attempting to dislodge it from the pan.

The intent here was for a ribbon of cheesecake in the center, like those picture perfect old timey 1970s Bundt cakes. Unfortunately my ratio was off, and this ended up coming off more as a marbled cake.

Cheeseycake part was fine, and the date nut bread was somewhat less moist than what I consider the ideal date nut bread. My ideal date nut bread is very dense, so I might lower the baking powder next time by 1/2 tsp.

Result: Tasty, but next batch will definitely be a winner.