almond cupcake

almond cupcake
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

awhile back i opened a can of marzipan to decorate some minicakes that i had made. since that episode, the rest of the lump has been languishing in the back of my fridge until i decided what to do with it. i had heard somewhere that marzipan has a long shelf life so i decided that (hopefully) it would still be edible. ;-)

i settled on altering a david lebovitz recipe for almond cake into cupcakes. the first batch came out sad and laden with butter... so much butter in fact that large pools of butter formed on the pan that i used to bake the cupcakes on! yikes! pools of butter wouldn’t usually be a bad thing. actually in most occasions it actually sounds pretty tasty. except on this particular occasion when it has oozed out of the cupcake batter AND the paper cup in which you are trying to cook cupcakes in! i attempted a second batch and decreased the butter to 7 ounces instead of 10. pools of butter again! although luckily this time they were not as large. so i ate them. yum. moist and almond-y. the recipe below decreases the amount of butter to 5 ounces. i think that would be just about right.

unfortunately the frosting was a whole different calamity. i don’t feel much like writing about it but it was sort of lumpy and clayish in consistency and had to be applied with my fingers rather than in the regular manner. ugh. so i’m not posting the recipe because it was basically a waste of time and ingredients. but i didn’t have any more time so i just used it. sometimes things are just much more difficult than you imagine in your head!

Almond cupcakes
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup marzipan
5 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and position the rack to the center of the oven.
2. Cut the sugar and marzipan together in the food processor until the pieces are the size of sand grains. (the sugar crystals helps break the paste into pieces-so don't add the butter yet!)
3. Now add the butter and sugar/marzipan mixture and beat with an mixer for a few minutes until light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, or a measuring cup with a spout, stir together the eggs with a fork then dribble it into the batter as you beat. Add the vanilla.