K I know what you’re thinking. WTF is a muffcake? Well I made these zucchini bread muffins, but then topped them with cream cheese frosting, so they bear the resemblance of cupcakes… so… muffcakes? ANYWAY I got a subscription to Imperfect Produce for my birthday - it’s a subscription box that delivers a bunch of fresh produce, which was too ugly to be sold to grocery stores, to your door every week - and it’s my favorite thing ever! Every week, I’ve been getting presented with a bunch of random produce, and have to figure out a way of cooking it. It’s like being on Chopped for every meal!
Last week’s box had zucchini, blueberries, and ginger, and for some reason I immediately thought of cupcakes. The end product was more like a muffin than a cupcake, but that’s more because I have no idea how to bake, and it actually served to compliment the flavor profile in the end. Basically it’s a zucchini bread muffin scented with fresh ginger, topped with a cream cheese frosting that I stirred some homemade blueberry ginger syrup into. It was a little savory for me, so at the very end, I threw on some Swedish rock sugar, which gave it a nice sweet crunch. The muffin itself was nice and spongy, specked with some bitter walnuts to give it some bite. It had an overall earthy, almost maple-like taste to it. The cream cheese itself lended a nice tang to the dish, which was tempered by the ginger in the blueberry syrup. The syrup was used only sparingly so as to avoid affecting the texture of the frosting but also to prevent it from becoming too sweet, so the blueberry flavor was very subtle and nice. The overwhelming impression is one of breakfast dessert, which is like, can that be a new thing please?
Butter Count: 8 Tbsp
Muffcakes:
3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 egg
1/4 cup canola oil
2 unpeeled zucchini, grated
1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350F.
In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add the egg and oil and stir with a fork until combined. The mixture should be more like a cookie dough than a batter at this point.
Stir in the zucchini, ginger, and walnuts until well dispersed. The moisture from the zucchini should make the mixture more batter-like now.
Butter and flour the sides of a muffin tray. Fill the muffin cups with the batter until they are about 3/4 full.
Bake about 23 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean, then remove the pan from the oven. There is very little moisture in the batter, so the muffcakes will overbake if you’re not careful.
After 5 minutes, transfer the muffcakes to a wire rack and cool completely (to prevent the frosting from melting on them).
Frosting:
8 oz fresh blueberries
1-inch fresh ginger, peeled and minced
3/4 cup granulated sugar
Water
8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter, softened
8 oz cream cheese, brick style, very cold but not frozen
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
3 cups powdered sugar, plus more if needed
Swedish rock sugar (pärlsocker)
Instructions:
In a small pot, add the blueberries, minced ginger, and granulated sugar. Pour in enough water to kinda get the sugar wet, like a large splash, but not a pour. (I used wine >__<)
Place a fine mesh sieve over a bowl nearby. Place the pot over medium heat and cook until the blueberries are completely broken down, about 15 minutes. syrup into the sieve and use a rubber spatula to push it into the bowl underneath. Cool this mixture in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes.
In a food processor, using a whisk attachment, whip the butter and cream cheese together until smooth, stopping the mixer and scraping down the sides when needed.
Add the vanilla extract and salt, along with about 3 Tbsp of the blueberry syrup. Mix it all in on low speed, and check the color. If you want it darker, add another Tbsp of syrup.
Add the powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time, moving the mixer from low to medium speed each time. With each addition, mix the sugar in until just combined. If the mixture starts to get soupy, immediately stop and hope that it is stiff enough to still pipe - adding more sugar should solve this issue, but only if you don’t over-whip the mixture. When the mixture is stiff and sweetened to the desired level, immediately stop whisking it and transfer it to a piping bag fitted with a wide tip.
Pipe the frosting onto the cooled muffcakes, and sprinkle with pärlsocker. Refrigerate until ready to eat!