Brown Paper Bag Baking

Strawberry rhubarb jam with Cabot cream cheese on whole wheat...

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:02:00 -0400

Strawberry rhubarb jam with Cabot cream cheese on whole wheat country bread. Rhubarb season is maybe the best season.

RETURN OF THE MAC

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 15:08:00 -0400

Macarons, the traditional French sandwich cookies made with almond meal and a variety of fillings, are one of our favorite treats to make. You might also have noticed that they’ve been enjoying a popular resurgence in the last couple years.

It’s no wonder - they’re bite-sized and delicate, but can carry a surprising amount of flavor. They’re also deceptively simple - the light meringue shells are piped onto a template for consistency, their ridges of “feet” let you know they’ve been baked properly, and they can be filled with just about any ganache, frosting, or jam you have on hand.

Mostly we find them nice to look at. During baking and assembly, their repetition can be beautiful and strangely hypnotic. Of course, we don’t just stare - we like to eat ‘em too.

IN THE KITCHEN

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:08:00 -0400

Catering a wedding, especially for people you know and love, is no easy feat, and it definitely doesn’t happen overnight. For Essie and Alexander’s wedding last month, planning meetings and recipe testing started early last year, with a late summer taste test for the bride, groom, and both sets of parents.

Once the menu was set, we took about two weeks to prep the cake and desserts in stages. Assembling and decorating a three-tier cake takes some hardware, and our homemade skyline stencils were a huge help.

Macaron shells rolled off the assembly line for two straight days, with fillings ready and waiting.

Finally, we assembled everything the morning of the ceremony in the Green Building’s lovely daylit space.

If you’re interested in cakes or desserts for your wedding, get in touch!

ESSIE + AKP

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:40:00 -0400

Our good friends Essie and Alexander got married last month at the Green Building in Brooklyn. Not only are these a couple of our favorite people, but they have excellent taste in desserts: they asked us to whip up a cake and a dessert table that would feed 150 of their closest friends and family; nod to their time living in New York, Seattle, and Paris; and use flavors from their favorite cocktail, Sweet Ups’ blackberry-and-gin Bramble. Challenge accepted.

Here’s our menu. First, an around-the-world cake: layers of honey, ginger, and lemon cake with blackberry filling and lemon curd.

Next, a Bramble cupcake to match: ginger cakes with honey lemon frosting and fresh blackberries.

Of course, we needed some minis for the chocolate lovers: pistachio cakes with chocolate frosting, plus chocolate beer cakes with salted caramel.

And finally, some bite-size snacks to round out the night: candied mixed nuts and spicy caramel corn by the scoop, plus Parisian-style macarons in lemon, rose, and chocolate lavender.

We couldn’t be happier for Essie and AKP. Thanks for making us part of the best wedding ever!

(As always, you can find more photos on our Flickr. These last two shots courtesy Liz Ligon.)

CARAMEL CORN

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:33:00 -0400

It’s nearly October, but it’s still hot and muggy as ever in Brooklyn. The last of our CSA corn is at odds with our anxiousness to break out the nutmeg. OR IS IT?! A new creation:

Sweet corn and brown butter cake, with salted caramel buttercream and homemade spiced caramel corn.

With some candied peanuts thrown in, we’ll be ready for postseason baseball.

GEOGRAPHY

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:18:00 -0400

I recently had the chance to bake for some folks who were working in New York, away from their homes in Atlanta and San Francisco. I used to have a job that required constant travel, and no matter how cool the city, it’s tough to stave off homesickness. (I also know some survival tips for lost baggage and living out of a mini fridge, but that is another thing). So I tried to stuff some SF and ATL love into cupcake form. Here’s what we came up with:

San Francisco: Chocolate cake with Anchor Steam Porter and Ghirardelli cocoa, Peet’s espresso buttercream, and chocolate-covered espresso beans.

Atlanta: Fresh peach cake with spiced bourbon buttercream, homemade peach preserves, and a cobbler biscuit.

Embroidery

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:10:00 -0400

In the spirit of wedding season, here’s a sample of a decorating technique called brushed embroidery. I did this one in royal icing on fondant for a cake, but floral patterns in this style are great on cupcakes and cookies as well. It’s not all booze and buttercream around here, despite our best efforts.

Hope you’re all seeing (and eating) some beautiful wedding cakes this summer!

HEART OF BROOKLYN

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:49:00 -0400

Heart of Brooklyn’s offices are tucked between a Greek diner and daycare center on Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights. From the street, you can’t even see the folks working upstairs in support of some of New York’s leading cultural institutions.

The places they represent are not so easy to miss. Heart of Brooklyn is a partnership of Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Museum, the Prospect Park Zoo, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and the Brooklyn Public Library. The big guns.

This winter marked HOB’s 10th anniversary, and we got to make cookies for the folks at their Grand Army Plaza birthday party. Chocolate and ginger cookies, with royal icing in HOB’s signature red:

Their logo is a 6-petal flower, representing their 6 member institutions. Our cookies weren’t nearly as cute as these PS 9 glee club kids in their Heart of Brooklyn beanies. They sang “Empire State of Mind.” COME ON, the best.

(Photos courtesy Samantha June Sutcliffe.)

VALENTINE

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:42:00 -0500

Let’s all agree it’s been a gross winter. Record-breaking levels of dirty snow and face-burning wind and I’m pretty sure we’re only getting 3 hours of sunlight a day at this point. All of New York City is like that part of “Groundhog Day” where Bill Murray is doomed to step ankle-deep in a pool of slush water, over and over.

Valentine’s Day is always a dorky and divisive holiday. And it’s in particular trouble when it falls on a Monday in the middle of a winter like this.

Luckily, Mike and I spent our Valentine’s Day date* in the kitchen, making dozens of these conversation heart cookies. We made them as cheerful and dorky as possible.

* We actually delivered these cookies and then treated ourselves to “Never Say Never,” the 3D experience. Bieber 4 life.

SIDECAR

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:17:00 -0500

Positive: A Superbowl party this weekend gave us an excuse to cook with a new kind of booze. America! Football! Cupcakes!

Negative: We couldn’t find a single can of Iron City in this godforsaken borough, so Mike had to go without the beer of his hometown (black and yellow black and yellow). Maybe every bodega and bar in Brooklyn was still salty about the Jets.

Positive: When life gives you lemons, make sidecars. A sidecar is a cocktail made with brandy, lemon juice, triple sec, and sugar. Tastes like summer, keeps you warm in the winter. A+.

Negative: The game did not go very well, despite Mike furiously waving his Terrible Towel.

Positive:

Lemon Cake with orange zest, Brandy Buttercream, and Candied Orange Slices. These guys found a good home, enjoyed during the kitten halftime show.

Frosting in progress for untitled sweet potato experiment. This is how we do Thanksgiving, folks.

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:00:02 -0500

Frosting in progress for untitled sweet potato experiment. This is how we do Thanksgiving, folks.

Berry season

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0400

These things looked so fresh we had to take a picture: ginger cakes with sweet plum and raspberry frosting, topped with fresh raspberries. It’s like the candy aisle and the farmer’s market all mushed together in one. Except maybe the candy aisle is getting a little more representation than the farmer’s market, let’s be real.

PRIDE

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:24:00 -0400

Things have been a little crazy the past few weeks— we moved to a bigger, badder kitchen with a way better sound system. Life is good.

But before the move, we had the chance to be part of the Pride Week party at StoryCorps, a non-profit oral history project in Brooklyn. StoryCorps records conversations between everyday people and archives them at the Library of Congress— it’s the largest collection of its kind, and it is awesome. You may have seen their recording booth in downtown Manhattan, or heard their broadcasts Friday mornings on NPR. If you haven’t, spend a little time here: storycorps.org/listen.

To help raise awareness for StoryCorps OutLoud, an initiative to record and preserve LGBT histories across the country, they threw a wicked garden party and invited us to make the cupcakes. We brought over red velvet with vanilla buttercream and candied pecans, and chocolate with salted caramel.

Thanks to StoryCorps for letting us party with them for such a good cause. If you live in New York, bring a friend or family member to their booth and record your own story.

Stay Cool

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:09:00 -0400

Not that you could ever be as cool as our buddy Leo, showing the correct approach to a carrot cake cupcake at his great-grandma’s birthday party.

Lessons from the master: stay inside, wear a hat, and keep your cupcakes air-conditioned.

Kickball

Wed, 26 May 2010 17:42:55 -0400

I’ve subjected my kickball team to a lot of baking experiments over our four summers together. They’re the best at eating with one hand and catching with the other.

A little shoutout from yesterday’s New York Post:

“Crucial Taunt members said they played in a “lackadaisical” manner all day, tying the New Frontiersmen in a 1-1 stalemate and dropping the nightcap, despite Kate “Buttercream” Brown’s award-winning cupcakes as a pregame snack.

“The cupcakes have beer in them,” said Brown.

Not mentioned: the frosting had whiskey. Also please note that we hardly ever lose, this is a total anomaly. Crucial Taunt <3

Mother + Child

Sun, 09 May 2010 11:05:00 -0400

To celebrate Mother’s Day, we thought outside the cupcake pan and used honey, lavender and fresh berries for a mother/child experiment. Here’s the mom: honey cake with blackberry lavender compote and vanilla buttercream.

And the baby: a honey cupcake topped with blackberry lavender buttercream.

Of course, our mail order system is a little shaky, so our moms can’t actually eat these. But when we’re chowing down, we’ll totally be thinking about them. Happy Mother’s Day!

Green

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:02:00 -0400

We were in the lab this week, doing some research (eating) and development (eating) of new flavors for Spring. First out of the gate, an homage to green: pistachio cake with citrus zest. We sent these to our pal Betsy’s birthday party, with vanilla bean and dark chocolate buttercream and candied pistachios.

Elvis Week

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:04:34 -0400

Someone told me it was “Elvis Week” on American Idol. Sure. Which got me thinking about the real (and totally incredible) Elvis Week in Tennessee. Every August, on the anniversary of his death, tens of thousands of fans gather in Memphis to commemorate The King. There are movie screenings, candlelight vigils, and the finals of the international Elvis Impersonator competition (obviously). This is serious stuff.

Once, inspired by Paul Simon, I skirted a term paper about religious pilgrimage by writing about Elvis Week. What I got was a lingering obsession with Graceland. One staple of the house was his grocery list— food that had to be stocked in the kitchen at all times. At the top was peanut butter, bananas and white bread. You know where this is going.

Here’s a picture (via cupcakestakethecake) from last year’s Brooklyn Cupcake Cookoff.

Banana cake with peanut butter filling, Southern Comfort frosting, honey roasted peanuts, and deep-friend banana slices. It’s the least I could do. Tickets for Elvis Week go on sale soon—plan your trip at www.elvisweek.com.

Important advances in cupcake-eating technology: we’ve...

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0400

Important advances in cupcake-eating technology: we’ve been informed that some folks remove the bottom of the cake and smush it on top of the frosting, as demonstrated above with our chocolate cake. Behold, the poor man’s whoopie pie.

Reviews

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:30:00 -0500

The blogs (almost all of them) are weighing in on Monday night’s event. NYPL posted photos, definitely worth a look. Jason Lam at Me So Hungry called our cakes “beautiful” and added:

Afterwards in the men’s room, Ezra Koenig commented, “ughh, I ate two cupcakes.” Well it was either him or his friend next to him. I almost joined in on the conversation, but realized that would be awkward because we were all taking a leak. Anyway, I think we all ate too many cupcakes.

Gonzo dessert journalism. Thanks for the shout-out. Over at the Voice’s Sound of the City blog, Zach Baron wonders whether Brown Paper Bag cupcakes are yet another reason to pretend-hate but secretly enjoy Vampire Weekend:

When the outraged masses finally rise up and slaughter Vampire Weekend for the sins of their Ivy League educations and crisply pressed pants, this room might well be Exhibit A—chocolate salted caramel buttercream, Bordeaux, Perrier, pineapple, and blood.

Um, thanks? Whatever. At least he was easier on us than that Titus Andronicus show.