When Brooklyn Based commissioned us to bake a cupcake just for them, the first thought I had was “egg cream”. But as fast as the idea came, I dismissed it. You can riff on just about every American classic in the culinary world: fried chicken, hamburgers, and of course, cupcakes.
Egg creams, however, are something sacred, or at least they were in my house growing up. My father brought me up to know that there was only one wayto make an egg cream: the right way. He was so obsessive about it that he relentlessly studied the guys at the soda fountains that would serve him in 1950’s and 60’s Bensonhurst. Obsessive to the point that when I was seven, he taught me all the secrets, and had me make egg cream after egg cream until I got it absolutely right. Thinking about it now, I think it may be the first thing I ever made in the kitchen. To this day, I am just as obsessive as he was. U-Bet syrup. Whole milk. A certain “stabbing” motion of stirring in a tall tilted glass, resulting in the perfect foamy head. The man gave me not only the power to make the perfect, quintessentially Brooklyn beverage, but sort of reverence for it that we only reserved in my home for saints and the works of Frank Sinatra. Obviously, the idea of an egg cream cupcake was ludicrous. There is no way to truly replicate “chocolate milk soda” in cake form. There will be no head, no lightness, and none of the refreshing coolness that comes from an honest-to-God true Brooklyn egg cream.
But as always, when I come up with an idea that I say I can’t do, it eats away at me nonstop (I’m still working on in my head someones nonsensical “sesame beef” idea they requested, even though I’ll probably never make it). The best way to get me to do something is to say that I can’t. So I told Nicole at Brooklyn Based to go on Twitter and solicit flavor suggestions from her readers- perhaps one of them would come up with another quintessentially Brooklyn flavor that would knock this egg cream madness out of my head.
The tweets came back.
“Egg Cream!”. “What’s more Brooklyn than an egg cream?”. “The Brooklyn Based Egg Cream for sure!”.
I was stuck. The universe was obviously demanding their egg cream cupcake. Balls.
The gears began to move again. I played with several ideas on how to replicate the foamy texture of the head. First I played with the idea of whipped cream, but that really only works if you’re serving the cupcake a la minute- stabilized whipped cream is almost always gross. I thought about stabilizing foams with agar or xantham gum, but I needed far more time to prototype those ideas than I had. Many of my ideas involved a la minute prep- I even played with the idea of making egg creams on the fly at the Mercado, spooning some of the foam onto the top, and tossing the rest. Not only would that be a logistical nightmare, but Matt pretty much flat out looked me and told me I was completely fucking insane. The whole lightness of foam idea was deflating like, well, foam.
I then began to think about the actual experience of drinking an egg cream. There’s only one way to do it- with a straw. Your first gulps come directly from the bottom, from the rich, super syrupy puddle on the floor of your glass. This led me to the base: U-Bet cake. Spongy, sweet, with that distinctive syrupy taste. I thought about filling it with some ganache to make it extra chocolatey, but I began to remember my dad’s training. A correct egg cream will have an unincorporated line of U-Bet on the side of the glass from where the soda jerk will have streamed it in. I could swear when I was a kid that parts drank from that side of the glass tasted better. I poked a hole in the top of each cupcake and drizzled a little more U-Bet in, letting it soak right into the center part of each cake for an added sugar high. Then onto the topping: our buttercream becomes relatively light when it comes to room temp (the optimal temperature for eating cupcakes), so though not as “foamy” as I would like, it would do. (Plus, when I have introduced cupcakes that have anything other than our signature buttercream on top, people get veryangry at me). The top should be clean and simple- not overly gussied up with bangs and whistles and whatnot. Sweet cream buttercream it was- a nice creamy counterbalance to the almost cloying sweetness of the cake. For the full sized versions we’ll have at the Mercado, I filled the centers with buttercream too, just because I felt it was that tasty. Then for the top, just a simple grating of milk chocolate. I normally like adding texture or another element of flavor, but the beauty of the egg cream is in it’s simplicity.
I’m sure that as time goes on I’ll rip this whole one apart and tinker with it again, because while my taste testers say it’s a “damn good cupcake”, I’d still really like to find a way to solidly incorporate some foam. I guess you can call it the “Egg Cream Bottom”, but that sounds a little dirty. Regardless, I hope you all it at Brooklyn Based’s party this weekend, or at the Mercado if you’re coming down to see us. Much thanks to all the people who challenged us on this one, and a very happy anniversary to Nicole Davis and all our friends at Brooklyn Based!
