The Ultimate Baking Challenge: Robicelli’s Kiwanis Cupcakes
by Elizabeth Nelson
The last time I was in Bay Ridge on a Sunday morning, I was running down Fourth Avenue with a mob of fifty thousand people in the New York City Marathon.
Last Sunday I was there again after surviving a different kind of marathon—a cupcake-making marathon. Let me just say, I didn’t come in first.
I challenged the leaders. Allison and Matt Robicelli have been selling their much sought-after cupcakes, whoopie pies and brownies wholesale since 2009 and opened their own outlet in Bay Ridge late last year. They could have set up shop in Manhattan, Park Slope, or someplace fancier, but since they grew up in Bay Ridge and still live there with their boys, they decided to brighten up their own neighborhood.
Lucky for anyone who can’t or won’t hop on the R train and head down to Bay Ridge, Allison and Matt put out a cookbook last fall. I got my copy of Robicelli’s: A Love Story, with Cupcakes (Viking Studio, $35) for Christmas and was eager to start baking. But when I started reading the recipes, I got anxious. I don’t have a stand mixer—something they deem essential—and I don’t have a lot of patience. All their recipes involve multiple complicated steps. You can’t just dump things into a bowl, stir them up and cross your fingers. (My preferred baking method.)
Never one to back down from a challenge, I decided to start with the hardest recipe in the book: The Kiwanis cupcake. Allison prefaces this recipe by saying that although “it is very likely the single most amazing cupcake in our repertoire,” she’s sworn never to make it again because it’s “a gigantic pain in the ass.” She writes that she hopes people will make it and invite her over. I decide to do her one better—I’ll make it and bring it to the shop as an offering.
Saturday morning I head out for ingredients. My local bodega doesn’t have mascarpone cheese, which I need for the frosting. Strawberries are out of season and ridiculously expensive. I spend over $50 at two specialty shops, and that’s without buying the vanilla bean. (I have vanilla paste at home. I’ll make do.)
A friend invites me to work at his parents’ home where they have vast counter space. I figure it can’t take more than a couple of hours, maybe three at most. All I have to do is make cream puffs, whip up frosting, cook some vanilla custard, toast walnuts, chop bananas and strawberries, melt chocolate and dip the cream puffs and strawberries in it. Oh—and bake the actual cupcakes. No problem.
Scoping out the kitchen, my friend finds a giant container of cream puffs in the freezer and suggests using those instead of making my own. I am deeply offended. I am not a cheater. I plan to prove I can turn out a Robicelli cupcake.
Who needs a stand mixer?
Three hours later, I’ve only managed to make the cream puffs—and a huge mess. My friend follows behind me, picking up broken eggshells and mopping up sticky spots.
Panic sets in. Luckily, the frosting turns out to be pretty quick to make. My friend lends a hand with the cake batter, pouring hot butter into the mixing bowl as I whip the eggs and milk, trying to keep the eggs from cooking. Once the cupcakes are out of the oven we pack everything up and take all the parts home to assemble. I’ve overstayed my welcome and the two of us deserve a dinner break anyway.
A cramped workspace adds to the cupcake-assembling challenge
Back home, we order Chinese. Between bites of lo mein, I dig out the centers of the cupcakes and fill them with banana-walnut custard, then swirl mounds of mocha frosting on top. My friend volunteers to slice strawberries while I melt chocolate. I forget how hot ceramic bowls get in the microwave and burn myself. Running my fingers under cold water and wincing, I notice the time. It’s been almost 12 hours since we started this project. Running the marathon took me less than five. My cupcakes look gorgeous but I'm too tired and too hung over from MSG to taste one.
Next morning I schlep my painstakingly assembled beauties to Bay Ridge and proudly present them to Allison and Matt. Their counter is crowded with luscious sticky buns, scones, mini Bundt cakes, picture perfect pies, a celebration of cookies and muffins. The pastry case is crammed with cupcakes, whoopie pies and whole cakes. One of them is covered in candied bacon. I look at my dozen cupcakes, which took me as many hours to make, fading now in the glow of perfection. I’m not going into business anytime soon.
Even so, Allison and Matt kindly pronounce my Kiwanis cupcakes a success. I confess that I did not strain the custard, as instructed, and didn’t use a whole vanilla bean. They wave away my excuses. “I can really enjoy this cupcake, because I didn’t bake it,” says Allison. “When I’m eating my own stuff, I’m too critical, always analyzing it. Could the crumb have been lighter? What could I have done better?”
“I don’t like the liners,” says Matt. I concede that they are ridiculous (the store only had “party” cupcake liners) but figure if that’s his only complaint, I did okay. The man graduated at the top of his pastry class at the French Culinary Institute.
I’ll go home while I’m ahead. I get an Elvis cupcake (banana cake, peanut butter buttercream, and candied bacon) a boozy Car Bomb (chocolate Guinness cake, Jameson ganache and Bailey’s buttercream), a Chicken ’N’ Waffles (vanilla waffle cake, vanilla buttercream and fried chicken) and a Plain Ol’ Vanilla—and have them boxed up for later to say thank you to my co-conspirator. I can’t look at another cupcake right now.
I love cupcakes as much as anyone, but if I have to choose between baking another batch and running a marathon, you can find me lacing up my sneakers.
The real thing: Chicken ’N’ Waffles, Plain Vanilla and The Elvis
Robicelli’s, 9009 5th Ave, Brooklyn NY, 11209 (917) 509-6048