Angels and Demons

There was no new episode of Top Chef this week (boooo!) but they did re-air the episode from last week in which the "cheftestants" had a quickfire challenge having to do with the little angels and little devils that sit upon everyone's shoulders. They were instructed to create a dish reflecting their interpretations of these dichotomous sides of the conscience. Personally, I thought this challenge wasn't that different from an earlier one this season in which they had to create a dish inspired by their own personal vices (they love to use this Las Vegas theme — sins, addictions, devils), but it was still interesting to see what the chefs came up with.

And I decided to do my own cupcake version of the challenge! Now, I have to preempt this all by noting that I rarely use boxed cake mixes for my cupcakes (and I rarely use packaged frosting, too), but in the interest of time for this one, I did end up collaborating with good old Duncan and Betty.

I also went with the most obvious interpretation of "angel and devil" with angel's food cake and devil's food cake. But! I did add a devilishly tangy component of my own (and made from scratch) to make the chocolately devil's cupcakes that much more diabolical: a sea-salt caramel filling.

You can probably guess which of these cupcakes I prefer. But it was interesting to make both of them. I've actually never baked angel's food cake, and using cupcake tins produced some fascinating results. For one thing, the instructions were to not coat the pans before baking, and the cupcakes stuck to them!

Once I got them out and tasted them, they were chewy and tasted much like toasted marshmallows.

The middle part was that light, airy white cake that pairs so perfectly with fruit and cream, though. Thus, my angel:

As for the little devils, I made my first homemade caramel from a recipe I received in my cupcake class a few months ago. It's so simple! You just boil a bunch of sugar in water for a while, add some heavy cream, butter, lemon juice and sea salt and voilà!

Okay, admittedly, I think I left the sugar boiling for a few seconds too long and the caramel was slightly burnt-tasting. At the same time, it kind of works for this particular recipe — the salty tanginess is just a little sharper than normal. My friend Reed, fellow Top Chef (and Glee) fan and courageous cupcake taster, generously called the caramel "smokey," which is actually even more in keeping with the demonic/fiery hell theme of the "devil's" cupcakes. So I'm going to go with that. :)