You know how I just said I was going to focus on Austrian specialties? Well, here are some Vietnamese coffee cupcakes. I’m flexible like that. Or contrary, depending on how you see it, I suppose. F. says I have a subversive streak because whenever he asks me to do something I gleefully say no even when I have every intention of doing it. Some delayed childhood trauma at work, clearly.
But really, how mad/bad/disappointed can you be? I mean, Vietnamese coffee is probably the most luxuriant thing known to man – it’s filled with the power of sweetened condensed milk. And then we go one step further and make it into a cupcake. They say the world loves a lover but I’m fairly sure the world would prefer a cupcake if given a choice.
Which reminds of this one time, at band camp…No, that didn’t come out right, it reminds me of this time where I was addicted to sweetened condensed milk. I realise this doesn’t make me sound very hardcore (hey man, wanna go mainline some dairy products?) but at the time, it was a big deal; I was riding the highs and lows of sugar addiction and my teeth were readying themselves to put my dentist’s children through university.
It all started when I lived in Thailand and we didn’t have a fridge. We did have a well for water but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, since milk doesn’t enjoy 35 degrees celsius the way I do and I don’t enjoy powdered milk, sweetened condensed milk was how milk and sugar were added to the coffee at my house. And if you pour sweetened condensed milk out of a hole in a can there’s always a little drip which can conveniently be cleaned off with your tongue (we didn’t want ants, after all). A tidy lick became a little slurp, a little slurp became sucking down half a can a day and the rest is history. I had to go cold turkey and believe me when I say it wasn’t pretty.
I’ve been on the wagon for a good five years now but Debra (of rhubarb cake fame) from Smith Bites posted this a while ago, I bookmarked it and the long road to recovery was for naught.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
Vietnamese Coffee Cupcakes
The actual cupcakes are as light as a feather since they’re mostly whipped egg white. You pour over a coffee glaze when they emerge from the oven and then ice with a creamy coffee icing when cool. I didn’t mess with the recipe that Debra got from Tasting Table much but the icing didn’t thicken for me until it cooled and I skipped the cinnamon sprinkle at the end.
For the cupcakes
3 eggs, separated
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
110 grams (1/2 cup) sugar
56 grams (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
60 grams (1/2 cup) plain flour
For the coffee glaze
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
2 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
For the coffee icing
60 ml (1/4 cup) heavy cream
2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
60 ml (1/2 cup) sweetened condensed milk
Preheat the oven to 160 celsius (325 fahrenheit) and and grease a 12 cup muffin tin with butter or line with paper muffin cups.
In a large bowl, beat the egg whites and baking soda on medium-high with a hand-mixer until frothy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go. Add the salt.
Continue beating at medium-high speed until soft peaks form, about 3 minutes.
Add the egg yolks and sugar and continue to beat until pale yellow and thick, about another minute.
Pour the melted butter into the batter and beat until combined.
Sift half the flour over the wet ingredients and fold with a rubber spatula until fully incorporated. Repeat with the remaining flour.
Pour the batter evenly into the lined muffin tins. Bake in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Meanwhile, make the glaze and icing.
For the glaze, heat the cream in a saucepan or in the microwave and into it dissolve the espresso powder and condensed milk and set aside.
In the same saucepan over medium-high heat, stir in the second quantities of heavy cream and espresso powder until the powder dissolves. Add the condensed milk and whisk to combine. While whisking, bring the mixture to a boil. Lower the heat to medium and cook until thickened slightly, whisking often.
When baked, transfer the cupcakes to a wire rack, brush with the coffee glaze and let cool.
Spoon warm icing evenly over the cooled cupcakes.
Leave a comment, make my day!
We LOVED condensed milk when we were growing up and what a coincidence that we too were living in Thailand? Although I don’t buy condensed milk that often, it’s still a guilty pleasure. I love adding it to tea instead of normal milk. We used to drizzle some onto toast. SO yummy. if you caramelise it, it tastes like dulce de leche.
Oh, Sasa, if my 10-year old were to see this, she would demand I make it for her upcoming birthday. She loves coffee! Can you believe that I have never tasted Vietnamese coffee? Shame, I know. Next time I am in SF, that’s on the agenda.
You licked the droplets of condensed milk, and I slurped the little packages of cream that Germans put into their coffee (you know what I am talking about). On the sly, of course:)
There is something so satisfying and sinful in a mouthful of rich, creamy goodness.
So you have both glazing and icing? Talking about guilty pleasures! ;-)
Oh my goodness! Talk about bringing back memories!
We drank Carnation Condensed Milk by the can, when we used to visit Burma. I think all my cousins were weaned on it.
I hadn’t eaten? / drank? condensed milk since about 1987 and then I made some white chocolate and raspberry cookies, which called for 1/2 can of condensed milk. What is one to do with the other, unused 1/2? Why, stand in the kitchen, guiltily spooning it in to my cake hole, making sure Mr B didn’t come in and catch me, mid indulgence. I was’ practising and upholding’ my Asian heritage! Hehe.
I have a lot of guilty pleasures that are guilty because I’m a “food guy” and I am not supposed to like them, but I do. Probably the one that kills most people is that for pancakes, waffles, etc. I like Mrs. Butterworth better than real maple syrup. That’s a hard thing to admit when you live near places where people tap trees for maple syrup in their backyards, but I always have the “Well, I didn’t grow up here, so . . . ” excuse.
The other one is powdered coffee creamer. I love the stuff. It’s probably terrible for me – I don’t know or care. I just know it is oh so smooth in my coffee and doesn’t cool it off at all. I think both this and the syrup had to do with growing up in the south. First cup of coffee I ever had (at the impressionable age of 9 years old) had powdered creamer in it, and we never had real maple around.
I should make Vietnamese coffee more at home. I always have sweetened condensed milk at home for key lime pie, so it’s not like I couldn’t do it. Of course, now that I know about these cupcakes, my supply might get lower than usual.
Sweetened condensed milk is pretty awesome stuff! Add that to coffee and it’s delicious. Add that to cupcakes and coffee?! Insanely yummy.
SWOON . . . and sigh . . . I confess to having a Vietnamese coffee this morning and wishing very much that I had one of these cupcakes to go with. The stuff is quite addictive! Guilty pleasure? Any type of sweet – had sworn off sugar until I married The Professor whose own love of sweets is no secret . . . what’s a girl to do? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! xo Sasa!
Yes, the guilty pleasures of the can, so dangerously more-ish… I can truly attest, there was a huge amount of this stuff being ingested on Koh Lanta… mmmmm…. the taste buds say yes but the teeth are terrified!
Had a friend once who had never had sour cream on her baked potato, because she knew that if she did, there’d be no going back.
So it goes for me and sweetened condensed milk. Had a lick once (no 35 degrees, and a humming refrigerator by my side, so no excuses save gluttony), and knew I must batten down the lips ASAP.
It is addictive stuff.
I suspect the same could be said of these cupcakes. Hmmm…
I see that there are others too who used to drink CARNATION (the on with the cowboy on the label) chocolate drink! Back then i didnt know i had lactose intolerance (i was 5 or sth….) so i used to gulp down tons of carnation cans.. when my mother found out i was forever banned from it… my mum used to be a healthy-eating freak… (i had my first cheesburger at the age of 16 or sth…u can imagine…)..
mmm these days.. i crave for something salty like potato chips.. i don’t eat anything sweet..dont like the taste of sweet.. (i know, i am a weird person) but this cupcake doesnt look sweet at all… i’d say id give it a try but we both know i am not capable of preparing this!!
xxx more austrian cuisine is coming up?!!!
Oh c’mon Marietta! I hear you’re a whizz in the kitchen.
I totally relate to the whole breaking my promises where food is concerned thing. I even posted about it a couple of weeks ago, heh.
Condensed milk is a sin I tell you! Good for you for breaking the habit. Those cupcakes are sure worth the relapse though.
Magda
I’m still dreaming of the ca phe sua we had in Hanoi – thick black treacly and lying at the bottom in a sweet little blob all that stickily viscous condensed milk. God it was good. I used to love it as a kid, but had forgotten just how damned addictive the stuff is. We now have a couple of cans in permanent residence in the kitchen. When I was properly young, my nan used to have this toothpaste tube of condensed milk she’d spread on toast. *Swoon*.
If there was ever a way to truly mainline it, i’d be first in line for a fix. Great recipe btw – looking forward to trying it soon.
LOL I too have a shameful condensed milk secret, and much MUCH worse than yours. So one time, at band camp, otherwise known as one time when I worked as a receptionist at a medical centre (BO-RING), I used to have to pass by the kitchen each time I went to drop a patient file off for the docs. We kept a tin of condensed milk in the fridge because, JUST BECAUSE, and each time I walked through the kitchen I would EAT A SPOONFUL. just like that. ooh yeah.
I love sweet milky coffee and these look awesome. Um… and is that a cow on your napkin? I need cow napkins!
One of my girlfriends at school was Vietnamese & she introduced me to the delights of ‘stolen condensed milk’ (so much better than when you can’t steal it out of your friends mothers kitchen cupboards) – it was our thing & still., to this day I find it hard to resist a little lick of the spoon or two.
Love the coffee cupcakes, what a great excuse to open a can of condensed milk ;)
So, basically EVERYONE has secret addictions to sweetened dairy products of some type. Maybe I should chuck Hangawareness and start SDP anonymous.
i’m so up for SDP anonymous. Amen.
Goodness me, they look and sound wonderful. You had me at condensed milk and it all went up from there. I became addicted to condensed milk at uni when my flatmate introduced me to it. Often people experiment with drugs when they go to uni, but I went straight for the hard stuff. I ate it a lot when I was studying for exams or writing essays, but I usually got so high on sugar that I couldn’t sit still at my desk. Bit counter-productive.
Your cupcakes look wicked and love the coffee part of it very much. I like condensed milk straight of a spoon, and that’s a habit from childhood when we lived in a country where fresh milk was scarce but evaporated milk, condensed milk and milk powder was plentiful! Funnily enough, I don’t like it in my beverages though I make an eggless cake with it.
LOVELY! i love vietnamese coffee. it’s so strong it leaves you shivering like a wet dog. This post got me laughing for some reason..I think it’s cause we both share a great love for condensed milk. Over here in Singapore, we have great coffees too (depending on how the locals brew it). You can ask for many types but the popular ones are Kopi (coffee with condensed milk) or kopi C (coffee with Carnation milk which is slightly less sweet and creamy than the former). Anyway, u’re giving me ideas to turn KOPI into a cupcake now! xx
These look like seriously delicious cupcakes!
Vietnamese coffee would be totally new to me, but I think I’m going to have to give it a shot… both in liquid and cupcake form.
Chips / crisps are my guilty pleasure. But I am seriously abstaining at the moment. Plus it helps that I don’t like Paprika favoured chips, which seems the only flavour they do here in Berlin!
Ooh I like me some chippies too…I don’t like European chips though – well, the French, Swiss and Austrian ones anyway. I like English chips.
I had some version of these at a party once and they were *amazing*. I also want to say that the styling in the first photo in this entry is lovely! So much thoughtfulness there. Really nice.
your blog is quite beautiful as well! and i think you should drop it all and move to spain…. ;)
Hey- Austrian, Vietnamese…what’s the diff? :) Those look totally incredible! I’ve never tried Vietnamese coffee before, but it sounds like I’m totally missing out. My guilty pleasure is not really sweets, though; anything cheesy tends to me my guilty pleasure. I would just eat blocks of cheese for every meal if I knew they wouldn’t kill me!
I always have a “squeezy” bottle of condensed milk in my fridge – it was a truly happy day when I discovered the existence of the squeezy bottle packaging! ;)
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