Goodbye Earl Recipe

Brown-Sugar Pound Cupcakes ( adapted from Martha Stewart)

3 cups sifted AP flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

21/4 cups packed light brown sugar

4 large eggs, room temp

3/4 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Line muffin tin (recipe made 22 cupcakes for me). whisk dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs one a time, beating after each addition.Reduce speed to low. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the buttermilk and ending with the dry. fill each cup approx 3/4 full, and bake for 25 minutes.

Carmalized Strawberry Jam

This is a recipe I found on http://www.smittenkitchen.com/

11/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups jam, raspberry, apricot, strawberry or peach are suggested (I used no sugar added strawberry)
Half of a vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped
Salt
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice

Place 1/4 cup of the sugar in a small saucepan. Cook over high heat, without stirring, until all the sugar turns caramel. Tilt pan to distribute caramel. Lower the heat and carefully whisk in the jam, the scraped vanilla bean and seeds, 1 tablespoon of water, a pinch of salt and the lemon juice. (The caramel will bubble violently.) Simmer, stirring, until the caramel dissolves into the jam. Remove from heat and set aside to cool. (This can be done a day in advance.)

I put a teaspoon of jam into each cupcake and swirled it into batter, but I think you could probably swirl it into batter before panning also.

When I piped on the cream cheese icing, I painted two sides of the bag with the jam before adding the frosting, and that made a nice swirl in the frosting for me!