Simple Italian Appetizers

As the holiday entertaining season approaches, I can't get the fabulous food of Tuscany out of my mind. Something about the simplicity of the fresh ingredients has stuck with me - like the prosciutto and melon pictured above, and the sheep's cheese, walnut, and honey platter below.

I truly think that fresh, local ingredients are what make the food I experienced in Italy so excellent, but I think that we can translate these foods into our own local and affordable versions. These are the appetizers that I served to my family at one of our Thanksgiving meals this week, which added some variety to what we often serve at our gatherings. All are simple to prepare and serve.

Sheep's Cheese Platter

For the cheese platter, I chose a Manchego cheese over an Italian peccorino, since I have not yet found fresh peccorino I like here in California (mostly I have found Peccorino Romano, which here is usually a hard matured cheese rather than fresh). Since "peccorino" just means sheep's cheese, I found the Spanish Manchego to be a pleasing alternative sheep's cheese, which is readily available at Trader Joe's. Sheep's cheese is also a good option for the lactose intolerant in my family, since it has less lactose than cow's milk cheeses.

I also chose a Havarti (not a sheep's cheese, but very mild) at the request of one of my brothers, and both cheeses paired well with the California Premium walnuts, bits of 85% Columbian dark chocolate, creamed honey, and crackers I also obtained from Trader Joe's. I had prepared crostini by cutting a sourdough baguette in thin slices, brushing them with a mixture of half melted salted butter and half canola oil, lightly sprinkling them with fresh ground pink salt, and baking them at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes until appropriately toasted. This is a great appetizer since people can experiment with the combinations they like of the available options.

Shopping List: Manchego cheese, Havarti cheese, California Premium walnuts, 85% Columbian dark chocolate, creamed or regular honey, crackers, baguette

Prosciutto and Melon

This is the prosciutto and cantaloupe I served; next time I would go with a different source for the prosciutto, since this one was a little too salty for me, and for some reason I had to wait 20 minutes at Muzio's in San Luis Obispo in 0rder for a quarter pound to be sliced for me. Still, it's a nice salty/sweet and fairly healthy appetizer; it takes about 1/4 pound of thinly sliced prosciutto to be served with half of a large cantaloupe. Just slice the melon and drape the prosciutto over it! I let the guests cut off their desired amounts of melon and ham.

Shopping List: 1/2 of a large cantaloupe, 1/4 lb thinly sliced prosciutto

Raspberry and Mascarpone Crostini

Finally, I stole this idea from a friend of mine in L.A.: crostini topped with mascarpone cheese (a milder cream cheese), fresh raspberries, and drizzled with honey. So simple, but so good! The crostini should be toasted plain at 350 degrees for 5-10 minutes, so that they are just dried on one side but not browned yet. These were sourdough, but a plain baguette would work just as well. Prepare just prior to serving so they don't get soggy, and the larger and plumper the raspberries the better.

Shopping List: 1 baguette, 8 oz mascarpone, 1 basket fresh raspberries, honey to drizzle

Adaptable Icings: Buttercream and Mascarpone Frostings

I accidentally had a cupcake for lunch on Valentine's Day; it wasn't planned, it just was there in front of me at noon, and I thought "I can't just Not Eat that cupcake." So I ate it. Which reminded me that I made all of these cupcakes last weekend for a friend's birthday...

She had requested a variety of frostings - chocolate, cream cheese, and vanilla bean - so I decided go on a spurt of cupcake creativity. The kind of spurt where I make 6 different flavors, using a basic cake and frosting as a foundation. I honestly started out with about 10 flavors in mind, which I whittled down to 6, which finally became 5 in the absence of key ingredients and extra time.

This time I went with my favorite mascarpone chocolate cupcake recipe, minus the mixed-in chocolate chips. For one of the flavors I mixed in some spice, and for one I added some white chocolate chips, but the rest I left plain chocolate. And then came the icings:

Vanilla Bean Buttercream Frosting
This is really just a basic buttercream with a vanilla bean scraped in.

Cream together:
1 C (2 sticks) salted butter
1 tsp vanilla
the seeds of one vanilla bean scraped into the bowl

Add:
1 lb (about 4 C) powdered sugar
2 T milk or cream or soy milk

To make this into a chocolate buttercream, add:

1 T unsweetened cocoa powder
4 oz melted dark chocolate (bittersweet chocolate chips work fine)

To make this into a cinnamon chocolate icing (think Mexican chocolate, with cinnamon mixed into the batter as well!) add:

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Mascarpone White Chocolate Frosting
For the remaining cupcakes, I made a mascarpone icing, similar to cream cheese but a little less sour. Together with the chocolate cupcakes that had white chocolate chips mixed in, it had the effect of a chocolate cheesecake. I split off some of this frosting to also make a raspberry mascarpone icing, for which I filled the chocolate cupcakes with raspberry jam. To fill cupcakes, cut a cone out of the top of the cupcake, into the middle of the cake, and then lop off the tip of the cone, fill the space with jam, and replace the top of the cake.

Cream together:
1/4 C (1/2 stick) salted butter
1/4 C mascarpone cheese
1 tsp vanilla

Then add:
2 C powdered sugar
3 oz. melted white chocolate chips

To make this a raspberry mascarpone white chocolate icing (shall we just call this "raspberry" for short?), add:

several tablespoons of good raspberry jam (to taste)


When making these frostings, cream the butter/mascarpone and vanilla well together first, until it's getting fluffy, and then after slowly encorporating the powdered sugar and other additions, beat it long enough to make it light and smooth. You want it to make voluptuous cupcakes, n'est-ce pas?

It's always my feeling that food should be decorated to look like it tastes, so I encourage you to find creative ways of doing so - while it might seem too obvious to put white chocolate chips on top of white chocolate frosting, I like the way the textures and shapes look together. And hey, you know what you're eating when you pick it up.

Be forewarned that the amounts of icing produced by these recipes are not proportionate to one batch of 24 cupcakes; the vanilla bean buttercream is more than enough to frost 24, but the mascarpone icing is about enough for 12.

Bon appétit!

Chocolate Mascarpone Cupcakes Dipped in Ganache

Oh, cupcakes. And ganache. How well they pair.

In my search for good homemade cake recipes, I stumbled upon this Everyday Italian recipe before it was yanked from Hulu, and I'm so glad I did! The cake itself has mascarpone cheese in it, and it ends up moist, nicely textured, VERY chocolaty, and not too sweet. This was not the most smooth ganache that I've ever made since I sort of forgot to stir it for a while after I had poured the cream over the chocolate, but still, the dipping process went well. I think they would look really pretty with a sugared violet on top of each one, so maybe that will be the plan next time!

Chocolate Mascarpone Cupcakes

5 oz. chopped unsweetened chocolate
1/3 C mascarpone cheese
3 C flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3/4 C chocolate chips
2 1/4 C sugar
1 T vanilla
1 C vegetable oil
3 eggs

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Boil 1 C water in a small saucepan, and once it boils stir in the chopped unsweetened chocolate and turn off the heat. Off the heat, add the mascarpone cheese and set aside to cool.

Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips. Adding the chocolate chips at this point will allow them to be coated in flour, which will help them to be suspended in the batter.

Use a handmixer to beat the wet ingredients in a new bowl: sugar, vanilla, oil, and eggs. Add the cooled chocolate to the wet ingredients and mix well with mixer. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in a few batches, stirring each batch just enough to mix it in without over mixing.

Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners; recipe makes about 33 cupcakes. Bake the pans one at a time in the oven for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

Bittersweet Ganache

2/3 C heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 C bittersweet chocolate chips

Heat the cream until bubbles form around the edge of the saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Pour the heated cream over the chocolate chips in a bowl. Stir gently until the chocolate has melted and well incorporated with the cream. Let sit and thicken until cool. Dip the cooled cupcakes and serve!

Mascarpone-Iced Cupcakes

This is my first foray into the flavor of mascarpone cheese, and I must say that just thinking about it now causes me to crave it. It's like cream cheese, but not - I still don't have words to accurately describe the unique taste. It makes a cool, creamy, simple icing, though, which I now am determined to rotate into my buttercream-dominated frosting usage.

Here's how you make enough to frost 12 cupcakes: scoop 4 oz. mascarpone cheese (found at any grocery store in the cheese section) into a bowl, and stir in powdered sugar until it reaches the desired consistency (I used 2-3 C). Add food coloring if you like. That's it!

What's more, I discovered this icing with a cake recipe from scratch that's actually good, and not difficult. Here it is, from the "Showgirl Cupcake" entry on DL's blog, with a few conversions done for you:

Butter Cake Cupcakes:

4 oz. (125 g) butter, salted or unsalted, at room temperature
2/3 C (125 g) sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 C plus 2 T (125 g) flour
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
heaping 1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 T whole milk or cream

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper cupcake liners.
2. Beat the butter with the sugar until smooth and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well, then mix in the vanilla.
3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. Gradually add in the dry ingredients, folding as you go.
5. Add milk. Beat well.
6. Pour mixture into cupcake papers. Bake 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick comes clean.
7. Frost with mascarpone icing when cool.