This recipe is for 12 small cupcakes. They are not precisely salad, but a great mixture of sweetness and the soft pungency of blue cheese.
Ingredients
50 g. flour
50 g. sugar
50 g. butter at room temperature
1 medium size egg at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon yeast
A pinch of salt
A pinch of black pepper
40 g. blue cheese, picon, gorgonzola or similar
6 peeled walnuts
For cream
40 g. blue cheese at room temperature
30 g. butter at room temperature
90 g. powdered sugar
Preparación
Have the oven at 170ºC. Dispose papers for mini cupcakes onto a silicone or metallic baking mold.
Sieve the flour, yeast, salt and pepper into a bowl, and set apart. Put the butter and sugar into the mixer glass and beat till it gets creamy. Add the egg and beat again, be sure of getting a perfect integration. Then add the mixture of sieved flour and beat. Finally, with the help of a spatula, mix it with the crumbled cheese and chopped walnuts, without beating!
Pour a pretty teaspoon of pastry in each mold, filling up to approximately 2/3 of the cupcake paper size. Bake for 20 minutes, taken care not to burn them as each oven is peculiar, and if you have, like I do, an electric table oven, it will take some additional minutes than a standard oven. Once cooked, take them out and let them cool onto a rack.
Once they are cold, they can be stored in a lunch box, tin, plastic bag or box, and they will be ready to take to the beach, a picnic, or to have them at any time.
Cream preparation
Put powdered sugar, crumbled blue cheese and butter into the mixer glass and beat with electric rods till it’s completely creamy, about 4 minutes medium-high speed.
To decorate, just spread some cream onto each, all or some cupcakes using a spatula, spoon or dessert knife. If you have a pastry bag, you can put a very wide round mouthpiece and decorate each cupcake.
Finally, I like to put some dry parsley on some of them, chopped walnuts on others, and leave the others just as they are.
Advices and Varieties
These mini cupcakes are great as entree, accompanying a belly and candied onion salad, a good beef or a vegetable skewers barbecue. I have also tried to prepare them adding the cheese and walnuts as stuffing (first I put some pastry, then I cover with crumbled cheese and chopped walnuts, and then cover with some pastry again). They are good anyway, although mixing cheese and pastry is softer, and cheese flavor is less noticeable.
