A Tribute to Numb3rs

How can I express how I feel about Numb3rs? How can I express the joy, laughs, tears and love this show has given me over the years? How can I express the sadness and anger I feel about its impending end?
If I were a musician, I would write a song. If I were a painter, I would paint a picture. If I were a writer, I'd write an epic, tear-jerking work of fiction or a breathtaking poem. The thing is, I'm neither a musician, nor a painter, nor a writer. Baking is my art. Hours after reading that CBS cut their order of Numb3rs eppesodes, my baking inspiration went haywire.
This is when "Cupcakes: the Numb3rs Collection" was born; cupcakes, inspired by Numb3rs characters. My tribute to a wonderful show; capturing its essence in sugary perfection.

The two characters I immediately knew how to portray in a cupcake were Larry Fleinhardt and Ian Edgerton. Lots of ideas for the other characters are still floating in my mind and will hopefully see the light of day soon. As always Charlie seems to be the most difficult character to handle, I still haven't figured out how to create a vegan lemon meringue cupcake that deserves to be named a meringue.

Numb3rs belongs to CBS, Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci. The recipes are mine. I'm not making any money with this; however, if this tribute helps to keep Numb3rs on air, I'm really happy to be of service. If you're holding a bakesale to help CBS to come up with enough money to keep Numb3rs alive, feel free to use my recipe. If you can bring the cupcakes to CBS directly, feel even freer to use my recipe; as I am
living in Switzerland I have currently no possibility to deliver them myself.

If you have any other idea how we could use my work to save Numb3rs, go ahead, but please drop me a note on twitter.com/stepfordgeek or stepfordgeek(at)gmail.com.
If you have problems with vegan baking, you can contact me as well, and I can try to help you figure out some alterations. Right now I care more about the general idea of a tribute than about the veganness of said tribute.

Larry Fleinhardt - Fleinhardt's Finest



Given his monochromatic diet, creating a cupcake for Larry is rather easy. It obviously has to be white (and vegan, but that's just me), so I settled on a recipe based on shredded white almonds. Inspired by eppesode 601, I added some clear raspberry spirit to the icing to make it taste like the universe, but without dyeing it pink at the same time. The white sprinkles stand for the stars in the constellation Lyra, because this is where the M57 nebula lies.


wet ingredients

1/3 cup canola or sunflower oil
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup soy joghurt
1/2 cup soy milk
1 tsp. vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar)
1 tsp vanilla extract

dry ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour (not the self-raising kind)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

1 cup of finely ground white almonds

Preheat your oven to 350°F (180°C) and line a muffin pan with white cupcake liners.
Mix the wet ingredients in a bowl, prepare the dry ingredients in another bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Add the ground almonds and mix again. Fill the cupcake liners and bake for 20-22 minutes.

white raspberry icing

1 cup icing sugar
2 tsp raspberry spirit/schnapps/brandy
water

For the icing mix 1 cup of icing sugar with 2 teaspoons of raspberry spirit (you can also use raspberry flavour, I had to go with liquor because I haven't been able to find colourless/white raspberry flavour). Add a couple of teaspoons of water while mixing, until you think the icing is okay. Add more icing sugar if it's too runny, add more water if it's too solid.

Glaze the cupcakes with the icing and place 5 white sprinkles on the icing,imitating the 5 stars of the constellation lyra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyra).


Ian Edgerton - Essence of Edgerton



For Ian I had to use a different approach than with Larry. Given no culinary preferences, I tried to capture the essence of this character in a few words, which I then turned into ingredients: dark and intense, with a hint of scary. Sounds like a really dark, slightly bitter chocolate cupcake to me.

The cupcake itself is based on bars of chocolate with a cocoa content of 85% and dark brown sugar. The pinches of chili in the cupcake and the chili sugar on top provide the hint of scariness and dance nicely with the chocolate flavours.

wet ingredients

1 cup soy milk
1 tsp vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar)
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup canola or sunflower oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 pinches of chili

100g (3.5 oz) chocolate with a cocoa content of 85%

dry ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour (not the self-raising kind)
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Mix the wet ingredients in a bowl, prepare the dry ingredients in another bowl. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan full of boiling water, stir occaisonally. You can melt slowly in the microwave if you must, but as we are working with rather expensive chocolate, a more tender approach is better I think...

Add the melted chocolate to the wet ingredients and mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Fill the cupcake liners and bake for 18-20 minutes. These cupcakes raise quite a bit, so be careful not to overfill your liners.


decoration

60g (2 oz) chocolate with a cocoa content of 85%
1 tbsp thick agave juice (maple sirup works just as well)
chili sugar

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan full of boiling water (again, microwave if you must). Add the agave juice and mix well. Draw a spiral on top of the cupcakes and sprinkle a pinch of chili sugar on top of it.