Grown-Up Cupcakes with Marlo Scott at Sweet Revenge

Divya Gugnani: Some New Yorkers wait in lines to satisfy their cup cake cravings. Others trade in the lines for a glass of wine and head to a place where they can indulge their sweet tooth with an adult beverage. I’m Divya Gugnani here at Sweet Revenge in Manhattan’s West Village. So, let’s go behind the burner and meet the expert for a special holiday treat and some bubbly to go with it. I’m here with owner Marlo Scott. I love cupcakes. I can enjoy them anytime but from Halloween to the holidays, my cup cake consumption only goes one way which is up. So, Marlo just show me how it’s done. Marlo Scott: Well here at Sweet Revenge for the holidays, specifically for Halloween and in order have a little flare for the festivities, we’re maintaining kind of a stylish look. I’m going to show you how we style out the dirty and the pure to our signature cup cakes. Divya Gugnani: I like the names. Marlo Scott: The dirty and the dark chocolate—cake with a dark chocolate truffle and the puree is a Mexican vanilla cake with a Mexican vanilla butter cream. Here at Sweet Revenge, we use a signature rustic parchment paper to preserve kind of a very sophisticated rustic downtown sheek kind of a European look. We are big believers in moistness and refrigeration tends to dry out products so in an effort to maintain the best quality even in on refrigerated case and that is why we spread the frosting all the way to the paper’s edge. It’s going to lock in and seal the moisture of the cake. Divya Gugnani: And so when you’re at home, how long can you keep a cup cake out before you feel like you need to refrigerate it. Marlo Scott: Well, what you can do is you can refrigerate overnight and then as you are wanting to enjoy them, you bring them out to room temperature for you or your guest. The other thing you can do which I do at home is actually use a Tupperware container, sealed Tupperware container very easy, pop the cupcakes in there and don’t even refrigerate it. Divya Gugnani: So now, we are ready to pipe. Marlo Scott: So, this is how you style out the signature Mohawks we put in three Mohawks here at Sweet Revenge to make them edgy and sexy and stylish and look nothing like a traditional cupcake and if you don’t have a pastry bag at home, you can use a bakery parchment paper, you can also use a little plastic bag and just cut off the end. And what I find is it it’s easiest if you hold the bag straight up and you’re just going to pipe in three ways. When we pipe this three Mohawks together, I said it look like pictures that I’ve seen at the Sydney opera house and I thought it was a neat and subtle way of bringing in a— Divya Gugnani: So, it wouldn’t be Halloween if we didn’t have orange and black. Marlo Scott: So for the dirty, we take dark cocoa powder and we give it a really good dusting and then we’re just going to take some very simple orange sugar crystals and decorate the top. What this does is it gives it a little flare for the holidays while maintaining a really sophisticated classy and simple look. Divya Gugnani: And so what am I going to do with the puree? Marlo Scott: With puree, you’re going to start with a little sugar in the row and now to style it out and be festive for the holidays, a little bit of orange sparkle. Fantastic, so let’s go try pair them. Divya Gugnani: So, you can make cup cakes like we just did or you can buy them but my real question is, what do you pair with them? Marlo Scott: Well I know in most people’s minds, they’re thinking cupcakes and a glass of milk, drink from a coffee or tea. Well, here at Sweet Revenge, we believe in cupcakes and booze. Okay so now Divya, I’m going to take you through a pairing so far comes in cream our raspberry red velvet cake with raspberries baked inside you can actually see them right there in the center of the cake, a little of cream cheese frosting and raspberry drizzle. We have it paired with a beautiful raspberry Bellini which is just a lovely little Prosecco raspberry. So, what it does is it accentuates that fruit in both the cake and in the drink. Divya Gugnani: What a great compliment. You’ve got the raspberry; you’ve got the cream cheese frosting and then this beautiful Prosecco which is just really refreshing and sparkling. So, choose my lucky number and it’s chocolate so I’m getting lucky. Marlo Scott: You sure are and this is called the dirty so you can read write into that, however you will Divya. So, the dirty which is the dark chocolate truffle is very rich, super intense and in order to kind of kind of cut that intensity we’ve paired it with a beautiful kind of Swedish pear cider which is light, it’s crisp, it’s refreshing and it really nicely kind of balances that rich dark chocolate. Divya Gugnani: And I always think of chocolate, red wine but you know what’s interesting about this is that it’s a compliment. Balance is the keyword here, intense chocolate and beautiful pear cider. That’s balance. So now, we are moving on to purity, its all nice and white. You can do the honors with a knife. Marlo Scott: It is, the pure which is our Mexican vanilla cake with Mexican vanilla butter cream. Divya Gugnani: That’s another tip, when you use a vanilla—the intense flavor of vanilla is so much stronger than using that imitation stuff that you buy in the grocery store. Marlo Scott: And we have it paired with a gorgeous Pinot Nior. So, the Pure which is a Mexican vanilla cake, with Mexican vanilla butter cream, really sweet, really creamy, very fragrant is paired with this light dry fruity red wine and it really helps just to balance out that creamy sweetness with a bit of soft red. Divya Gugnani: I happen to love vanilla cup cakes, I happen to love Pinot Nior, did I know they were going to go together, I did not. This is a match made in heaven. Marlo Scott: Thank you. Yes the Pinot Nior, it’s still soft although it’s a light dry red wine, it really kind of rounds out that creamy sweet Mexican vanilla taste. Divya Gugnani: It does, it adds really nice body and flavor to something that’s very sweet. Marlo Scott: Absolutely. Cheers! Divya Gugnani: Cheers! Thanks for having me. Marlo Scott: Stay tuned to Behind the Burner where we give you the tips, trick and techniques that are lighting the culinary world on fire.