I'd been thinking about making some cupcakes for a party, when I got a call from a friend asking me if her daughters could come and learn how to make cupcakes with me. Little did they know that I had never made chocolate cupcakes before! But, I thought it would be a great learning experience for us all. When the girls came, I learned that they, like me, had reservations about cupcakes because there's usually a mound of frosting glopped on the outside and too much dry cake underneath. We all thought it would be fun to try and fill the interior of the cake with some frosting and I decided on cherries for the top ( I had been invited to a party and was asked to bring something chocolate with fruit).
I would say that the morning was not a success, although we did have fun and learned what to do when you have a failure. The first problem was that the cupcakes (we made minis and regular) stuck to the pans. We hand anticipated some trouble and had greased and floured some of the cups, and just greased the others, but ALL of the cupcakes stuck.
But the cake tasted great - so we certainly didn't want to throw it away. Now was the chance to think creatively. Veronica thought the cupcake remnants looked like muffin tops (they did) and in keeping with our idea of having filled cupcakes, we decided to cut off the tops and sandwich two together with frosting and filling inbetween. Here are my two helpers, Jasmine and Veronica.
I had planned on using simple meringue buttercream and cherries for the filling, but Jasmine wanted to know if I could make some ganache, so we made some of that, too. The buttercream never really firmed up the way I had hoped (the kitchen was WAY too warm), so eating the cakes right away (no refrigeration) was perfect with the soft buttercream, cherries, chocolate cake and oozy ganache (like hot fudge!).
The ganache went on top and we ended up with something looking like a moonpie, which tasted great! Another idea for when things don't work out is to do a trifle sort of dessert. In this case I used real whipped cream instead of buttercream (it's quicker to make and the dessert can be eaten straight from the refrigerator).
Next post, look for the recipes for chocolate cupcakes, frosting and icing that works!
