cupcakes

Last Friday I made some cupcakes.  I did this because it was one of our post-docs' (is that apostrophe right? I wrote myself into a corner there) birthdays and Jen, who was making cake, gave up chocolate for Lent.  Lauren, our new group event coordinator (a role she originated and is beasting at) plead for some chocolate.  So I made some cupcakes.

I've been trying cupcakes on and off lately, because they're kind of fun to make.  They're also really easy to screw up.  Those darn little personal cakes.  Anyway!

She asked me for my recipe today so I suppose that's not a wash!  I thought I was really funny, so here's the recipe I sent her.


Hmm.  Okay.  Here's what I did!

I used a straight-up mix for the cake: I think it was Betty Crocker's Devil Food cake, and just followed the directions on the box because I wasn't up to making them from scratch. :)

The filling was a ganache, so I was using 8 oz (about 1 1/3 cups) of semi-sweet choc chips.  I chopped them up a little bit beforehand, but ultimately got lazy and figured that chocolate-chip size was small enough.  I heated 1 cup heavy cream to a boil - you can tell it's ready when it actually starts to lift up and threaten to spill over in the pan.  Then you take the boiling cream and immediately pour it over the chocolate chips in a heat-safe bowl.  Let sit for 1 minute and then slowly stir the chocolate into the cream.  You'll be able to tell when it's homogeneous - it gets darker and smoother and is no longer gross looking. :)

Okay here are some steps in case the paragraph was rambly and unclear:

1. Chop up 1 1/3 cup chocolate chips for a while, then give up because it doesn't seem to be doing anything.  Put into heat resistant bowl.

2. Pour 1 cup heavy cream into small saucepan.  Heat to a boil.  You can use medium heat if you want, but high gets it done faster.  When it boils it starts to lift in the pan.  You'll see what I mean.

3. Pour boiling cream over chocolate chips.  Tap the bowl on the counter to make sure all of the chocolate is covered by the cream.

4. Wait one minute, then slowly stir until the ganache is uniformly colored and smooth.  Maybe 2 minutes?  Maybe more.  Definitely stir by hand.

Then I let that sit while I panicked about not having powdered sugar, tried to make my own powdered sugar, and then ran to the store for (you guessed it) powdered sugar.  It was still warm when I used it, but not particularly.  I just wanted it to be thick enough to not just flood the spongy cupcake.

I fly pretty fast and loose with frosting, and if I could make the frosting I put on the cupcakes again, I would have used milk instead of half and half (I didn't have any milk because I am terrible at grocery shopping and being an adult in general and the milk in my fridge was spoiled) and probably would have used more so that the frosting would stay softer.

My general guideline go-to is as follows:

1. Melt 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, transfer to large mixing bowl and stir in 2/3 c cocoa powder.
2. Add 1 cup powdered sugar and a little bit of milk (1 tbsp?).  Beat together with electric mixer.  My mom always hated this step because it got sugar everywhere, but I am an adult now, and my kitchen is still covered in sugar.  Because I'm an adult who likes television better than mopping.  Nobody's perfect.
3. Repeat step 2 (2x)

4. Taste, remember that you forgot vanilla, debate adding it and finally...

5. Add the ~1/2 tsp vanilla (or like 2 tbsp if you like vanilla... I do... I don't ever measure it) that you forgot to add earlier.
6. If the frosting is too firm, add a little more milk; if it's too fluid, add more sugar.

I used a cupcake corer and a cupcake gun, both on loan from Oana, to core and frost, respectively.  I filled them just using a spoon to drizzle the ganache in.