Chocolate Surprise Cupcakes

Chocolate Surprise Cupcakes

My husband travels, a lot. He doesn't normally get to take advantage of my cupcakes since I mostly do them during the week for our Wednesday evening after church fellowship time. I also share them with my teacher friends at my kids' school and I have to do that during the week too. :) So today's cupcake is my husband's favorite, Chocolate Surprise. Of course, he can't eat them right now because he is out of town, but since I am a "good wife" I thought I would save him at least one. :)

The Chocolate Surprise Cupcake starts with my favorite chocolate cake recipe. You can also start this with a Devil's Food or any other chocolate cake mix (devil's food is just my favorite at this), but since I discovered this fabulous recipe, it is about all I use. I made the cupcakes the night before, put them flat in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag until I was ready to use them. They were incredibly moist and tasty and a perfect vessel for all the other yumminess.

Ganache, right out of the refrigerator

My next step was to make my frosting, a whipped ganache. Seriously, I think it might be a little piece of heaven on earth. This frosting takes a little time to do, but to quote my son, OMW--as in, oh my word--it is SOOOOOO worth it. Well, you know, if you like chocolate. It might be somewhat time consuming, but it is quite simple. Heat 2 cups of heavy whipping cream (I do it until right before boiling. . . you might call it a scald). I add about 1 tablespoon of corn syrup, I saw it in a recipe once. Then I was reading Martha Stewart, and she said it is supposed to add shine. I figure it just gives it a little bit more sweetness if nothing else. After heating the cream, (what I do is) pour it over 1 bag of mini semi-sweet chocolate chips. Mix well. I find that the mini chips help it melt faster, but you can use whatever size and flavor (dark, semi-sweet, milk) you like. (I experimented with using a cherry chip and didn't have as much success--that will go into a "flops" blog later. I am going to try a peanut butter chip sometime too and see if that works.) I also added 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Let it chill for a while. I let it go for a few hours, but as long as you let it get pretty cold, you can go to the next step. I had time to do a little shopping (trying to make a quilt for my daughter so I needed to get material) and I also had time to prepare my cupcakes (I will talk about the cupcake prep below).

Whipping the ganache

Depending on what you want to do with the ganache, depends on what you do next. If you want a lovely pourable option, just whisk it just a bit and then pour it over what you want. If you want to spread it, mix it for a little bit--maybe a minute. If you want to put it in an icing bag, mix it for about 3-5 minutes. I then put it in my bag with a #1M tip. I was ready to put little rosettes and the other lovely cupcake design.

Cutting my hole

For my traditional Chocolate Surprise cupcakes, I make my cupcake just like usual. I then cut a hole in the center of the cupcake (I use my cute little tool, but you can use a knife, or honestly a spoon if your kids are helping). I make this fabulously tasty filling with two store bought ingredients: White Icing and Marshmallow Creme. Blend these together. I put it in a "piping" bag and filled the hole in my cupcakes with it. (Since I only did 1 dozen cupcakes this way, I had some leftover. I will use it again this weekend.). Then I piped my frosting into the traditional cupcake design on top.

The "Surprise" part of the cupcake

I also made a variation of my Chocolate Surprise cupcakes this time. I was trying for a Black Forest, but I had a lot of the ganache leftover, so I thought I would just do a cherry chocolate surprise cupcake.

Cherry Chocolate cupcakes, before icing

When making the cupcakes, I put a little dollop of cherry pie filling in my cupcakes before baking. (The next time I do it, I think I will make sure it gets covered with batter.)

I didn't have it covered with batter. I will next time.

I covered these with the ganache in a rosette pattern and had a little extra on the edges of it because I wanted to put some more cherry pie filling on top as a yummy garnish.

See how there is a little "divot" to put my filling in.

Cherry Chocolate Cupcake

I made two dozen cupcakes to take to church with me. . .I normally only take about 18 (because my mom will bring cookies) and have about half leftover that I can take to the teachers the next day. . .I only brought 3 home!!!! I think they were a hit!!!! I guess I will have to make something special for the teachers really soon.

If you can't follow the link to the chocolate cupcakes, I will type the recipe out, just let me know. It is a recipe I have used in the past and you can access it thru my archives too.

Groundhog Cupcake Cuteness

Groundhog Cupcakes

Since tomorrow is Groundhog's day, I thought I would attempt these super cute cupcakes. I found my inspiration on Pinterest, but I thought I could do it a bit differently. I thought a chocolate cupcake would be perfect. . . you know, because dirt can be that chocolatey color :) I found a recipe from one of my favorite sources, allrecipes.com. Here is the link to the recipe I used. I will type it out below with what I did differently or how I followed it.

I made a butter cream icing and tinted it green with the Leaf Green color from Wilton. I used tip #21. What was so great about the icing, I could be messy with it and so not perfect!!!! It's supposed to look like grass. Since grass grows in a random pattern (unless it is on a golf course) the more random it was, the cuter it became, at least I thought so. I sprinkled brown sugar around the center of the cupcake. I put a Teddy Graham in the middle to act as the groundhog. This was a fun cupcake to decorate. It looks adorable. Sometimes the cute things don't always taste so great, not an issue on this one. The cupcake is good, and I love the icing.

Cake Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup Unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Hershey's)
3 tablespoons softened butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup milk

Cake Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and prepare cupcake pan. (I used cupcake liners, but you can spray it with a non-stick cooking spray like Pam. If I am not using my favorite Reynolds brand liners, I will spray my cupcake papers to make the cupcake come out better). Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa and set aside. I usually skip this step. I generally put my dry ingredients in a separate bowl and use a whisk. This works just fine to get the lumps out and blend the mixture. I thought I would try something different. I have seen the Barefoot Countessa use a strainer and tap the side of it to "sift" the ingredients together. I tried this today.

Sifting the Cocoa

When all you have is lumps, you can press it through with spoon

 

In another bowl, blend the butter and sugar. The original recipe says to cream it together, but with that little butter and that much sugar, it is quite difficult to get it light and fluffy. Just get it mixed well. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well. Stir in vanilla. Alternately add the flour mixture and the milk. Pour into prepared muffin/cupcake tin about half full. These rise nicely so you don't need to over fill them.

Bake for about 20 minutes.

My butter cream frosting is pretty easy and the same one I always use.
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening (I use butter flavored Crisco)
4 cups powdered sugar
2 TBPS milk
1 TSP vanilla

Mix well and tint to your liking :)

Other Ingredients for this project:
Brown Sugar
Teddy Grahams