Here's the recipe for the Faux-stess cupcakes that many of you enjoyed at the recent Juli/Elise birthday celebration. For those of you who weren't able to join us, you can now enjoy them at home. For those of you who liked them at the party, you can now have seconds.
I said that the Brownie Mosaic Cheesecake was easy, but had a lot of steps. Maybe that's an oxymoron. I will reiterate the oxymoron here. Regular cupcakes are easier to make than these...and they can be pretty tasty. Cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcake are easier too...unless you count the labor required to earn the money to buy a $5.00 cupcake. Buying a package of Hostess is a lot easier...unless you count the effort necessary to drive to an unfamiliar neighborhood to buy them...so that nobody who loves or respects you will see you debasing yourself like that. But of course, God is always watching...and God will smite you.
Hostess cupcakes taste like sweet brown chemicals. The filling tastes sweet and white and coats your mouth...think of a little Louisiana Gulf coast right there in your mouth. These cupcakes taste irrefutably like chocolate. The creamy filling tastes creamy. If you left it out on a store shelf, it wouldn't last an hour. It would melt down into inedible goop. That's because it's real, actual food. Real, actual food does that. Mysterious white chemicals with polysyllabic names remain perky and foodlike nearly forever. These cupcakes have no frosting. These are slathered with ganache...chocolate melted with butter. You cannot peal it off like a disk of brown Play-Doh and eat it separately. Ganache melts at just below body temperature, so it can be licked off, if nobody's watching...and you're that kind of person.
Maybe "easy, but with a lot of steps" is an oxymoron. Fair enough. There is a continuum between "easy peasey lemon squeezy" and "too fussy to bother with". There is also a continuum between "inedible really but kind of food-like" and "very tasty". Others may use lurid descriptions, eye rolling and groaning..."the best thing I ever ate" and other hyperbole. Those kinds of intemperate descriptions are unscientific. We're scientific around here. (Editors note: Jacqueline defines the tastiness scale. The "very tasty" can be accompanied by a demure stamp of the foot...feet in third position. "Over the top" can also be appended to "very tasty". But since "over the top" can be used to describe things that are not food, "over the top" cannot be used to define
the scale...like the foot stamp, it is only a modifier.) These cupcakes lie at the intersection of the two curves...where the difficulty line meets the tastiness line...at the "for special occasions" point on the difficulty curve...admittedly closer to "too fussy to bother with" than "easy peasy lemon squeezy"...but smack dab on top of "very tasty" on the tastiness curve. Around here, we call that point of intersection "worth it".
Faux-stess Cupcakes (AKA Chocolate Cream Cupcakes from Cooks Country)
CUPCAKES
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
FILLING
3 tablespoons water
3/4 teaspoon unflavored gelatin
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch salt
1 1/4 cups marshmallow creme (not marshmallow sauce)
GLAZE
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
METHOD
1. MAKE BATTER Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 12-cup muffin tin. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in bowl. Whisk boiling water, cocoa and chocolate chips in large bowl until smooth. Add sugar, sour cream, oil, eggs, and vanilla and mix until combined. whisk in flour mixture until incorporated. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups. Bake until toothpick inserted into cupcake comes out with few dry crumbs attached, 18 to 22 minutes. Cool cupcakes in tin 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack and cool completely.
2. PREPARE FILLING Combine water and gelatine in large bowl and let sit until gelatin softens, about 5 minutes. Microwave until mixture is bubbling around edges and gelatin dissolves, about 30 seconds (microwaves are so unpredictable and fussy, you need to watch this like a hawk). Stir in butter, vanilla and salt until combined. Let mixture cool until just warm to touch, about 5 minutes, then whisk in marshmallow cream until smooth; refrigerate until set, about 30 minutes. Transfer 1/3 cup mashamallow mixture to pastry bag fitted with small plain tip (see note below); reserve remaining mixture for filling cupcakes.
3. ASSEMBLE CUPCAKES Microwave chocolate and butter in small bowl, stirring occasionally, until smooth, about 30 seconds. Cool glaze to room temperature, about 10 minutes. Cut cone from top of each cupcake (see note below) and fill cupcakes with 1 tablespoon filling each. Replace tops, frost with 2 tablespoons cooled glaze, and let sit 10 minutes. Using pastry bag, pipe curlicues across glazed cupcakes. Serve. (Cupcakes can be stored up to two days in an airtight container at room temperature).
Note on pastry bag: A pastry bag is not necessary. Use a sturdy ZipLock plastic bag. Spoon the filling down into a bottom corner of the bag. Snip a tiny bit off of the corner and presto...cheap, instant pastry bag. That's what we did and it worked fine.
Note on cutting cone from top of each cupcake: Use a small, thin bladed knife, like a paring knife. Cut about 1/4 inch from the edge of the cupcake with the knife slanting inward toward the center at about a 45 degree angle. Cut about 2 inches deep in a circle. It's easier than it sounds...and if you Gerber one up, spoon its measure of filling into it immediately and eat it! Once you've extracted the cone of cake from the cupcake, cut off all but about 1/4 inch at the top, to make a little lid. The leftover cones of cake are pretty tasty too. You need your strength to get through a recipe like this. Eat those little cones of cake as you work. The party is still probably hours away.
One last thing: Even if you don't want to go to all the trouble of filling and curlicues, at least make the chocolate cupcakes...frost them with cream cheese frosting or put a little vanilla glaze on them...you can even eat them plain...but honest, they are the best chocolate cupcakes you might ever eat. Would we lie?
This was good food. Dood.
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