Week 3: Flourless Chocolate Cupcakes

Ethan's cupcakes turned skeptics into believers (in flourless baking)!

The flourless chocolate cupcake is more like a mini-soufflé than a cupcake, both in terms of the result and how it is prepared. The hardest part of the process is incorporating the fluffy egg whites into the chocolate stage. The original recipe isn’t real specific on how to incorporate them.  I’d recommend dividing the egg foam into thirds.  The first third of the egg foam just whisk in to the chocolate mixture to lighten it.  The next third, fold the mixture about 20-30 times until mostly incorporated.  The final third fold in about 15-20 times to keep the mixture light and fluffy.

 

These cupcakes tasted like
baked hot chocolate. Yum!

The other thing I discovered about the original is that it has you way over filling the cupcake liner.  I’d recommend only filling the liner half full.  I used a standard cookie disher and found that if you just scoop from that, generally one scoop was enough. Granted the scoops will be a little more full than they would be with cookie dough.

One batch will fill two 12 cupcake pans with cupcakes, meaning a single batch produces about twice as many cupcakes as the single batch of other cupcakes, so be prepared.  I never made mine look as neat as hers.  Mine always had a little more overflow than hers did, and I never experimented enough to find a solution.  If anyone else has tried them, you might leave a suggestion.

If I could change anything about the recipe it would be to use a lighter whipped cream.  I used heavy whipping cream as the base and thought it was just a bit too thick.  Though the club seemed to really like the thick whipping cream so feel free to disregard this suggestion as the mad ramblings of an insane lunatic.  

Week 2: Eton's Mess Cupcakes

These cupcakes were so summery, they deserved a hot-pink plate!

Hi cupcakers! I'm Kate, and I'm so excited to be doing this cupcake challenge. For week 2, I made the Eton's Mess Cupcakes—yellow cupcakes with whipped cream, meringue and strawberries on top. I was really looking forward to making this cupcake because it includes two of my favorite things—cupcakes and meringue—and it would give me an opportunity to use my new icing gun to make the meringue chips. Yay!

So, I set about baking. I wanted to make a double batch so I would have enough for the club members and some leftovers for workplace scavengers. With that in mind, I doubled the flour, the baking powder, the salt, the sugar, the vanilla, the butter. Oh, it was so much butter. I started to think that these cupcakes were going to be yellow just because they had so much butter in them. I mean, I was really putting my hand mixer through its paces just trying to cream all that butter. But, the recipe was easy to follow and I popped the doubled batch of cakes (all 34 of them) into the oven. I set the timer for a half hour and started on the meringue.

But something was wrong. After 20 minutes, the cupcakes were brown. On the verge of burnt. I started to think that Ming had led me astray.

After they cooled, I tried one. I noticed that the paper liner was really, really greasy. I figured I must've greased the muffin tin before I put paper liners in the cups. I get so frazzled in the kitchen; I would do something like that. I ate the cupcake. It tasted good. But it didn't taste right. I couldn’t figure it out.

The recipe made a lot of meringue.

Suddenly, as I was finishing up the meringue, it hit me. If I was supposed to double ½ cup butter, that means I was supposed to use 1 cup. One stick of butter equals ¼ cup, right?

Wrong. I'd put four sticks of butter into the first batch of cupcakes. I'd doubled all the ingredients except the butter. I'd quadrupled the butter. No wonder they tasted delicious but somewhat off. No wonder they looked like they'd been sitting on a pile of grease.

Since I'd used four sticks of butter in the first batch, I now had zero sticks of butter in the house. It was 9:00 at night. Imagine my dismay. I was going to let the whole club down.

The first batch. Six sticks of butter were harmed
in the making of these cupcakes.

Cue my husband, Mike. He goes to the store for me while I try to get my meringue chips to look like they're supposed to (note: my "chips" looked more like beans). The day—and recipe—is saved.


After the whole buttery mess, everything went fine. The cupcakes were really, really tasty. They were kind of a new spin on strawberry shortcake, and would be perfect for a summer party. If I were making them again, I'd be sure to measure twice and cream the butter once. I'd probably also use a different meringue recipe because I couldn't quite get the meringue to peak right. I usually use this recipe for meringue, minus the chocolate chips and walnuts. Also, the doubled recipe of this cupcake made about 30 cupcakes when made correctly. And the cake was pretty spongy inside. But, I loved them, and can't wait to try the next 31 cupcakes!

Week 1: Espresso Fudge Cupcakes

Abby's cupcakes got the challenge off to a great start!

Hello cupcake blog readers. I'm Abby, and I made the first batch of cupcake for our cupcake challenge at work: Espresso Fudge Cupcakes with Chocolate Cream Cheese icing. I've made loads of cupcakes in my few short years on this world, but only once before had I made the cake from scratch. Mixes are just too delicious. But I was excited to try a recipe from scratch. And I was pleased to find out that these were pretty simple and turned out great! I will definitely be making these again. I'm not sure if I would put the chocolate chips in the batter next time, because they all fell to the bottom and sort of stuck to the liners. Speaking of the batter--it was DELICIOUS! It had more of a coffee flavor than the cupcakes ended up having. They didn't have too much of a coffee flavor, so my kids even ate them. 



Inside the espresso fudge cupcake.



The frosting was pretty delicious, too! I usually make cream cheese frosting w/ half butter and half cream cheese, but I also usually pipe it on pretty thick. I like this all cream cheese recipe when doing just a thin layer of frosting. I put the chocolate chips on top, like in the picture on the website, and I thought it made the cupcakes look adorable. However, to me, the chocolate chip flavor overpowered the cupcake, so I ate them off and then ate the cupcake! I also think if I make this again, I will add some espresso powder to 1/2 of the frosting for the coffee lovers, to give it a little more espresso-ness. All in all, a really great cupcake and I can't wait to try my next assignment (after testing everyone else's for a while, of course!)





The Cupcake Challenge

For 33 weeks, the 12 members of the Cupcake Club will attempt to make each of the cupcakes found here: http://mingmakescupcakes.yolasite.com/. We'll update here with how the cupcakes turned out and pictures, as often as we can. First up, espresso fudge cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting!