Week 20: Coconut Sponge Cupcakes with Chocolate Espresso Buttercream

It was only a matter of time before a cupcaker was unable to successfully complete Ming’s recipe and be forced to make an entirely different recipe so as to not disappoint the fellow cupcakers. Well, if you haven’t guessed it by now, that cupcaker was me.

I dutifully followed the recipe, but there were so many places where things could go wrong, and evidently, something did. I needed to beat the egg whites and salt until there were soft peaks. Then add sugar and beat until there were stiff peaks. Then fold the stiff peaks gently into an egg yolk mixture.



I don’t know if I went wrong at the soft peak, stiff peak, or gently folding stage, but the cupcakes shriveled up a few minutes after I took them out of the oven. After splitting one open, it appeared as though the ingredients separated:  the bottom was a congealed glob of goo and the top was somewhat spongy. There was no way I’d serve these to anyone, and I unfortunately didn’t have the time or culinary resources in stock to go through the soft-peak, stiff-peak, gently-fold process again and risk another fail at any/all of those stages. So I claimed defeat and used Barefoot Contessa’s coconut cupcake recipe instead. The batter was absolutely delicious—I had no problem licking the bowl—and the cupcakes graciously didn’t shrivel into a congealed glob after I took them out of the oven. Instead they turned out plump and tasty.

The conquest wasn’t a complete fail:  I used Ming’s frosting recipe, which was very good. However, because it uses egg yolks, I’d be somewhat leery to make it for other people again. I’d hate to make someone sick.

All in all, if I were to make coconut cupcakes in the future, I’d probably choose the easier route again and stick with Barefoot Contessa’s recipe and leave Ming’s recipe for those with more culinary genius.

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 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!)