Hot Chocolate cupcakes...take 1

Have you heard of the movie "A Series of Unfortunate Events" from a few years ago?  This could very easily describe my adventures in baking this morning.  I have been wanting to do a hot chocolate cupcake for some time, so I decided today was the day.  The powers that be in baking world had other plans.

I am still on the hunt for the perfect yellow cake recipe, so I decided to use a box mix and jack it up with butter and milk instead of vegetable oil and water.  That was fine.  They still taste box mix to me, but that's just me.

I tried to put together a chocolate mousse for the filling...and it broke.  I tried to fix it with more cream, and it broke again.  It did, however, taste really good.

Now came the marshmallow frosting.  I found an easy recipe with butter, marshmallow creme, powdered sugar and vanilla.  What could go wrong?  Yep, you guessed it....it did not set up.  I did not have the marshmallow creme, so I went to plan B and just melted marshmallows.  That was fine except I added too many.  Many scoops of powdered sugar later and adding some milk...I finally got something usable.  Again, tasted pretty good.

After all of these unfortunate events, I was feeling pretty defeated but I decided to soldier on and put this mess together.  I hollowed out the center of the cupcakes and dumped in my chocolate mousse mess.  Smeared some over the top of the cupcake.  I then topped that off with the soft marshmallow frosting.  I drizzled on some leftover chocolate sauce from my mousse attempt.  I frosted a few cupcakes, drizzled on the chocolate sauce and threw them in the refrigerator before they melted down over the cupcake.

Now, I am exhausted, but I take solace in the fact that they do not look terrible...and they don't taste terrible either.

Happy Birthday to me!

Yesterday was my birthday. My husband asked me what kind of cake I wanted, and I told him I would be making my own.  I wanted to practice my ombre frosting flower technique.  

I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe (click here for the recipe) and then filled it with a peanut butter mousse frosting (peanut butter, butter, Kool-Whip, milk and powdered sugar).  Oh my...almost forgot to fill the cake because the mousse was so good.  I put a crumb coat of this peanut butter mousse on the outside of the cake to keep it neat and tidy.

I should mention with the chocolate cake recipe that you NEED parchment paper in the bottom of your pans.  I ran out of parchment paper, so I decided that Bakers Joy would just have to do.  Nothing against Bakers Joy, it's a fine product, but this cake is so moist that it will stick like super glue to the pan if you don't have parchment paper.

Now comes the part about the flowers.  I was so transfixed with tinting the frosting that I did not realize I did not make enough.  I had to make the flowers smaller than I wanted and could not overlap them like I wanted.  Lesson learned.  Overall, I was pleased with the way it came out, gaps and all.  

I served it to my family last night after our celebratory dinner at Carraba's (if you have not been, you MUST go).  You could almost literally hear my 5-year-old granddaughter inhaling her slice.  Everyone else also loved the cake and gave me great compliments.