Triumph! Search for the perfect creme filled cupcake completed.
First husband being a huge Hostess cupcake fan, one of the tens of thousands recently heartbroken by the company's demise, his birthday seemed the perfect occasion for cream-filled chocolate cupcakes.
I used Michele's Red Velvet Cake recipe, page 173 in
Chocolate Cake tweaking slightly for altitude. This batch suffered ever-so-slight center collapse, which may mean more extreme altitude adjustment is in order. Trying Bobby Flay's inject-filling-using-pastry-bag technique (page 124,
Food Network Magazine, The Chocolate Issue, March 2012) corrected this flaw. The filling inflates each little cake to a perfect shape. If overfilled, the creamy center bursts out like lava escaping a volcano. At that point finger food morphs to fork food, but no one seems to mind.
While the cupcakes cool, make decorations. This is easy but does take a little time. For 24 cupcakes, you melt about an ounce of white chocolate and an ounce of dark in separate pans over hot water or in double boilers. Let them cool slightly and pour into Ziplock storage bags. Let them cool a little more, so they have a thick but still liquid consistency. As they cool, tape a piece of waxed paper to a cookie sheet. Then snip a tiny hole in the corner of your baggie, and create designs to top your cupcakes. When you have both the white chocolate and dark formed into whatever your little heart desires for topping the cakes, chill the pan of decorations in the freezer.
Marshmallow Fluff Filling
2 jars Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme (7 oz. each; perhaps this comes in larger jars?)
1 stick butter at room temp
Whip thoroughly, and spoon into a pastry bag fitted with a medium metal tip. Wilton worked well here. It took filling the bag twice as each completely cooled cupcake got a generous filling.
Incidentally, I bought the last jar of Jet-Puffed on the shelf and so experimented with a store brand marshmallow creme. Making 2 half batches of filling showed that Jet-Puffed really was the fluffier stuff. The store brand batch was more liquid, less stiff, which made it a little more difficult to keep inside the cakes. Filling made with the store brand wanted to ooze through the bottom of the cupcake where it was thankfully corralled by those great Wilton cupcake liners. While the flavor was pretty much the same, I strongly preferred working with the airier Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme. Go ahead and spend that extra 29 cents to get the good one!
Each cake received a little coat of filling on top as well. Then they rested while I made the glaze. This rest matters because it gives the marshamallow time to set a little, becoming less inclined to interfere with glazing by dripping out.
Scharffen Berger Chocolate Glaze
1 9.7 oz. bar Scharffen Berger semisweet chocolate
1 stick of butter
2 T milk
Chop the chocolate, and melt it gently with the butter in a double boiler. Remove from heat and whisk in the milk a little at a time until you like the consistency. You might not use all the milk, or you might use a little extra.
Working quickly now, while the glaze is runny, dip the top of each cupcake, and set them on a baking rack. Still going fast, grab your decorations out of the freezer and stick them to the glaze before it sets. That way, they adhere better to the cupcakes.
