Devil's food cupcakes

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I recently had a birthday. At some point birthday's have gone from a highly anticipated to slightly dreaded events. I don't dread them so much because of getting older aspect but more for the fact that they mark how quickly time flies by. Every birthday I can't believe another year has slipped away and I'm another year older. Yikes when did that happen??!! The upside of course is, it's your birthday so cake and ice cream are required eating, and of course gifts are nice too. I usually get at least one cookbook for my birthday. This year I was given a copy of Martha Stewart's Cupcake cookbook. I've had a love/hate relationship with Ms. Stewart in the past. I love her ideas and she makes everything looks so easy. Remember the marshmallow peep bunnies anyone??? I was definitely not feeling the love for Martha when I was making those peeps.
This cookbook is just cupcakes. It's a beautiful cookbook filled with great recipes and drool worthy photos. It was hard to decided which cupcakes to make first. I went with the devil's food because they were frosted with a ganache frosting and looked completely decadent. The cupcakes are very tasty but the topped with the ganache they're a chocolate lovers dream. I'm loving Martha again right now!

Devil's Food Cupcakes
Source; Cupcakes by Martha Stewart

Ingredients

3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream, room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together cocoa and hot water until smooth. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
2. Melt butter with sugar in a saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring to combine. Remove from heat, and pour into a mixing bowl. With an electric mixer on medium-low speed, beat until mixture is cooled, 4 to 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add vanilla, then cocoa mixture, and beat until combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the sour cream, and beating until just combined after each.
3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three- quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 15 minutes; turn out cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely. Cupcakes can be stored overnight at room temperature, or frozen up to 2 months, in airtight containers.
4. To finish, use a small offset spatula to spread cupcakes with frosting. Refrigerate up to 3 days in airtight containers; bring to room temperature and garnish with chocolate curls just before serving.

Chocolate Ganache Frosting

1 pound good-quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 1/3 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup corn syrup

Directions

1. Place chocolate in a large heatproof bowl. Bring cream and corn syrup just to a simmer over medium-high heat; pour mixture over chocolate. Let stand, without stirring, until chocolate begins to melt.
2. Beginning near the center and working outward, stir melted chocolate into cream until mixture is combined and smooth (do not overstir).
3. Refrigerate, stirring every 5 minutes, until frosting just barely begins to hold its shape and is slightly lighter in color. Use immediately (ganache will continue to thicken after you stop stirring).

Cautionary Tail..making peeps at home is not as easy as it looks!

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It's happened again. Every time I do it I swear to myself "never again!". But hey I'm a mere human and she is not so it's not really my fault. No definitely not my fault, all the blame should go to Martha. She puts insanely cute things on her website and magazine and I'm sucked right back in. I know that it's probably humanly impossible to replicate the things she does but she makes it sound so simple. Just follow a few easy steps and Voila! I don't know what it is subliminal messages maybe but,I find myself thinking "yeah that looks easy, I could make that". Okay to be fair to Martha I do usually think if somebody else can do something, so can I, granted that it doesn't involve special training. I don't think I can perform surgery or fix you car or anything, but I can make a marshmallow peep...right? I mean Martha made it look so simple and the little rabbits were just so adorable. I'm pretty handy with a pastry bag and I'm a Daring Baker after all so you don't scare me!!! Those are all the thoughts I had when I saw the marshmallow peeps recipe on her website. Oh and by the way, yes you do scare me a little. haha
So yet again, like a crack addict, I convinced myself that this time I knew what I was doing and it would turn out great. I was going to make these adorable little peeps. They would be cute and probably taste really good as well.
That's what I thought anyway but that's not exactly how it turned out. I made the marshmallows for the peeps, no problem. No the problem came when I tried to take that marshmallow cream and make it into a rabbit. First of all Martha says you have to work fast, I should have known then and there to run away from this fast! But no it still looked easy...well not so much. You have to quickly get the marshmallow into the pastry bag. First problem for me was I needed a smaller tip to make the ears. I tried making the whole rabbit with the same tip, but the ears looked way to big and it just looked like a blob. So I ran grabbed another bag shoved a tip in and made the ears. Then tried to "pat down the spikes" which got my sugar wet which then stuck in a clump to my bunny, but only on the top. For some reason the sugar didn't want to stick to the sides on the rabbit. I guess I wasn't fast enough, meanwhile the marshmallow cream in the bag got cooler so the next rabbits came out a little lumpy but I kept trying! I did try to make ears that stood up to make mine look more like rabbits. It didn't help much.

The picture at the top is from Martha's site. My rabbits turned out, well lets just say a little less than that perfect than that. My rabbits look like they may have been exposed to toxic chemicals and mutated.
Consider yourself warned, they are not cute but here are my little mutant rabbits.









Here's the instructions for the peeps if you, like me, think you'd like to make these adorable little bunnies. Good luck getting them to look like Martha's bunny, but it was fun to try!

Fill rimmed baking sheet or small bowls with about 1 1/2 cups sugar. If desired, color white sugar by stirring in luster dust or sparkle dust a little at a time. Pipe shapes onto sugar. Bunnies and chicks must be completed one at a time. (I never made it to trying the chicks!)

Ingredients

Makes about 1 1/2 cups

1 unflavored gelatin (2 1/2 teaspoons)
1/3 cup cold water, for gelatin, plus 1/4 cup for syrup
1 cup sugar

Directions (this part IS pretty easy)

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, sprinkle gelatin over 1/3 cup cold water. Allow gelatin to soften, about 5 minutes.
2. In a small saucepan, combine 1/4 cup water and sugar, and stir over medium-high heat until sugar is dissolved. Stop stirring, and place a candy thermometer into sugar water; wipe sides of pan with a wet brush if sugar crystals have splattered up. Boil sugar until temperature reaches the soft-ball stage (238 degrees). Remove syrup from heat; add to softened gelatin. Using the whisk attachment of an electric mixer, hand-stir the mixture a few minutes to cool; place bowl on the mixer stand. Beat on medium high with the whisk attachment until soft peaks form and the marshmallow mixture holds shape, 8 to 10 minutes.
3. Transfer marshmallow mixture to a large (14-inch) pastry bag fitted with a 1/2 inch (No. 11 Ateco) tip, and use immediately.

Bunny How-To
1. Pipe a small marshmallow mound onto sugar, about 1 1/2 inches long and 1/2 inch tall. Pipe two smaller mounds on either end for the head and tail. (umm right it sticky!)

2. Pipe the ears, starting from the top of the head onto the body, pulling forward and off to finish. With a damp finger, pat down any marshmallow spikes formed from piping.

3. Immediately sprinkle sugar over the entire surface of the bunny. Allow a few minutes for the shape to set. (right and while you're doing this the marshmallow cream in you pastry bag is quickly getting to cool and your next bunny will be lumpy!)

4. Pipe on a royal-icing face with a #1 Ateco icing tip; lift bunny out of sugar with a spoon or small offset spatula. Place in a parchment-lined airtight container until ready to serve, or for up to 2 weeks.

Well I was right about one thing, these peeps do TASTE really good. Way better then the mass produced ones.
I bow to you Martha you've proven to me once again that I am a mere mortal and I need to buy my peeps at Wal-Mart!