She: Toffee Chocolate Cupcakes

SO. I had my craving to bake some cupcakes again. I do this often...every week or two. But, since this is a new blog site, I will explain. I NEVER use boxed mixes. Why? Well, if I had my own kiddo who needed 75 cupcakes for school, I might. But most of the joy for me is coming up with a recipe that isn't a standard flavor. That, and boxed stuff has a ton of preservatives and other scary things I like to avoid. Because I like my sugar honest. I don't always start with an original base--the vanilla cake base is from Amy Sedaris, but usually I try things out a few times and modify from there.



Yesterday I made a new concoction: Toffee Chocolate Cupcakes. First, a few words of caution: do NOT overfill these cupcakes. They will overflow into a messy mass if you do. Also, make sure your oven is well heated at 360. Most recipes say 350, but when you open the oven, you let some of the air out, and it cools slightly. This adjusts for that a tad. And one last thing...if you use foil cups, great. But I don't always know what I have at hand at home, and this was a mix of both foil and paper. For paper, I tend to double-cup. This is because the second paper cup helps soak a little of the greasiness out of the cake. Also, this recipe uses baking powder--thats good because powder releases at oven temp and not immediately like baking soda, so don't subsitute.



Batter Ingredients:
1 1/2 sticks of butter (room temp), 1 3/4 cups sugar, 2 eggs, 2 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 1/2 tsp baking powder, 2 1/2 cups flour, 1 1/4 cups milk, 1 cup toffee bits.

Instructions: Cream butter and sugar--make sure the butter is well incorporated. Then add eggs, vanilla, salt and baking powder. Alternate adding flour and milk--I did this in 1/2 cup increments. Fill the cups 2/3 full, and cook for 20 minutes. Test with a toothpick; they'll be done when you get NO crumbs on the toothpick. Let cool for 5-8 minutes, then transfer to a rack. Recipe makes about 2 dozen cupcakes.

Now, the cupcake is moist, but the toffee bits melt in to add extra butteriness (is that a word?) to the cake. I paired it with my own version of a chocolate ganache icing. The icing was SO worth the wait, not that I had a clue of how LONG I'd wait when I started it.

Ganache Ingredients:
1 cup heavy cream, 1 cup bittersweet chocolate (at least 60% chocolate--I like Ghirardelli), 1 cup powder sugar.

I have seen a lot of ganache recipes, and they call for either butter or a ton of powder sugar. I HATE adding butter to icing if I don't need it. Why? It cuts the chocolate flavor down. And so does too much sugar. This works really well though. Just put the cream in a sauce pan on low heat, stirring every once in a while til you see small bubbles around the edge. If you don't stir it, it could burn on the bottom and that would taste nasty. This took me about 5 minutes. I cleaned the kitchen counters and let the dog lick the bowl (the cupcake batter, NO chocolate for doggies!) while doing this. Put the chocolate chips in a Pyrex or metal bowl, and when the cream is ready, dump the cream on top. I let it sit for juuuust a minute or two to let it melt, then take a whisk and stir them together. After its all solidly mixed, I added the powder sugar, stirred it in well, and let the ganache sit. AND sit. AND sit some more. You don't put chocolate in the fridge or you start to break down the cocoa butter and such. And destroying chocolate flavor is a sin. But since I didn't know how heavenly it would taste, my patience was wearing thin. I'm a photographer. We dig that whole "immediate gratification" thing. SIGH.

Its supposed to sit til at room temp, but what I THOUGHT was room temp was only close, so I broke down, put plastic wrap on the bowl, and let it sit overnight. Up to that point it was like I was 8 yrs old in the back of my parents car, only instead of asking "are we there yet?" it was "has it cooled yet?" You'll know its ready because if you tip the bowl sideways, it doesn't slide. Niiice and thick. And really rich. I think it might overwhelm the toffee cakes, but adding a tad more toffee might make up for it.