Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes
Clara of I Heart Food 4 Thought chose Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection. I was looking forward to this one because you can never go wrong with cupcakes and the group was encouraged to decorate them for Halloween if we wanted to.
I love Halloween. All of the candy, the costumes, the funny scary, the scary scary, everything! When I was growing up I had the BEST Halloween parties. We lived in a really old farmhouse (that was spooky even when it wasn’t Halloween) and my Mom would go nuts with the decorations, games, candy and food. She saved her Wicked Witch of the West “I’ll get you, my pretty… and your little dog too!” impersonation until the very end because it would make her lose her voice for a couple of days afterwards. 
Costume wise, my favorite year was probably the “Vanna White” year. I wore a fancy dress and carried around big letters while I walked back and forth turning them. Ahhh, memories!
On to the cupcakes… I didn’t realize when I started making these that I was out of flour. I had 1/4 cup left so I cut the recipe into fourths. I also had no bittersweet chocolate so I used semi-sweet instead. I wanted to add a bit of coffee to the batter, so I took a full coffee pot and went to pour a little in. Now there’s always a voice of caution in the back of my mind when I do things like this, which I ignore 100% of the time. Of course, my hand slipped and I accidentally poured in way too much. The batter was pretty runny pre-bake and I was a tad concerned that I had ruined them and would have to start over. I kept my fingers crossed…
A fourth of the recipe made 9 mini cupcakes that I baked for about 15 minutes or so. Once they were out of the oven and cooled off, there was no way to tell that I had any coffee mishaps at all. They were very moist, chocolately and good. Maybe it was actually a good mistake, as I read afterwards that some people had experienced issues with the cake being too dry. I kept the ganache on top to a minimum and added nonpareils and sprinkles (the Monster Mix from Wilton and some fall type sprinkles from the Dutch Market).
All 9 mini’s were eaten within a few minutes between me and the boyfriend and I was kind of bummed that I wasn’t able to make more. In other words, this week was a huge success! Make sure you stop by Clara’s I Heart Food 4 Thought for the recipe and to what she thought of her choice. While you’re at it, stop by Clara’s other site I heart cuppycakes!, a blog dedicated just to cupcakes. Then make your way over to the Tuesdays with Dorie site to find out what almost 275 other bakers had to say this week.
Now, I leave you with my Halloween costume… a turkey suit! It’s so stupid, but it makes me laugh. I think in this picture I’m turkey dancing my way out the door, whatever that means. What are YOU going to be for Halloween this year?
Next week it’s Rugelach as selected by Piggy of Piggy’s Cooking Journal. I’ve never made, tasted or even heard of Rugelach before I got the book. It should be interesting!
I Like Amy Sedaris
After somehow finding this post recently on the now closed down (unfortunately, as this was one of my all time favorites) Cupcake Bakeshop blog, I started to get interested in Amy Sedaris and her cupcake recipe. I knew who she was from TV but had no idea she had a Vanilla Cupcake recipe out there that people actually really seemed to like. So I decided I would have to test them out and see what I thought.
I got home late from my weekly piano lesson and WalMart trip, whipped these up in a couple minutes and was baking in no time. I made a third of a batch, made minis and baked for about 15 minutes at 375.
My thoughts on the taste: I would eat these without frosting. That’s how good the cake part is. It kind of reminded me of one of my all time favorites, Hot Milk Sponge Cake, although lighter. The frosting was pretty sweet but it wasn’t too overly sweet. I would definitely make these again. As of right now, this will be my Vanilla Cupcake recipe of choice.
Amy Sedaris’ website is called “Amy Sedaris Rocks”. Very true, just for this recipe alone.
Click here for Amy Sedaris Cupcakes Recipe and to check out the other recipes on her site. I love how to the point some of her directions are.
For My Mom: Coconut Cupcakes
I thought I knew almost everything about my Mom, especially when it came to what she likes to eat. I got a big surprise though the other day when I asked her what her favorite kind of cake was and she answered “Coconut”. I said “Huh?”. This was news to me. I don’t even remember seeing her eat a piece. Ever.
Coconut is usually one of my LEAST favorite things to eat. Now I don’t mind the flavor so much. In fact, I have been known to enjoy many Pina Coladas in a row on occasion, but to actually eat coconut in little shreds and all that… blech.
But I knew I had to make my Mom her favorite kind of cake for Mother’s Day. It’s what any good daughter who likes to bake would do.
I remembered that Ina Garten had a Coconut Cupcake recipe that looked pretty good in her Barefoot Contessa Cookbook so I decided to go with that. You know, Ina has not let me down yet. Most of her recipes are basic and simple but have something different about them that delivers incredibly good versions of well known favorites. Love her, love her, love her.
And of course I love my Mom. So, Happy Mother’s Day to mine and all the other Mom’s out there.
Please check out Ina Garten’s Coconut Cupcake recipe here and make them, like, tonight. It gets five star ratings and the word “heavenly” is used to describe these in her cookbook. Really, how could you go wrong?
So, maybe I can live with a little coconut in my life outside of pina coladas. I survived putting it in Bill’s Big Carrot Cake for TWD and now these cupcakes. And let me just tell you, these babies were freakin’ awesome.
