Chocolate Ginger Cupcakes Stuffed with Ginger Creme and Chocolate Ganache

Holy cow.

I know I rave about a lot of the recipes I make. It's not because I'm a great baker - it's because I use solid recipes from sources that I know are far more talented than I.

But this, this cupcake is my favourite. Of all the little darlings I have created, this one is currently at the top of my list. I found a really, really, good, moist, amazing chocolate cake recipe (if that isn't enough descriptors, I don't know what is),

The bad news? I have no photos. That's right, my computer suffered some minor short-term memory loss with its recent infection, and (of course) I have already deleted them off of my camera. So I will wait until I bake them again (for I will, without a doubt, bake them again...soon) to post some pictures.

I love the combination of chocolate and ginger. But for this particular recipe (which I got an idea about from chockylit's blog) I pieced together some of my favourite recipes and ideas to come up with the ultimate cupcake.

I actually think I ate about four of these when I made them.

If you like chocolate, these are for you. If you like ginger, these are for you. If you like those little stuffed snack cakes that Hostess makes, these are for you.

In short, they are delicious!

Chocolate Ginger Cupcakes
makes 24 cupcakes

1 c. baking cocoa
1 c. boiling water
1 c. unsalted butter, softened
2 1/2 c. sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. sour cream
2 inch piece peeled fresh ginger, grated

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Paper 24 cupcake tins
  
• Dissolve cocoa in water, let cool
• Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy
• Add eggs, one at a time; add vanilla
  
• Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl, set aside
• Add dry ingredients alternately with sour cream, beating well after each addition
• Add cocoa mixture, beat well
  
• TURN MIXER OFF
• Add ginger by hand, mixing well to incorporated
• Bake 20-22 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean

these puppies will dome up a lot, which is OK since you need to dig the middles out. Still, don't fill more than 2/3 of the way full or it will just be a mess. Tried it. Believe me.

Ginger Creme

2 c. whipping cream, well chilled
1/2 c. sugar
pinch of cream of tarter
4 inch piece peeled ginger, grated very fine

• Whipping cream works better when it's chilled
• Whip chilled cream with cooled utensils until soft peaks form
• Add sugar very slowly, making sure not to deflate
• Add cream of tarter (just a pinch)
• Add ginger
• DO NOT OVERBEAT. I've always heard of this, but never done it until this recipe - whip that sucker too hard and you'll get butter. Odd, ginger butter. Just believe me on this one

Chocolate Icing

1 c. heavy cream
12 oz. dark chocolate
1 c. icing sugar
2 tsp grated fresh ginger

• Chop chocolate in a small bowl, add ginger
  
• Bring cream to a low boil, pour over chocolate
• Let stand for one minute before stirring until incorporated
• Add icing sugar slowly, beating well to keep smooth

Assembly

• Wait for cupcakes to cool, then dig the middle out with a spoon
• Fill middle with ginger creme
• Ice those puppies

You know, I really have not done this post justice without any picture, but suffice it to say that this really is a wiiiiicked cupcake, that I cannot wait to make again. It was universally loved and I think claims the number one position in my heart!

Happy eats!

Consummate Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is not a picture of my chocolate chip cookies - it is an image that google was good enough to offer. I make these so often, I'd never thought to ever photograph them, nor write a blog about them. Then I brought a batch to work and my co-workers all couldn't stop talking about them! Since then they have been heckling me to post the recipe.

Well, now the time has come to share. And I'm afraid I am going to disappoint them all when I come clean and tell them that my "super amazing chocolate chip cookie recipe" is not really as secret as I let them think it was.

In fact, it's right off the back of every package of Hershey's Chipits Chocolate Chips you get at any grocery store!

The secret to chocolate chip cookies is not the recipe. Granted, not all chocolate chip cookies are created equal, and this recipe is darn good even if just slammed in the oven directly after mixing. But no, the real secret ingredient is time.

There's something about letting chocolate chip cookie dough sit for a while that just makes it miraculous. I'll let mine sit in the fridge over night if I can, but always at least for an hour. It just makes all the flavours in the dough so much better.

Still, I did promise to write down my recipe, which I hereby dedicate to Linda, Toni, Stephanie, Karen, and Janice (the five ladies I work closest with). Just because it turns out it isn't secret, doesn't make them any less delicious!


Chocolate Chip Cookies
from the back of the Hershey's Chipits bag
makes 4 dozen cookies

1 c. shortening or softened butter (truth? I use shortening. Butter makes them very runny)
1 c. packed brown sugar
1/2 c. white granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla (I usually just do 2 tsp)
2 c. all purpose flour (although cake and pastry flour makes them that much lighter)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder (my addition)
1/2 tsp salt
1 package of chocolate chips (approx 350 g)

• Cream together shortening and both butters until creamy
• Beat in eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy
• Combine flour, baking powder and baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl
• Gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients
• Turn mixer off.
• Add chocolate chips by hand with a spatula
• CHILL FOR AT LEAST ONE HOUR, OR UP TO 24 HOURS
• Drop by the tablespoon onto ungreased cookie sheets
• Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes until golden brown
• Cool on a wire rack

These cookies will surprise even the most discerning chocolate fiend. They are sublime and sinfully simple. They travel well, keep for days (although they never last that long) and are sure to be a favourite.

July Daring Bakers: Filbert Gateau!

The obvious first comment that will undoubtedly jump to your mind when you correlate the title with the date will be "but Maria, it's not July". And, dear reader, you are correct. The post date for the July Daring Baker's Challenge was July 31st, alas my computer was deathly ill and in a computer ICU for the last few weeks. It's a family computer, which means that there is far too much downloading, and browsing, and cookie-accumulating for the poor old beast. And every once in a while it just catches a bug and needs a vacation.

But I'm back! And finally with some pictures and stories to tell about this great challenge. This month's challenge was a Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream from Carole Walter's "Great Cakes". It was hosted by Chris of Mele Cote who obviously is a sucker for punishment. Not that this wasn't an enjoyable challenge - it was amazing, such an accomplishment, and delicious. But it took me SIX HOURS to finish this challenge from start to finish, and peeling hazelnuts was ridiculous.

It had a lot of expensive ingrediants (namely the hazelnuts and the booze) - but it made a very large, rich cake that could have been cut quite thin and still been exceptionally satisfying for every person.

It turns out that to bake with hazelnuts, you have to peel them first. Otherwise, their skins have a very bitter taste (like the bitter taste you get off a walnut). In order to peel them you can roast them for a few minutes, but I found that wasn't enough, so I actually boiled mine for a few minutes to get the skins off. Even after that, they didn't just "rub off" as promised and I found myself logging a lot of hours peeling individual skins off a few hundred hazelnuts. It really made me appreciate how much work making a cake like this is, and why they are so damn expensive. Over and above the ingredients, the manpower in this thing was unreal!

The recipe is here if you are feeling very adventurous, but let me tell you, it is worth the effort.

The cool thing about this cake is its lack of rising agent. It was done all with eggs, which meant that we had to move quickly and gently in order to combine all of the parts, get it into the pan, and then into the oven. I was really impressed with how light and fluffy the batter was. When I poured it into the pan there were bubble throughout the mix, but tapping it a few times on the side with a spoon helped remove them. You have to be careful, though, because although you don't want air trapped inside, you still need it to be very light - so you can't overmix!

For my apricot glaze I actually chose a brand of Smucker's Jam that was an apricot, peach and passionfruit ("triple fruit") combination. It was unbelievable. The jam was also reduced sugar, which was nice because every component of this recipe was very rich, and it added a slightly less sweet element to the cake. The jam was definitely not tart, but it wasn't as sickly sweet as most jams are. It was spread all over the cake (which at this point had been divided into three layers and spread throughout with praline buttercream) just before glazing the sucker with chocolate ganache.

When the cake was finished I tried piping the little leaves on the top of the cake that the original recipe called for, but my praline buttercream was not as smooth as I had hoped. No matter how much I ground up the hazlenut brittle I had made (yes, you even make hazelnut brittle!) I couldn't get it into a paste - just into a really wet meal. While that was OK, and added some texture to the buttercream, in the end it proved too hard to squeeze through a leaf tip and so I just added it in "blobs" with raspberries on the top of the cake. Gimme a break - I was now leaning into hour six, and only slightly exhausted.

The final product, though, was unreal. The cake was moist and so delicious. I used both Grand Marnier and Dark Rum in the recipe (as called for), and it added such a good kick to the whole recipe. While I can't see me whipping this up all that often, it was an excellent Daring Baker's challenge, and a great cake to learn how to make. It was also comforting that, although even this one wasn't perfect, it was not nearly as disastrous as last month and re-instilled some confidence and daring in me!

So better later than never let me present: Maria's Miraculous Filbert Gateau!

Standard Chocolate Poodle Cake

Last Friday was the 20th anniversary for one of my co-workers, Linda. In commemoration we decided to make a fuss about her (she deserves it), and in our discussions together as a team (covert, secretive, discussions) we decided there should also be a cake. I volunteered to make it and immediately regretted it.

I didn't regret the offer, per say, I was just worried about what I could possibly come up with that would do the cake justice. I didn't want to do just another slab cake, because then it would have just been smarter to buy one, especially since my standard decorating skills aren't that hot (God bless you Wilton, I'm just a slow learner).

So there was the challenge. I knew Linda liked golf, and gardening, yadda, yadda, yadda - but I also knew that she had a standard chocolate poodle. I knew this because of the high number of pictures plastered all over the cubicle of this beautiful dog doing the silliest things.

Once I put the two together, there was no other way about it. I searched on the internet and I found a picture of a pink and white poodle of the same design (I can't seem to find the link now, but I literally did a google search for "poodle cake"). It looked easy enough and heck, I have a mixer ;) What could go wrong?

Eager and excited with my plan of attack, I greeted Thursday night with enthusiasm. I had found out that Linda's favourite cake was vanilla chocolate chip, and as Thursday was already cupcake day, I decided to cut corners by making a vanilla cake mix and just mixing some chocolate chips in.

Bad idea. Baaaaaaaad idea. Turns out that chocolate chips are just a little too heavy for a vanilla cake batter and they sunk like stones. But that wasn't the worst part. The real problem was that when tipping the cake over, I realized just how far they had sunk.

!!!!!!!!! Shoot !!!!!!!!!!!

It was a moment for pause. For contemplation. For re-evaluation.

For fear.

I looked at this horrifically ugly cake and thought oh God I've ruined Linda's day. I thought of a million ways I could just buy a cake and get it over with, but it was already 10 pm and the time for cake buying was long gone (unless you counted WalMart. And I hate WalMart).

So I soldiered on. I made some chocolate buttercream and tried my hardest to use the techniques dear old Wilton has tried to teach me - weilding my angled spatula like a crazed woman I gently patted globs of icing all over the cake, spreading gently to avoid the (unavoidalble) crumbs.

Thank God for the marshmallows. I rolled them in cocoa powder to make them chocolate-y and snipped the bigger ones (for the head an tail) in half to make them sit better on the poodle. There was black licorice for the legs, tailand one ear and a chocolate chip for the eye.

Cutting the shapes out of the cake seriously depleted the cake size...and I work with a crew of about 30, so that just wasn't enough. I had made a double-batch of cake mix and had made cupcakes as well (the chocolate chips sunk there too, but luckily the papers kept them in tact). I iced 22 of them with blue icing to read "Congratulations Linda! 20" which were artistically placed the next morning ;) along with a piece of the remaining cake iced as a water bowl reading "wow" (someone joked it was a good thing I hadn't placed the "water bowl" on the other side of the dog)

When I was finished I couldn't recognize the ugly broken cake. Instead all I saw was chocolate standard poodle - and thank heavens that's all Linda saw too! She loved it so much she called her husband and had him come in to take a look before we cut the cake. Which made the cupcakes a hit, too.

Linda got a chance to tell us all about her dog, and we all had the fun of selectively removing cupcakes for maximum spelling hilarity (at one point it read "Rats, Lindo")

I'm really happy with how this worked out. I don't do shaped cakes, really, so it was a great experiment, and a great chance to practice my icing skills around all those curvy corners. I still love cupcakes, but this was a lot of fun!

Chocolate Chai Spice Cupcakes with Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

Armed with my new mixer...I am invincible.

No really, the mixer is phenomenal. It's like the instrument to a set of baking super powers I never knew existed, and now that I do I'm kicking myself for waiting so long. Seriously, it's like becoming a baking superhero.

It's the batmobile of baking utensils.

With that in mind, I was ready to try anything - and I was definitely ready to try something new. I'd been asked a couple of weeks back to make chocolate cupcakes, and this seemed to be a great week to try them; however, I needed a bit more kick than that. I found exactly what I was looking for on chockylit's blog Cupcake Bakeshop, one of my most-favorite-of-all-times cupcake blogs. This is a woman who is not afraid of her ingrediants, and armed with my mixer I was suddenly eager to jump into the fray.

I was so sorry to see that her blog is now closed. On her last entry she spoke about going new places (she has had a child, and is a career woman to boot), so I couldn't help but understand - yet selfishly, I wish she had continued! :) So this recipe seemed to be an even better choice, a tipping of the cap to chockylit.

What I found was a recipe for Chocolate Chai Spice Cupcakes that looked wicked good. The recipe also called for eight eggs. Eight Eggs! However, I was not worried - I have a mixer after all!

So I jumped to it, and I must say they were pretty darn delicious. I was surprised that the batter rose as much as it did (it had a bit of a dome) and they were a nice texture - but I am still searching for the perfect chocolate cake recipe - one that is more a bit more moist. That is my only complaint.

As for the icing, chockylit tried a chai buttercream, but I was in the mood for something with a bit more punch....so I invented my own! I must say, the icing is a real winner. I will definitely use it again. I've thought about what it would taste like on a vanilla chai cupcake, which I think is worth looking in to. Finally, the raspberries (my afterthought decoration) were the perfect pairing - adding a little sharp sweet to the cupcake. My co workers loved them, a few actually said it was their favourite one yet!

However, when I brought the cupcakes to work, one of my more carb-conscious co workers took to nipping the raspberries without the cupcake...which soon lead to an angry note taped to my desk outlining proper raspberry-cupcake etiquette!

For the chai spice, chockylit gives a great recipe for do-it-yourself; however I am really committed to the chai masala spice I hunted at the Toronto International Food Show made by Arvinda's,

a company that makes authentic masala spices for gourmet Indian cuisine. Personally, I'm so much in love I cannot imagine using any other chai spice (plus cardamom is a pain in neck to grind)

So, anyway, check out the recipe on chockylit's site, and the to-die-for icing is below!

Chocolate Chai Spice Cream Cheese Icing

try saying that five times fast - it's not a tongue twister, it's just fun

8 oz. softened cream cheese

1/2 c. (1 stick) softened unsalted butter

4 c. icing sugar

2 tsp. milk

2 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 tsp. chai spice

• sift cocoa, chai spice, and icing sugar together (or dump it all together and use a wire whisk for 20 seconds to break up chunks, and blend together)
• beat cream cheese and butter until fluffy
• add icing sugar mixture one cup at a time for the first two cups
• add milk
• add last two cups of icing sugar mix
• pipe with large, round tip; top with raspberries!

Again, eyeball your icing. Icing consistency changes a lot, especially as the days get hotter you may find you need more icing sugar to get a good consistency. This icing is rich and creamy!

May the mixer be with you.