For the cake I used a chocolate cake mix. There are a few ways you can doctor cake mixes to get a better cake. My favorite way is to substitute milk for the water (preferably, whole milk), add an extra egg, and substitute melted butter for the oil - oh yeah, and double the amount of butter. :)
I made a ganache for filling my cake using Andes creme de menthe baking chips instead of chocolate chips/baker's chocolate. In retrospect, I could have just as easily made a regular chocolate ganache and added some peppermint extract.
Here's my ganache recipe:
12 oz. chocolate (I used Andes creme de menthe for this recipe)
1 cup whipping cream
- Heat whipping cream just to a boil.
- Add chocolate. Don not stir. Leave 5 minutes.
- Stir until smooth and let rest another 15 minutes, at least. I recommend letting it sit longer, until it reaches a clearly thickened consistency - almost like frosting. It fills cupcakes best this way. You can even use it as frosting if you want. I have a little leftover Andes ganache I just might take a spoon to.
One more thing about ganache, if you are only using it for filling and/or drizzling, I would only make half a batch.
There are also different methods for filling your cupcakes. I like to take the back of a wooden spoon, stick it down the center and swirl it around to make a cone-shaped hole. Then I pipe in my filling using a ziplock freezer bag with the edge snipped off.
I made the mistake of trying to fill my cakes while my ganache was too loose. My kitchen was too hot and it didn't thicken in the time I allotted. The ganache poured into the cake and slowly got absorbed. After I had frosted almost half the cakes I decided to refill the rest of the cakes with regular chocolate ganache that I had leftover from another project. Ultimately, after trying the different cakes, I found that the extra filling was unnecessary. It didn't hurt anything, but the cakes were just as good without it.
The mint frosting used cream cheese as its base. I got the recipe from Your Cup of Cake. The writer of this site also does an Andes mint cupcake and uses a different version of doctored cake mix. Feel free to try both versions. After completing this project I got the feeling that you can't really go wrong with any version. Chocolate and mint just really works. Hurray for that!
I finished off my cakes with a drizzle of semi-sweet chocolate ganache (I was worried about going overboard with the peppermint) and topped them off with some of the Andes baking pieces. The pieces weren't as lovely as the Andes regular chocolate mints. They rub up against each other in the bag and get kind of akin to a fuzzy sweater. That probably sounds worse than it actually is.
I ran out of frosting before all of the cakes were done and improvised by creating a version that people who aren't big into frosting might like better. I dipped the filled cupcakes in the Andes ganache, put them in the fridge for a few minutes to set, drizzled regular chocolate ganache over them, and topped them with Andes creme de menthe pieces.
One of the things I love about cupcakes (there is so much to love) is that there isn't just one right way to do things. Whatever kind of cake you want to make, know that there are many options and all kinds of different ways of doing it. Think of the flavor profile you want to end up with and get creative.
By the way, these cupcakes are addictive. The peppermint makes them refreshing and whenever something is refreshing you can consume more of it for some reason. Don't ask me why.
No comments:
Post a Comment