Chocolate-Raspberry-Marshmallow Cupcakes

That's a mouthful, huh?

Nothing pains me more than a birthday without cupcakes...  so this year, I asked Jordan what he wanted me to make for his birthday party/100th unique beer at Pony Bar celebration...  I got a lot of vague, 'um, i dont know...'s so I just went ahead and picked something.

(ladies, if you are ever dealing with an indecisive man, just make a decision...  He'll immediately tell you what he really wants when you tell him what he's about to get if he doesnt say otherwise...)

That something that i picked never got made but what did eventually get made is the cake and frosting components that will now be my official standards...  Jordan's final request was raspberry chocolate cake...  and then somewhere along the way, he decided it needed marshmallow frosting...  So we set out.  I was hell-bent on keeping it as simple as possible so i decided i wanted to start with a boxed cake mix and just doctor it up a bit...  In googling, i stumbled upon "Too Much Chocolate Cake" and decided that, with a few slight modifications, that was going to be the base...

I knew that adding a raspberry jam filling would be simple (and i wasnt making my own jam or anything crazy like that), so next up was frosting.  We knew that the chocolate and raspberries were going to create a really sweet cake, so we wanted a frosting that was a little less-so...  In searching, we found Smitten Kitchen's post on making homemade devil dogs which included a recipe for Marshmallow/Seven Minute frosting...  seemed easy enough and like it might be a bit less sweet than the versions made with fluff, so we figured why not?

In the end, it all came together like one huge pile of YUM.  The sum much greater than the parts and the cupcakes a HUGE hit among friends, bartenders and other patrons alike...

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Chocolate-Raspberry-Marshmallow Cupcakes
courtesy of me, with component parts from Denise on Allrecipes.com and Smitten Kitchen
Click here to import recipe directly into Pepperplate

For the cake:
1 package devil's food cake mix
5.9 oz instant chocolate pudding mix (this is one large package or about 1 1/2 small packages)
1 c sour cream
3/4 c vegetable oil
4 eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 c warm water
2 c mini chocolate chips

For the filling:

1 jar of your favorite raspberry jam

For the frosting:
2 large egg whites
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c light corn syrup
2 tbsp water
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

pinch of salt

***

For the cake:

Preheat oven to 350°

Line muffin tray with foil liners

In a large bowl, mix the first 6 ingredients together.  

Once they are all well-combined, stir in the mini chips.

Pour into cupcake liners, filling each about 2/3 full.

Bake 20 - 24 minutes or until toothpick comes out mostly clean.

To add the filling:

Once the cake is done baking and cooled, use a butter knife to cut a little divot out of the top of each.  (Each divot should be about 3/4 of an inch circle with about the same depth.)  

Pop out the divot, plop in a teaspoon or so of jam and then pop the divot back in.

For the frosting:

Set a saucepan on the stove and bring a couple of cups of water to a simmer.

Combine all ingredients in a metal bowl and set the bowl over the simmering water. 

Beat at high speed until frosting is thick and fluffy, 5 to 7 minutes. 

Remove bowl from heat, place on a heat-proof surface, and continue to beat until frosting has slightly cooled. 

Final Assembly:

Once frosting has cooled down, frost cupcakes, taking care to not knock the filling divot out.

If you have any mini-chips left over, sprinkle on top for decoration.

NOTE: Frosting will harden slightly as time goes on, so it is best to do any decorating while the frosting is still 'fresh'.

Happy Birthday to me!

Generally speaking, when its your birthday, someone else brings the cupcakes... however, when you are the one with the food blog (however defunct it may be) it just makes more sense that you'd do it yourself...

The boy had gotten guiness cupcakes on his birthday because I decided that if i was going to bring cupcakes to a boy-birthday, that they had to be 'manly' cupcakes...

but for my birthday? no need to be manly. or overly-flavor complex as we'd be paring them with limey-corona goodness... but I stuck with the 'match the cupcakes to the personality' thing and went with the side of me that thinks that birkenstocks are appropriate footwear almost anywhere you go...

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Hippy Dippy Tie-Dye Cupcakes
cake courtesy of Magnolia Bakery with modifications by me, rainbow effect courtesy of the internet

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

food coloring gel

1 container cream cheese frosting
sprinkles


Preheat oven to 350°

Line cupcake tray with cupcake liners

Cream butter and sugar (with electric mixer) until light and fluffy

add eggs to the sugar/butter mixture one egg at a time, beating after each

in a seperate bowl, combine flour and baking powder and whisk to ensure that its all combined

in another bowl, combine milk & vanilla

in small batches, add flour mixture and milk mixture (alternate) and continue to beat the entire time

divide into 6 small batches.

add food coloring to each of the small batches to achieve desired colors

spoon a small amount of each color into each cupcake

repeat with each color until cupcakes are about 3/4 full

bake for ~ 20 minutes, checking after 18 for done-ness

transfer to cooling rack & allow to cool

frost with cream cheese frosting & sprinkle liberally with sprinkles

i'll make a great mom someday...

last weekend was Kim's birthday... however, kim is one of those people who has a birthday countdown, a birthday week and then days of post-mortem discussion of the birthday festivities...

therefore, i knew she'd appreciate cupcakes at work the day after her actual birthday...

i dont know if i'd ever made a regular, old, yellow cake from scratch before - i know there was a mexican chocolate cake, but i think that, when it comes to regular cake, i generally deferred to a box.

have you ever looked back at something and wondered why?

cause making a cake from scratch isnt hard and really, isnt even that many more steps!


i mean, first of all, you get to do that thing that is so gross and yet SO good all at the same time... cream the butter & sugar...
i know, i know, its totally gross when you think about it, but i'm sorry, there are few things better than that mixture. and yes, i mean that i 'sample' it to ensure that it is thoroughly blended...




aside from all of that, the only part that is even remotely more difficult is the whole sifting of the flour thing... and to be quite honest, i had bought a sifter a year or so ago and hadnt used it yet, so this was a fairly good excuse.

since i couldnt decide between vanilla and chocolate, i split the batter and made both. cause i'm crazy like that, yo.

(i call this 'radioactive cupcakes'. which was a close second for the title of this blog...)


of course, if i'm going to make cake, i might as well make the frosting as well, right??? kim can be a little picky, but i knew that she loved the cupcakes we got at magnolia a couple weeks back,

so i figured i was fairly safe with buttercream...


of course, my problem was in not being able to leave well enough alone... not to be outdone by the overrated, in my opinion, cupcakes of sex and the city fame, i needed color... and if you know kim like i know kim, there was only one choice... pink. but i also needed choices. so the frosting was split into 2 and made 1/2 chocolate and 1/2 vanilla, which would be the stuff of pink dreams...


i tried to get fancy with the frosting - grabbed a ziplock and made my own makeshift pastry bag, and made a few all swirly, but they (the ziplocks) kept exploding on me... and, it turned out that the frosting wasnt quite as thick as i thought and sorta wanted to slide around some anyway... a few minutes in the fridge took care of that, but by then, i just wanted to frost them and be done.



and to put them in a box, just like a mom...

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i'd say they went over fairly well. Kim walked around like a kid in 2nd grade handing them out to the people she deemed worthy...









but was sure to keep one or two for herself...

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Everyday Cake
courtesy of southernfood.about.com

2 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs, separated

2/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

preheat oven to 375°. Prepare your baking pans. If cupcakes, just line, if pans, lightly grease and flour.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt; sift once more. Cream butter with sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks then beat in beat in sifted dry ingredients, alternating with the milk and vanilla.

to make chocolate:
for the whole batch - add 3 tablespoons cocoa powder. you may also want to add a tiny bit more moisture if you do this, as my chocolate cakes came out with cracks on top... (i made half of mine chocolate).

In another bowl, beat egg whites until stiff; fold into the batter. (obviously, if you are making yours half and half like i did, only beat one egg white at a time and put one in each... i know its kindof 'duh', but some people need explicit directions...)

Pour batter into 2 8-inch round cake pans. Bake at 375° for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a wooden pick or cake tester inserted in center comes out clean.
Conversely, pour into cupcake pan, filling each about 2/3 to 3/4 full. Bake for about 15 - 18 mins. Makes about 16 cupcakes.

Buttercream frosting
courtesy of
Cooksrecipes.com

3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup butter or margarine
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
About 2 tablespoons milk

With an electric mixer at low speed, mix the powdered sugar and butter together. Once combined, add vanilla and milk. Increase speed of mixer to medium and beat for 1 to 2 minutes or until smooth and of spreading consistency.

my variation on making it chocolate:
I made half of the batch chocolate by adding a little more milk (maybe a tablespoon or two) and about 1/3 c cocoa powder.

my variation on making it pink:
add 4 drops red foodcoloring to start. slowly add more to get the color you want. I think i added a total of 6 or 7 drops to half of the batch.