Mississippi Mud Cupcakes - Southern Cake Book

My second baking adventure using the scrumptious looking The Southern Cake Book by Southern Living was Mississippi Mud Cupcakes. 

The final product looked so cute with its dainty, fluffy tuff of Marshmallow Frosting, and clusters of nuts and chocolate.  Click HERE for the recipe on the Southern Living website.

But appearances can be deceiving because despite its silky good looks I found the cake itself a little dry. Not Sahara desert dry, but it definitely needed a tall glass of milk to wash it down.  If I make it again I would do some tweaking to the recipe, and also reduce the baking time by 3-4 minutes.  

The mixing process also dirties a lot of bowls and utensils. One set for the blending of sugar & eggs, one for the dries, and one for the sour cream mixture.

Eventually everything goes into one bowl.

And then the beautiful chopped chocolate are added as the last step.

Dropped into the prepared cupcake liners the batter looks more like brownies than cake.

But after baking they puffed up nicely.  I baked mine for 17 minutes (18-20 was the recommended time).

Slicing one open shows just a few hints of the chopped chocolate that was added to the batter. It definitely needs more chopped chocolate, lots and lots more chopped chocolate.

The Marshmallow Frosting was the most eye-opening part of this baking adventure.  It was a flavorful mix of butter, cream cheese, and marshmallow cream. I’m not a big fan of marshmallows, but I have to say this stuff was really, really good. Not too sweet, with just a hint of marshmallow and cream cheese.  Neither taste was overpowering.   It was the perfect blending of both.

Nice.

It also had a light airy consistency that added to its appeal. I think this will become my standard cupcake frosting. I also added a few drops of Americolor Bright White Food Color to bring the color back to pure white. Between the yellow butter and the brown vanilla extract the frosting had a slight yellowish cast.  A few drop of Bright White got rid of the frosting's jaundice look.

The final verdict came from my family at our 4th of July party.  Granted these cupcakes were competing with lots of festive red-white-and-blude desserts, but the cupcakes just sat there. Sad, lonely, forgotten.  A few were eaten but no one went back for seconds :-(

I took the leftovers home with me and ate them with ice cream. Nothing moistens up cake like melting ice cream.

So this adventure turn out a little disappointing. If I try these again I would do something to add moisture to the mix.  Maybe add some oil to the batter (2 Tablespoons), double up on the amount of chopped chocolate, and decrease the baking time by 2-3 minutes. I would start checking for doneness at 14 minutes and err on the side of undercooked instead of overcooked.

Overall I would give the cake 3 stars, but the Marshmallow Frosting gets the highest rating of 5 finger-licking stars. That stuff is good.

TWD: Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie baking assignment was chosen by Amy of Amy Ruth Bakes.



I’m a lover of all things chocolate, so I had such high hopes for this cake. The batter mixed up like a dream: thick, creamy, and very, very tasty.



But I missed judged the time needed to make the cake ( the cake came out of the oven at 11:15 am and I had to be at our Father’s Day party at noon), so I sliced and frosted the cake while it was still steaming hot. Of course the frosting melted on contact with the hot cake and the suddenly liquid chocolate oozed all over the place.


And the taste?

Well, honestly, I was a little disappointed.

I found the cake bland and the bottom and sides of the loaf were very hard. Maybe I cooked it too long -- I probably cooked it too long. -- I have a very bad habit of doing that :(

Here is a peek at the inside. My cake may not have been the best tasting thing at the party, but I just loved the look of all that warm chocolate oozing out and dripping down the sides. Ahhh chocolate.



Side note on the job situation: Only three more days till the pink slips come out! I wish Friday would hurry up and get here cause I keep swinging from deep depression at losing my paycheck to overwhelming joy at finally getting away from a job that was slowly killing me. I guess this emotionally roller coaster is normal????

So what should I do on my first Monday of unemployment? I think I may go back and start baking all of the TWD recipes I missed!

Deep Dark Chocolate Cake with so-so Chocolate Frosting

My brother's annual crayfish boil was on Saturday, and for this year's party I decided on Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting. Yummmmm. My favorite.



I scoured the listing on RecipeZaar and decided on:
Sue B's Chocolate Cake and
Courtly's Chocolate Frosting.

The Sue B's cake turned out amazing. It was dense, moist and as black as midnight. It had a melt-in-your-mouth texture, and you could really taste the cocoa and rich buttermilk. It was truly scrumptious. Just take a look at that color and extra moist texture...



Now the frosting, well.... That was not such a success.

The frosting had a light, airy consistency that was really appealing. BUT light and airy goes hand-in-hand with soft and unstable. Below are the steps involved in making the frosting. 1) beat together the butter, sugar and cocoa. 2) pour in the cream and whisk. 3) add the melted chocolate (cooled to room temp). 4) whisk until smooth and shiny.


Well the frosting came out smooth and shiny, but it was so soft and runny it kept oozing down the side of the cake. I finally had to place the cake in the refrigerator just to keep the frosting from sliding off.


I also didn't care for the color: I thought it looked a little anemic (especially when placed next to the deep, dark chocolate cake).



So I whipped up a batch of ganache and poured it over the top of the cake. Much better looking, or at least I think so...



But in the end the ganache wasn't enough to hold the soft, airy frosting in place, and a mini catastrophe ensued. The cake was inside the house, but the 76 degree temp was still to much for the frosting to handle. By the time I had slice up half the cake the frosting was oozing off the sides and the top layer of cake kept sliding off (note to self use dowels next time).

So if you want to use this frosting (which really tasted good) only risk it when the temperature is less than 70 degrees.

Ghirardelli Lava Cakes - Disaster

Don't you just love Lava Cakes?

Ooey, gooey molten chocolate flowing from a warm bed of chocolate cake.

Sigh. Too bad my lava cakes didn't turn out that way. Here they are in all their disastrous glory.

I knew I was in trouble from the get-go. The first part of the recipe had you prepare a frozen ball of chocolate that would be inserted into the cake batter just before baking. The recipe said to melt chocolate and cream together, refrigerate it until firm, and finally roll the chocolate into six balls. Well my chocolate would never harden! (Did I accidentally use too much cream? Or not enough chocolate? ) I even put the chocolate into the freezer and still it wouldn't harden.

Finally I just gave up, mixed up the cake batter and spooned the still soft chocolate centers into the batter.


After the suggested baking time I pulled the pan out of the oven. They looked pretty good, and I had high hopes for success.


But after tipping the cakes out of the pan, this is what I found.

DISASTER.

But what my lava cakes lacked in beauty they made up in taste. Yummy! I may have to try them again this weekend and figure out what I did wrong.

Here is the recipe if you want to give it a try.

Sprinkles Cupcake Mix - Review

I attended a friend's baby shower recently, and came home with a tube/box of Sprinkles' Dark Chocolate Cupcake Mix (I won one of the silly shower games). Now I had heard of Sprinkles before but had never tried one of their cupcakes. And honestly after sampling the cupcakes produced from their mix I don't think I would be in a hurry to buy the original. The cupcakes (from the mix) were moist enough, but I found them very bland and unexciting. There was no explosion of flavor or pop of taste, and if I'm paying $14 for a box of cupcake mix I expect an end product that makes my taste buds stand up and sing.


I made the Sprinkles cupcakes for my Mom's 76th birthday party. I always buy her birthday cake from Swiss Confectionery (the BEST tasting cake in New Orleans), but some last minute additions to the party list made me fear that I wouldn't have enough cake (a serious crime in my family). So I pulled the Sprinkles mix from the pantry and whipped up some cupcakes in less than an hour.

I did make one change to the Sprinkles cupcake: I added a cookie crumb crust. I grind up Lorna Doone shortbread cookies, mixed them with sugar and butter, press the crumb mixture into the bottom of the cupcake liner, and bake the crust for five minutes until it sets. My Mom LOVES cupcakes with cookie crust.


Next came the mixing of the Sprinkles cupcake batter. The sequence of mixing was a little different than normal. 1) Cream the butter then added the dry mix to the butter, 2) add the eggs, 3) and finally the milk. The batter was thick and luscious looking, but even at this point it was a little lacking in flavor.


I spooned the batter on top of my pre-baked cookie crust, and then baked the cupcakes for 20 minutes. My oven runs a little hot so I always remove my baked goods at the lower end of the baking range.


I didn't think the trademark Sprinkles "dot" looked festive enough for a birthday party, so I skipped the blue and black dot and used my own sprinkles.


Looks cute, but taste-wise the cupcake was unremarkable. Even the cookie crust and luscious frosting wasn't enough to perk up flavor of the Sprinkles cupcake.

TWD: Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

This week' assignment at Tuesdays with Dorie was one of my favorite so far: Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes. Chocolate batter, chocolate filling, chocolate topping, could a chocoholic ask for anything more?

But I do have one gripe---where is the line between fudgy cake and brownies? This dessert is called "cake", but I found it very brownie-like in consistency. It was dense and crumbly with a wet, fudgy layer. The taste was out of this world (I ate two of those little suckers myself), but my analytical mind wants to know: is it a cake or is it a brownie?



The recipe instructions start out with the filling. Simply whisk the nuts, sugar, and cocoa until combined.



Next melt the milk chocolate and allow to cool. The recipe calls for 7 oz of milk chocolate, but I had read some of the messages on TWD that the cakes weren't chocolaty enough so I used 5 oz of milk chocolate and 2 oz of special dark chocolate. The recipe also calls for "premium" chocolate, but I just used run-of-the-mill Hershey bars. Call me unsophisticated, but I love the way Hershey taste.



The batter was quick and easy to combine, but very thick, almost like cookie dough in texture. Here it is after the flour was added, but before the chocolate.



Chocolate!!!!!



The addition of the melted chocolate thinned the batter somewhat, but not a whole lot.



Next came the assembly. Batter, filling, batter. I should also mention that I search in 4 different stores and couldn't find the 6-cavity mini Bundt pan that Dorie used. I found a 12-cavity Bundt, but not a 6-cavity. In the end I used a jumbo muffin pan. The end product wasn't as cute as Dorie's but my family didn't seem to care.



Just out of the oven. I baked my muffins for 20 minutes, but I think they would have been perfect at 19 minutes.



The one issue I had with the recipe was the "Glaze", which was just chocolate and corn syrup. Sounds easy enough, but mine didn't work. Chocolate seizer set in as soon as I put the corn syrup into the warm chocolate. Yikes! I tired reheating the supposed glaze, but it just got even harder.


But a lot of other bakers at TWD had the same problem with the glaze, so I didn't feel completely foolish. In the end I just whipped up some ganache and squeezed it on top of my mini cakes.


So all-in-all another tasty Dorie recipe. I haven't had one fail yet.

TWD: Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake

This week's TWD assignment allowed us to select between Tarte Tatin and Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake. As a lover of all thing chocolate I, of course, selected the Chocolate (Cup) Cake.


The cake batter came together really easy and the creamed butter, sugar and eggs looked especially light and fluffy.


The recipe gave the option of adding melted chocolate to the batter, but I decided against using it. I wanted the cake to be light and fluffy and I was afraid the melted chocolate would make the cake too dense and brownie-like.


I also decided on cupcakes instead of a fancy layered cake.


Just out of the oven. The cupcakes didn't puff up much and the color looks a little pale, but...


...they sure tasted great. Thanks again, Dorie.


PS: I also didn't have any malt powder to make the prescribed frosting, so I whipped up a chocolate ganache instead. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Nothing better on earth.

Hot Fudge Brownie Cake

The weather was horrible this past weekend, so I decided I needed chocolate to lift my spirits. I combed through my file of "to-do" recipes and found one I had clipped from Southern Living's January 2009 magazine: Hot Fudge Brownie Cake.

Warm, gooey and chocolaty. The perfect recipe for a dreary Sunday afternoon.



You start with a basic batter that is spread into a greased pan. (Grease the pan really, really well. This stuff is stick-kkkyyyyy.)

Then a simple topping made of sugar and cocoa is sprinkled on top of the batter. I added pecans to my topping, to give it a little crunch.



Next comes the interesting part. You carefully spoon a cup and a half of boiling water over the batter and topping. (It is the water that creates the pudding layer while the cake bakes.) I was a little hesitant about pouring the whole 1-1/2 cups of water. My pecans started floating and it just seemed like an awful lot of liquid to pour on the cake. At the last minute I chickened out and just used 1 cup. But I was sorry in the end because my cake didn't have quite enough fudge goodness. It was fudgy, but not FUDGY.

Note to self: next time use all 1-1/2 cups of boiling water and may be even up it to 1 -3/4 cups!



Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees and then cool for 25 minutes before serving.



Yummm.... Hot Fudge Brownie Cake