Martha Stewart Cupcakes (MSC) Club: Itty Bitty Chocolate Cupcakes

Today was the first baking session of the Martha Stewart Cupcakes (MSC) Club, organized by Betty at Eat My Cupcake! Our recipe du jour was Chocolate Salted-Caramel Mini Cupcakes on p. 148 of Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. The finished cupcakes look gorgeous in the book, but I decided to tweak it a bit so as to avoid caramel. I know, I know, caramel is beloved by everyone, but I'm just not very fond of it unless it's covering an apple on a stick and eaten at an apple orchard surrounded by brightly colored fall leaves.

Lucky for me the cupcake club "rules" emphasize creativity and fun over recipe fidelity, so I just substituted a black raspberry filling (yum!) for the caramel, put a pinch of sea salt in the frosting to give more depth to the chocolate flavor, added an almond sliver garnish, and then sprinkled the frosted cupcakes with sugar crystals instead of fleur de sel.

The recipe is straight-forward and simple, even for a novice like me, with only one semi-specialty ingredient. As much as I adore Martha (and adore her I do!), I sometimes get frustrated with her recipes that require obscure ingredients I have to: a) hunt down by going to three different gourmet food stores; b) pay a shocking amount of money for; and c) will never use for another recipe, so they essentially go to waste in my cupboard. The only item I had to hunt a little bit for the cupcakes was the Dutch-process cocoa powder, but I found Droste brand at the second store I tried. (I've always had a fondness for Droste cocoa because my grandfather emigrated from the Netherlands when he was a young man. My sister and I both have antique Droste tins in our kitchens.)

For these cupcakes I decided to try mini nut cups instead of liners in muffin tins, an idea I loved from chockylit's blog, Cupcake Bakeshop . I heeded her advice and made sure to fill the cups no more than halfway... err... well, at least I got it right on most of the cupcakes!

Is there anything more pathetic looking than a mini cupcake that has overflowed and then sunken in on itself-- poor little thing. The rest of the cupcakes turned out moist and rich, with just the right amount of chocolatey goodness that's dark instead of being too sweet. (Below, with the tops scooped out to make room for black raspberry filling...)

Cupcakes = success. Filling = success. Frosting = ... I have no idea where I went wrong!! I couldn't get the frosting to firm up, except if I chilled it. And since I wanted to be able to serve the cupcakes at room temperature and have the frosting hold its fun swirls, I really didn't know what to do except to use more confectioner's sugar. Did anyone else have this problem? Doesn't 3/4 cup of confectioner's sugar seem pretty inadequate for 2 1/4 cups butter and the melted and cooled chocolate?? Well, I couldn't figure it out. So my frosting ended up being lighter in color and fluffier than I'm sure Martha intended, and it certainly didn't have the deep, glossy sheen of hers in the book. In fact, my frosting had pretty much the taste, texture, and color of the classic recipe on the back of the Hershey's cocoa box. Ah well, I'll have to save mastering Martha's glossy frosting for another baking adventure!

La musique du jour...

Since NPR covered the 40th anniversary of Woodstock on and off all day, my music for baking cupcakes was: "Dance to the Music" by Sly & the Family Stone and "A Little Help from My Friends" performed by Joe Cocker. Perhaps not your usual cupcake baking music... but it had me shaking my business in the kitchen today!