Dos Batches en un Fin de Semana

This past weekend was filled with cupcake time.  I made two different recipes, mainly just because I was super duper excited about cupcakes (that excitment dwindled down as I realized how much time I was wasting on stupid cupcakes). 

Cupcake #1

The first cupcake recipe came from What The Fruitcake?!, a vanilla cake with a white chocolate ganache filling, and a vanilla swiss buttercream frosting. It looked so wonderful from the picture and description, but I am still a wee but frustrated by it. 

After my weekly free saturday yoga class at Yoga Vermont I had a lovely breakfast with my pals Sachi and Atiya and then we wondered our way to City Market to pick up some white chocolate and heavy cream for the ganache...which really is just cream and chocolate.  After a few other adventures, we all ended up in my kitchen ready to make some cupcakes.

The actual cake was easy to make and ended up tasting great.  Filled 24 cupcake liners perfectly and cooked pretty much to perfection...

BUT, the silly ganache screwed me over big time.  I had to babysit at 4, and we started this cupcake endeavor around 2.  I only skimmed the recipe, so I missed that the guanche would need to chill for a very, very, very long time (it was suggested to leave it overnight in the fridge).  So, it was decided we would put the ganache in the freezer to spead things up, which it did not.  Soon enough 3:30 rolled around I had to shower and Atiya and Sachi had to leave, so I decided I really would let the ganche chill overnight in the fridge.
When I got home from babysitting (which was wonderful because we watched High School Musical, the sing-along version), I looked at the ganache and it was still liquid, so I threw it in the freezer overnight.  When I woke up Sunday the ganache was actually hard(!), so I moved it into the fridge again.  When I came back to it a few hours later, it was liquid again, so I just decided to screw it and use it as a liquid.  It was challenging to get it into each cupcake, but I managed to somehow.

Then I moved onto the frosting...which had four and a half sticks of butter.  This was a pain to make and looked really messed up at times.  First you have to boil sugar and eggwhites together, then you beat up it into a meringue.

I was fine up until this point, but then I started to add the butter a tablespoon at a time.  The frosting looked curdled, lumpy, and plain out disgusting.  I wanted to quit and just not do a cupcake blog anymore. After leaving the mixer on high for 10 minutes it finally took shape into somewhat of a frosting, so I piped that crap out of my new frosting bag (it probably has some fancy name, but who cares about that). And then bam!, I had my first batch of cupcakes after 24hours...

They tasted pretty good, very rich and you could sort of tell there was a crap load of butter in the frosting, but they were finally finished.  Not sure if I would suggest the whole cupcake, but I definetly suggest the cake part.

Cupake #2

Carmel cupcakes were the next task.  Much easier to make, and a lot less frustrating.  I wipped up the batter pretty quickly.  These are pretty cool because they actually have a carmel candy baked into them.                                     

The frosting was pretty simple too.  First I made my own caramel sauce pretty much, then put it into the stand mixer, then threw in some butter and some powdered sugar and it was done!  I frosted up the cupcakes with a plain old butter knife and I was finished!



 With some of my babysitting money from Saturday night I bought this snazzy cupcake holder that looks like a cupcake!  Since I had a total of 48 cupcakes, I filled up the container this morning with 22 to bring to school to get rid of.  As I was walking out the door, my hands were filled with tea, car keys, and this container.  I was doing a little dance out of excitment (in which I was sort of swinging the cupcake container back and forth) down my front walkway to the car, and of course the top to the container flys off and half of the cupcakes fall out onto the pavement.  Luckily I was in a good mood so I saw it as funny instead of devestating.  My sister, my neighbor/friend/carpool buddy (Catherine), and I picked up and inspected the cupcakes that had fallen on the ground, but none could be saved.  I still managed to get rid of 11 or so cupcakes at school though!  

The cons to these two recipes are pretty much this:

• Vanilla Cupcakes
• Very very very very very very rich
• Holy butter
• Carmel Cupcakes
• Candy stayed hard in the cupcake
• Very very sweet

But, in the end I think they were both pretty good and definitely filled up my weekend time wise.  I only managed to watch 3 episodes of SVU!