Poisoned Apple Baking: cupcake

Showing posts with label cupcake. Show all posts

German's chocolate cupcakes!

Omg, I love this recipe. Not as much as my Tiramisu cupcake, but its up there. This actually took me 3 hours to make, only because I was watching Leatherheads and oogling John Krasinski while baking. It was relatively easy to make and messy too!

I decided to look up the origin of German Chocolate Cake when I came across some interesting stuff. Apparently this cake is American and has no German association except for the fact that in 1852 a gentleman by the name Sam German made this dark baking chocolate bar for Baker's Chocolate Company. After a while they just dropped the apostrophe and the "S" and it became Baker's German Sweet Chocolate instead.

I baked this recipe for my hubbster Jesse. He looooves coconuts. Hopefully there are still cupcakes when I get home tonight. :) A coworker also asked me to bake this for them. Ill do that next week.

Ingredients for the cupcake:

1 1/4 all purpose flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temp

1 large egg at room temp

1/2 tsp of vanilla extract

2 oz semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled to room temp

1/4 cup sour cream

1/2 cup of milk (I used 2%)

Instructions for mixing:

First, lets heat up the oven to 350 degrees then set up your muffin pans. Do not use the paper cupcake liners so that it doesn't leave the rigid lines on the cake itself. Instead spray/rub the pans with butter. I like Mazola's Butter Cooking Spray personally.

Next, combine in one bowl the flour, salt and baking soda. Meanwhile, In another bowl, using an electric mixer at medium-high speed, beat sugar and butter until fully combined and fluffy for 2-3 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla next, then beat until combined together. Add the melted chocolate and sour cream and beat on low.

Finally, add the flour in 3 additions alternating with the milk in 2, beat on low speed, scraping down the sides when you need to. Once you are done with that go ahead and fill the muffin pans 3/4 of the way and bake for 18 minutes or until done. Check to see with a toothpick in the center of the cupcakes. If it comes out clean its ready!

German's Chocolate Topping:

3/4 cup of evaporated milk

1/2 cup of light brown sugar firmly packed

1/2 cup of butter cut into 8 pieces

1 1/4 cup of sweetened coconut shavings

1 cup of pecans coarsely chopped although you can just use a mortar and pestle to crush them.

pinch of salt

Over a medium heat combine evaporated milk, brown sugar and butter, bring to a simmer. Then remove the sauce pan from heat and mix in pecans, coconut and salt. Let cool for till it reaches room temp. Please be careful since it is hot.

Instructions for assembly:

Once the cupcake has cooled, with a parring knife, cut a quarter of the top of the cupcake off. Set the larger portion of the cupcake in a cupcake liner and use the Filling/Frosting you made earlier. Apply only a teaspoon in the center of the cupcake. Once you have done that grab the top portion that you cut off and place it on top of the filling. Go ahead and scoop up another teaspoon and apply it to the cupcake. Voila! A double-tiered cupcake!

Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes with Strawberries and Maple Cream.

I am a huge fan of pineapples. Crushed, smashed, chunks, rings or puree pineapple. It doesn't matter to me at all. I practically drool at the thought of pineapple. Actually, I'm drooling right now. For my Friday recipe I decided to take my moms pineapple upside-down cake and turn it into a cupcake! Bam! Just like that. Only this time, instead of a cherry, I would use strawberries. Tart and scrumptious, it would add the perfect balance to her recipe.

She always did say never to follow the recipe completely but make it your own in a certain way. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm not done yet. Not only did I change out the cherry and add a strawberry but I also drizzled some maple cream onto it. Not much, so it would not overcome the pineapple flavor. We will see how it goes tomorrow at work when I take this batch to my subjects. Although my husband, Jesse, already approved!

My photography skills are horrible seeing as this was taken with my iPhone.

Pineapple Upside-down Batter:

1 cup of Butter (2 sticks) softened to the touch.
1 cup of Sugar.
2 cups of Self-rising flour
4 Eggs
1 tsp. Vanilla extract

Topping (or the bottom of the cupcake :P):

2 cups of Strawberries.
1-20 oz. can of Crushed Pineapples.
1/2 cup of Butter (1 stick) softened to the touch.
3/4 packed light brown sugar (or any kind of brown sugar, really up to you)

Maple Cream:

3/4 cup of heavy whipping cream.
5 tbsp of natural maple syrup. None of this Aunt Jamima stuff. I'm talking real maple syrup!

Making the cupcakes:

Make sure you pre-heat your oven to 350F degrees. While that's heating up, in a large bowl,
mix together the butter, vanilla, eggs, sugar and sift the flour into that bowl. Mix with an electric mixer for 1 minute on the lowest speed then 3 minutes on the highest speed. Once done with that go ahead and butter your muffin tray and dust it with flour if you want. I prefer lining them with the cupcake liners.

Spoon into the pan 1 tablespoon of melted butter, one tablespoon of crushed pineapples, and one tablespoon of brown sugar. Do this to each cupcake liner in the pan. Once done go ahead and spoon in the batter. I pretty much added the batter till it was flushed with the top of the cupcake liners. Heh. Bake for 20 minutes.

While that's baking, go ahead and mix the heavy whipping cream and the maple syrup together. Stir occasionally till it turns into a thicker consistency (around 5-8 minutes).

Serving:

When you are ready to serve these cupcakes just put them on a plate upside-down take off the liner and drizzle lightly 1 tbsp of maple cream and top with a few slices of a strawberry.

Let me know what you guys think of my version of my moms pineapple upside-down cake recipe.

Enjoy.