My mother's birthday was also this weekend. As I mentioned in my birthday post, she loved my birthday cake (a little too much), so I made Blackout the Forest Cupcakes for her and my grandmother for Mother's Day/her birthday.
(Note: the post behind the cut is pretty image heavy; I was finally able to take some photos in daylight and may have gotten a little carried away.)
I started out with the same recipes I used for the cake, Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance, halving them and substituting cherries for raspberries. This yielded ten cupcakes. One could probably get eleven out of it, but I tend to overfill.
The cross-hatching on some of the cupcakes is neither functional nor decorative. I just dropped them upside down on the cooling rack.
Next, I cut a cone out of the center of each cupcake, trying to keep the removed part as tidy as possible, so it could be replaced neatly:
Then I filled the hole partway with the cherry layer:
Topped that with ganache:
Topped that with the bits of the cupcakes I'd cut out earlier (trimmed down for a neater fit - and so I had something to snack on):
Then the cupcakes went in the fridge until the ganache hardened and I could be pretty certain nothing would fall off when I turned the cupcakes upside down. Once they were cooled, I covered them with cherry preserves. I covered the full size cake with more of the cherry layer I made, but I didn't think the cupcakes would be able to accommodate the lumpiness of the cherries and still look nice:
I dipped each cupcake in the still warm ganache:
Then the cupcakes went back in the fridge, joined by the ganache, so it could harden. When it was firm, I used the icing to pipe ganache-y os on the cupcakes:
That was topped with chocolate covered cherries, and when I ran out of cherries, a truffle made from leftover ganache:
The money shot:
Loads of extra pictures:
1 comment:
that is a gorgeous cupcake!
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