Monday, May 12, 2008

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy belated Mother's Day to all the mothers reading this. And all the wannabe mothers. And all the people who have mothers. And everyone who likes mothers. Basically, I hope everyone had a nice Sunday.

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:

bazu said...

that is a gorgeous cupcake!