Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Strawberry Cupcakes with Ganache

It's Tasty Tuesday!  At the request of the Cubbies Leaders at church, I am making 2 dozen strawberry cupcakes for the Cubbies' last night of class.  I am on a quest to reduce our processed foods, which means making cakes from scratch, instead of a mix.  I found this recipe, and fell in love!  Now, just an excuse to make them right?  Well, that came along with the Cubbies!  I am leaving out the red food coloring.  My cupcakes will be less pink than the picture, but I'm okay with that.  At first, they were not nearly pink enough, and I couldn't fit all the cupcakes in my oven at once.  I baked 24, and was unimpressed with the coloring.  After that, I pureed a few more strawberries and stirred them into the remaining batter.  Those cupcakes had a much better color, but did not rise as well.  Did they not rise because they had already risen some, or because the egg whites were beginning to fall, or because I folded more puree into them, I'm not sure.  Her frosting sounded yummy too, but I was looking for less sugar, since I'm covering them with the chocolate Cubbie Bear faces from yesterday's post.  It came to me, ganache!  I am using this recipe, but again altered it.  The 60% Cacao Ghirardelli chips come in a 10 oz. bag, so I just used 10 oz. of chocolate instead of 12 oz.   Tomorrow, I'll post pix of the finished product, along with my taste test reviews!

Monday, May 21, 2012

Make-It Monday!

It's Make-It Monday.  As the school year winds down, so does AWANA.  BruCrewDad is helping lead the Cubbies, and he voluntold me to make cupcakes.  (Around here, if someone else volunteers you for something, you were "voluntold.")  I was happy to do it.  The perfectionist in me wanted the perfect cupcakes that screamed "CUBBIES" and not just regular cupcakes.  The other leader requested strawberry, so I get to try a new recipe.  Yay!  (I will sample them first, and if they are nasty, I'll go buy a cake mix.)  Stay tuned tomorrow to see how that goes!  Okay, so here's what I made for Make-It Monday:   Cubbie Bear's face!  I made 24 of these out of chocolate to put on top of the cupcakes!  Aren't they darling?  I also had plans to do some quilting today, but these cute little faces took WAY more time than I planned.