filled cupcakes

German chocolate cake

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Like a lot of things in America, the so-named German chocolate cake isn’t actually German. But Americans, I guess, decided it is. Or actually the history goes that it was concocted by someone named Samuel German and was originally called German’s chocolate cake. Has nothing at all to do with being German or Germany. But the name has shifted, as so many do, to make people wrongly believe that this cake is a German treat.

I’ve always been fairly disgusted by German chocolate cake. It was the go-to birthday cake for my maternal grandfather, and I, liking neither chocolate nor nuts, could never see the appeal. Recently, while thinking a lot about my grandparents (now both deceased), I wondered if I could make German chocolate cupcakes.

Before you get started, I would suggest toasting your pecans for the filling. Toast about 4 ounces or 113 grams of pecan pieces in an oven at 175C/350F for about 10 minutes, making sure they do not burn. Set aside.

Cake
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs
1/2 cup cold, strong brewed coffee
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat oven to 175C/350F. Butter and flour muffin tins (or use paper muffin cups). Sift dry ingredients together in one bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, coffee, buttermilk and vanilla.

Beat the coffee mix into the dry ingredients in two batches with an electric mixer on low. Beat in butter last. Pour into prepared muffin tins (about half full).

Bake 10-14 minutes (done when a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake in the center of the pan comes out clean).

Nut-coconut filling
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1 cup coconut
3/4 – 1 cup toasted pecan pieces
3 tablespoons butter

In a heavy mid-sized saucepan, combine cream, sugar and yolks. Cook on medium-low until the sugar dissolves (about ten minutes). Remove from heat and add coconut, pecans and butter. Stir until the butter is fully melted. Let stand until at room temperature.

When cool, use the filling to fill/top each cupcake to the capacity you like. I made holes in my cupcakes and filled them and then topped the rest of the cake with some chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream, but you could also use a chocolate ganache as a topper.

Latest bake recipes and feedback

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Although I provided links to the original source and inspiration for the recipes with which I experimented in my latest bake, I decided I ought to post the recipes including modifications as well as the feedback I received.

Pumpkin cupcakes with gingersnap crust, Rolo/Center candy center and spiced apple cider icing

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup milk
1 cup pumpkin

Package of gingersnaps or pepparkakor cookies

24 Rolo, Smil or Center chocolate caramel candies

Directions/cupcakes:

Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Line 24 muffin cups.
Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside.
Beat 1/2 cup of butter and sugars. Add the eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to be fully incorporated before adding the next. Stir in the milk and pumpkin. Stir in the dry mixture, mixing until just incorporated.

Place a thin gingersnap or gingerbread (pepparkakor) in the bottom of a cupcake paper. Put cupcake batter over the top of the gingersnaps and fill to about two-thirds full. Press a Rolo into the center of the batter.

Bake until golden, about 25 minutes. Cool in the pans for 5 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

Spiced apple cider frosting
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
Two or three packets spiced apple cider

Mix the egg white and the sugar over a double boiler. The sugar should be completely dissolved when you remove it from heat. Pour the mixture into a large bowl (preferably the mixing bowl of a stand mixer — Swiss meringue is mixing intensive, so a stand mixer works best). Whisk on high speed until stiff but still wet peaks form. Continue to beat for about five or six minutes after these peaks form.

Switch to the paddle attachment and turn the speed to medium low. Add the butter in one or two tablespoons/pieces at a time. The mixture might start to look lumpy and curdled. Don’t worry. Keep mixing. When things start to come together, beat in the flavoring (in this case, the apple cider powder) and keep beating for another two minutes. It might take some time to get to the right texture. You will know when it comes together in a solid, fluffy, frosting-like consistency.

Among the feedback on these – which were giant (I double the recipe and baked them in double-sized cupcake papers) – were statements like, “I have a new favorite. The pumpkin cupcakes are like a meal! And then a caramel surprise in the middle. I loved it!” And, “That pumpkin cake was amazing! The balance with the icing was perfect… and then a toffee middle! Was it ginger and cinnamon in the sponge or just cinnamon? Was it lemon in the icing? I loved it … definitely made my morning.”

(And to answer those questions… yes, ginger and cinnamon in the sponge along with cloves, nutmeg and allspice! That’s a LOAD of spices! And no, no lemon in the icing!)

About the “fauxstess” Hostess cupcakes

Chocolate cupcake
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk, you can quickly make some by adding 1 tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice for each cup of milk you’d like to “sour” – or use “súrmjólk” or “filmjölk”)
2 teaspoons vanilla

Beat sugar and vegetable oil until fluffy. Add eggs, beat well. Add vanilla. Mix. Sift all dry ingredients together and add in thirds alternately with the buttermilk.

Preheat oven to 175C.

Put batter into prepared cupcake papers, fill to about two-thirds full. Bake 20-24 minutes. Let cool in pan for five minutes and then remove to cooling racks. Let completely cool before filling.

Fauxstess vanilla filling
The original, suggested filing recipe was too heavy and thick for me to use but you can find it on the lovely Lemon Sugar blog site.

My filling recipe is the same as I use for Swiss meringue buttercream frosting
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 teaspoons vanilla bean powder, a teaspoon or so of liquid vanilla (to taste)

Mix the egg white and the sugar over a double boiler. The sugar should be completely dissolved when you remove it from heat. Pour the mixture into a large bowl (preferably the mixing bowl of a stand mixer — Swiss meringue is mixing intensive, so a stand mixer works best). Whisk on high speed until stiff but still wet peaks form. Continue to beat for about five or six minutes after these peaks form.

Switch to the paddle attachment and turn the speed to medium low. Add the butter in one or two tablespoons/pieces at a time. The mixture might start to look lumpy and curdled. Don’t worry. Keep mixing. When things start to come together, beat in the flavoring (in this case, the vanilla) and keep beating for another two minutes. It might take some time to get to the right texture. You will know when it comes together in a solid, fluffy, frosting-like consistency.

Add to a piping bag and use a piping/frosting tip that can be poked into the tops of the cupcakes to fill them. Gently squeeze piping bag to fill the cupcakes with filling, being careful not to let the cupcake explode. If using the original filling recipe, you are supposed to set aside a cup of the filling to make the white icing curlicue on top of the cupcakes, but because I did not do that I used some store-bought white-writing icing.

Chocolate ganache topping
5 ounces chocolate
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons heavy cream

Over a double boiler filled with boiling water, heat cream in the top until steaming. Remove from heat and add chocolate, stir until smooth. Cool completely. When cool, dip the filled cupcakes into the ganache (or spread them with the ganache). Set in fridge at least 30 minutes to let harden/solidify.

Use the icing “pen” to make squiggles on top. Refrigerate the cupcakes so everything sets nicely.

People were truly bowled over by these, no matter how ugly they turned out. I mean, heck yeah, it’s chocolate. But they didn’t turn out looking like their namesake and processed “inspiration”, the Hostess cupcake. I guess they don’t have to look exactly the same to taste even better.

The most effusive feedback came from the only other American person (someone who actually knows the real Hostess cupcakes) to try these out. The exuberance and all-caps are hers (she emailed her feedback): “WHATEVER ON EARTH WAS IN YOUR CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES?!!?!?! IT WAS SO GODDAMN SPANKING GOOD! IT REMINDED ME OF THE JOY OF A DING DONG AS A CHILD – BUT THIS WAS BETTER! IT WAS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LIGHT… I’m like….. in heaven… It was AMAZING! PERFECT! You have to make those again!!” When I responded with a thanks, she answered, “IT WAS TOTALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLY A HOSTESS!!! TOTALLY! TOTALLY! TOTALLY!! !%&”!%”#@!”

the fauxstess with the mostess?

fauxstess cupcakes with bad squiggles
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After moving beyond the mundane world of plain cupcakes, I was happy to come across inspiration for something different. I stumbled on the Lemon Sugar blog and its take on the Hostess cupcake. No doubt – a homemade version of the original processed feast of Frankenstein ingredients (what IS the peel-off ‘choco-not’ frosting topped with glue-like squiggles?) is superior. You would barely have to try hard to get a better-tasting finished product.

I mostly followed the Lemon Sugar recipe as posted, but when I made the creme filling, it turned out too thick (I could spackle with this stuff!), so I turned to Swiss meringue buttercream* as my filling.

I made a few mistakes. For one, I did not let all the cupcakes bake quite long enough, so they were a bit too soft and collapsed in the middle. For another, I followed the “creme” filling recipe provided in the Lemon Sugar blog BUT did not have quite enough marshmallow filling, and that probably made the difference. Third, because the filling did not work out as planned, I could not use it to make the topping-squiggles, so I turned to a tube of white “writing” glaze/icing, which worked fine except that I just don’t have the patience or dexterity for doing artistic or decorative stuff … so witness my mess.

filled fauxstess cupcakes

filled fauxstess cupcakes

IMG_1744 IMG_1745 IMG_1746

*Swiss meringue buttercream how-to
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
Vanilla powder and liquid vanilla (to taste)

Mix the egg white and the sugar over a double boiler. The sugar should be completely dissolved when you remove it from heat. Pour the mixture into a large bowl (preferably the mixing bowl of a stand mixer — Swiss meringue is mixing intensive, so a stand mixer works best). Whisk on high speed until stiff but still wet peaks form. Continue to beat for about five or six minutes after these peaks form.

Switch to the paddle attachment and turn the speed to medium low. Add the butter in one or two tablespoons/pieces at a time. The mixture might start to look lumpy and curdled. Don’t worry. Keep mixing. When things start to come together, beat in the flavoring (in this case, the vanilla) and keep beating for another two minutes. It might take some time to get to the right texture. You will know when it comes together in a solid, fluffy, frosting-like consistency.

Gone bananas: Banana oat cupcakes with Smil filling

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Banana oat cupcakes stuffed with Smil/Rolo candy

Banana oat cupcakes stuffed with Smil/Rolo candy

A new experiment… I had three bananas ready to go and a bunch of oats that I just did not want to store any longer. I vaguely knew I wanted to make something with caramel. I had also intended to make some chocolate cookies stuffed with Smil (the Norwegian equivalent of Rolo) but did not want to make more chocolate stuff in the end, so I just threw a Smil into the center of each cupcake. It remains to be seen how these will be received, but hopefully it will be a successfully experiment.

How to go bananas yourself?

Preheat oven to 190c

1 1/2 cup flour
1 cup oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 mashed overripe bananas

Mix dry ingredients together and set aside. In another bowl, beat egg, add milk, oil and vanilla, then sugar. Add banana. Mix well. Add dry mixture until just mixed (do not overmix).

Place mixture into greased cupcake pans or into cupcake papers. I put a small amount of the mixture into a cupcake paper, added a Smil candy and topped it off with a bit more batter.

Bake 18 to 20 minutes.

I frosted with caramel Swiss meringue buttercream.

4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
24 tablespoons unsalted butter
three tablespoons caramel/dulce de leche

Over a double boiler, whisk egg whites and sugar. When sugar is dissolved, transfer the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer – beat with the whip attachment until soft to medium peaks form. Switch to paddle attachment, start beating and adding in the butter a few tablespoons at a time. Once you have a frosting-like texture (which can take a long while – the mixture will possibly look curdled, like it cannot possibly come together, at some point, but it will come together – just keep beating), add the vanilla. When nearly ready, add the caramel and mix until well-combined.

Frost the cupcakes with the prepared frosting.

Caramel-filled cappuccino cupcakes with Kahlua frosting

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cappuccino cupcakes with Kahlua frosting

cappuccino cupcakes with Kahlua frosting

Another cupcake experiment. I basically used a brown sugar cupcake recipe, which I normally use for brown sugar cupcakes with maple frosting and candied bacon, and dumped in some Starbucks Italian roast VIA instant espresso powder (some stuff I had on hand and needed to use up). I might have added too much but no one bothered to tell me after taste-testing.

Once baked and cooled, I used a handy-dandy “cupcake holer” tool to make uniform holes, which I filled with dulce de leche/caramel (made by mixing a can of prepared dulce de leche with about a half tablespoon of milk, just to make the filling slightly less thick).

Then I made some Swiss meringue buttercream and flavored it with vanilla bean powder and two tablespoons of Kahlua.

Decorated with sprinkles I had had for too long (don’t like to keep stuff like that just sitting around).

filled cupcakes

Filling process for filled cupcakes

Cappuccino cupcakes
1 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tablespoon vanilla
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder (two or three packets of Starbucks VIA instant espresso powder)

Preheat oven to 175C. Mix all ingredients together. Put into cupcake papers in a cupcake pan. Bake 16 to 19 minutes until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Turn the pan around once in the middle of baking for a more even bake.

When done, remove from oven, place on a rack and cool for a few minutes before removing the cupcakes from the pan onto their own cooling rack to cool completely.

Caramel/dulce de leche filling
Use a prepared can of dulce de leche and put it in a bowl, mix together with a half tablespoon of milk to achieve a slightly less thick consistency.

When cupcakes are fully cooled, use a knife or a cupcake holer tool to remove the middle of the cupcake and fill each hole with caramel. Reserve the very top of the cupcake when you cut the middle out. Place the tops back onto the filled cupcakes.

Kahlua Swiss meringue frosting
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter
3 to 4 tablespoons Kahlua
(vanilla bean powder, if desired)

Over a double boiler, whisk egg whites and sugar. When sugar is dissolved, transfer the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer – beat with the whip attachment until soft to medium peaks form. Switch to paddle attachment, start beating and adding in the butter a few tablespoons at a time. Once you have a frosting-like texture (which can take a long while – the mixture will possibly look curdled, like it cannot possibly come together, at some point, but it will come together – just keep beating), add the vanilla powder. When nearly ready, add the Kahlua and mix until well-combined.

Frost the cupcakes with the prepared frosting.

Filled butternut squash cupcakes

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It’s baking experimentation time!

I have a recipe for pumpkin cupcakes but… I had a butternut squash sitting here for a while that I was going to use for some savory meal that I never got around to cooking. Having substituted butternut squash in other pumpkin recipes (soup and pie), I figured a cupcake or muffin could not be too challenging a substitution.

I baked the squash, scooped out the baked “innards” and will now puree. After that I will mix it all up into a spicy cake batter and put that on top of a pepparkakor crust in cupcake papers. And, to be a whole lot like the maven of Bake It in A Cupcake, I will pop a Rolo candy (or actually in this case another substitution – these are turning into an imitation/substitution fiesta – a Norwegian copy of said caramel-filled chocolate candy, Smil) in the batter. And BAKE!

I have not quite decided on how to frost these little monsters, but we’ll see how the cupcakes turn out before plotting the finale.

Pumpkin spice cupcakes with pumpkin spice filling

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pumpkin cake

Pumpkin spice cake with pumpkin spice pudding

Pumpkin spice cupcakes are only improved with pumpkin spice pudding as a filling. Topped with the very yucky but totally necessary pumpkin marshmallowy candy, these really represent both Halloween and autumn.

candy corn and candy pumpkins

Yucky Halloween candy

Check out the pumpkin spice cupcake recipe. The only difference will be the filling and frosting.

pumpkin spice cupcakes

Pumpkin spice cupcakes all ready for Halloween

Feeling stabby – Vanilla cupcakes, cherry blood filling and knives

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feeling stabby

Vanilla cupcakes with cherry “blood” filling decorated with small candy knives

A number of years ago, I worked with a guy who was accused of stabbing another person to death in a parking garage. He spent some time in jail but was eventually released – I suppose there was a lack of evidence. I don’t know all the details of the story or the case. But I can’t look at these small candy knives and not think of him, regardless of his guilt or innocence.

Vanilla cupcake recipe

2 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 cup softened butter

1 1/4 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cups milk

Preheat oven to 375F/180-185C. Line a cupcake pan with liners.

Whisk dry ingredients together in one bowl. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until smooth and fluffy. Add eggs, vanilla and 1/4 cup of the milk. Beat for a few minutes until the mixture is light. Alternately beat in dry ingredient mix and the remaining half cup of milk. Half-fill each cupcake liner.

Bake for 15-20 minutes (check for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the center of cupcakes; a clean toothpick means the cupcake is ready). Cool.

When cooled, hollow out the center of the cupcakes, discard the middle parts but retain the very top to recover the filled cupcake. Fill each cupcake with cherry jam or cherry pie filling and top with the reserved cupcake lid.

At this point you could also frost the cupcake but the “bloody knife effect” is best achieved by simply sprinkling more jam/filling messily on top of the cupcake and plunging the candy knife into the cupcake or flat on top of the cupcake.

feeling stabby vanilla cupcakes

Vanilla cupcakes with cherry filling

Matcha green tea cupcakes with raspberry filling and raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream

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I don’t have a great relationship with matcha/green tea. In my geekier days attending Japanese-language camp in high school, I volunteered for a week-long culture course in the Japanese tea ceremony. These provided my first tastes of the very bitter and not entirely pleasant (to my inexperienced palate) taste of traditionally prepared matcha. (The tea ceremony itself, like most Japanese rituals, is complex, beautiful and takes basically forever to learn for tea ceremony… practitioners and aficionados.)

I have also chronicled my history with the Green Tea Asshole, an unpleasant man who rears his head in my life once or twice a year demanding “answers” as to what I am doing with my life. He offered me a canister of matcha when he visited me once many years ago – and that went to good use in baking some other matcha concoction.

A lovely Canadian friend sent me a new supply of matcha, with which I have been doing several other matcha-baking experiments.

This time I made green tea cupcakes and filled them with raspberry filling and made some raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream frosting to top them off.

Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons matcha green tea powder
1 cup butter
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and matcha) together and then add them alternately with the milk. Put into cupcake papers and bake at 160C for 15 to 17 minutes (although in baking these later I went for 170C because I ended up with a gooey mess at 160C), until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Green tea cupcakes make a rather dense texture (not dense after the first time I baked them… they came out more like sponge cake, and I don’t know why). Let cool completely and then hollow out the cupcakes (keep the tops). Fill the cupcakes with seedless raspberry jam (next time I make these, I am going to try cherry jam) and replace the tops. Prepare your icing.

Raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
24 tablespoons unsalted butter
raspberry preserves (preferably seedless – enough to suit your taste and maintain the right, spreadable texture)
coconut (you can sprinkle the top of the cupcake with coconut if you like – it’s optional)

Over a double boiler, whisk egg whites and sugar. When sugar is dissolved, transfer the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer – beat with the whip attachment until soft to medium peaks form. Switch to paddle attachment, start beating and adding in the butter a few tablespoons at a time. Once you have a frosting-like texture (which can take a long while – the mixture will possibly look curdled, like it cannot possibly come together, at some point, but it will come together – just keep beating), add the vanilla. When nearly ready, add the raspberry preserves and mix until well-combined.

Frost the cupcakes with the prepared frosting.