A Cupcake Not for the Feint of Heart

High-Hats: Lots of work, but worth it!

(Recipe courtesy of the Barmy Baker)

For ingredients to create these culinary wonders, you will need lots of sugar in various forms. (You will also need immense amounts of patience, courage and emotional fortitude.) You will also want to pull out loads of your pantry standards. Oh, and also be sure to have an ample supply of Trader Joe's Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies... just in case your experiment in cupcakery is a complete failure. Cause you never know what might go wrong and it never fails to be prepared, I'd say. But if they do turn out, the results are heavenly.

Chocolate Blackout Cake

2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup cocoa powder (natural, not dutch-processed)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
4 ounces melted butter
1 cup brewed coffee (I used 3/4 cup boiling water)
3 large eggs

DIRECTIONS:

• Preheat oven to 350F
• Prepare 2 muffin tins by lining with 20 or 21 muffin liners.
• This is just like making a quick bread. Sift the dry ingredients together into a mixing bowl.
• Mix together the wet ingredients, Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until combined. This will be a fairly wet batter.
• Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin tins, filling until about a quarter of an inch from the top of the liner.
• Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when lightly pressed with a finger.
• Remove from oven, let cool in pan about 10 minutes and then finish cooling on a rack. Place the room temperature cupcakes in the refrigerator while you make the Italian meringue. These cupcakes (or cake if you make one from this recipe) do tend to taste better the next day after the flavors have all come together.

"I want to cook too!", Benjamin exclaimed. Although a hot oven impeded him from really helping, I gave him a mixing bowl and a rubber scraper; he promptly went to work as a very diligent sous chef. Until he was sidetracked by blocks, books and the Christmas tree.

Italian Meringue

1/2 cup (4 egg's worth) egg whites

1 cup sugar

1 tsp corn syrup

3/4 tsp cream of tartar

1 cup water

2 tbsp pure vanilla extract (I found that 1T is my preference)

DIRECTIONS:

• Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer.
• Place the sugar, water and cream of tartar in a heavy bottomed saucepan with a candy thermometer placed on the side of the pan dipping into the mixture. Bring the mixture to 238F.
• When the sugar syrup is about 10 degrees away from 238F, begin whipping the egg whites to firm shiny peaks. If the whites get to this state before the syrup is at 235, turn your mixer to low speed and just let them keep moving.
• Once the syrup is at 235 and your egg whites are firm and pretty, Carefully (hot sugar=ouch, I know from past experience) and slowly pour the syrup into the egg whites with the mixer running on high speed. Don't worry about any spatter on the sides of the bowl, it happens and won't effect the final product. Add the vanilla extract and continue whipping the egg whites until they cool to room temperature (I also add about 1/2 tsp salt, as I like my icing a bit salty with the sweet). Once the mixture is cool, scoop it into a pastry bag fitted with a large piping tip (or you can just use a plastic baggie with the corner cut off to pipe).

Pipe coil mounds on top of the chilled cupcakes, mounding each high to form the marshmallow "hat". Place the cupcakes in the refrigerator and make your chocolate coating.

Oh, but first, you must feed the sous chef. After all of that work, he is very, very hungry... and ready to eat up a storm. That level of intense eating becomes problematic when tangy strawberry yogurt is shoveled up your nose. But, we must get back to the High Hats now and that lovely, glistening finishing touch:

Chocolate Coating

14 ounces bittersweet chocolate (I used Trader Joe's Dark Belgian Chocolate)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

• Place chocolate and oil in the top of a double boiler (I just use a stainless steel bowl) and place over just simmering water and let sit about 5 minutes, then stir until chocolate is melted and you have a nice smooth dipping chocolate.
• Scrape the melted chocolate mixture into a deep container (one that is narrow and deep enough to dip the "hats" in). Dip your cupcakes in one at a time*, allow excess to drip off and place the cupcakes on a rack over a sheet of parchment to catch the extra drips.

* I'm not sure what I did wrong - obviously I did something, because every other baking site seemed to do this no problem - but my silly meringue frosting kept slipping off every time I tried to dip it. So... I took a spoon and slathered the chocolate on by hand. Time consuming, messy and intense, but it did the job!

Finished product, out for delivery!