from my kitchen. Simply prepare a boxed chocolate cake mix, allow cupcakes to cool, and use a pastry bag and tip to fill cupcakes with vanilla buttercream.

Topped with chocolate ganache: add 1/2c scalded milk to bowl containing 8 oz. finely chopped dark chocolate and whisk.
Note: the hot milk didn’t melt all my chocolate, so I set the bowl over a pan of boiling water for just a minute to two to finish melting the chocolate.

I brought them in for the co-workers and they indicated they liked them-hope they weren’t just trying to be nice. Anyway, I got one, “tastes like a Yodel,” and one “tastes like a Ding Dong.”

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in Somerville, MA at Lyndell’s Bakery (via Boston Globe). Yum, now i’m really hungry.

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I spent yesterday in the kitchen. I attempted to make my own Hostess cupcakes, but had a few issues.

1. I don’t think I whipped the egg whites for the buttercream long enough before adding the sugar-syrup. And then I think I rushed adding the butter to the too-warm mixture. I stuck the mixing bowl, with about half of the butter added, to an ice bath and then continued to add butter after the mixture was cool. The icing then seemed to be fine and I filled the center of the cupcakes and stored the rest of the vanilla buttercream in the refrigerator.

On to the ganache to coat the cupcakes—I added the chopped chocolate to slightly warm cream, began to stir the mixture and then it separated! I did some quick research and found that if I added a little bit of cold cream and beat the mixture it would re-form. It did and I poured the ganache over the tops of the cupcakes.

After the ganache cooled I took the vanilla buttercream out to pipe little swirls on top of the cupcakes. Guess what, after bringing the buttercream to room temperature, it too separated. I tried putting it in the mixer and even adding a touch of cream – in the end it looked liked cottage cheese.

Btw, the picture is that of the cupcakes (tops sliced off for flatness) filled with cream, awaiting the ganache.

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A few weeks ago a co-worker brought in red velvet cupcakes for another co-worker’s going away party. They were quite good–and my first taste of red velvet cake. I’ve since been looking at different recipes and found this lower sugar recipe last week in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

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Many of you have asked where I purchased my 3-tier cupcake carrier. I found it at Kmart earlier this year — it’s from the Martha Stewart Everyday collection. Unfortunately they don’t seem to carry it any longer. So for those in need of easy cupcake transport, here are some other suggestions:

Cupcake Courier
Crate & Barrel cupcake carrier
Onieda cupcake carrier
King Arthur cupcake caddy

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