Tuesdays With Dorie: Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes

I love chocolate. I really love chocolate. Chocolate candy, chocolate frosting, chocolate sorbet, chocolate pudding, hot chocolate. But oddly, I’m less fond of chocolate cake (and chocolate ice cream). Go figure. So when I looked at this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe I figured I’d love the ganache, but the cake would be kind of eh.

Now, Friday was a bit tense around here. Errands took insanely long, and there was this chicken to be disjointed. (See Friday’s post if you care.) So I kind of rushed the cupcakes into the oven, and as part of that ill-conceived rushing I failed to read the entire recipe before starting. So everything was mixed exactly right, including the dry ingredients (which you never want to do until right before the cake goes into the oven, of course), when I discovered I needed 2 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled.

Oops.

So there was a bit of a delay, and the chocolate (when it went in) was perhaps not quite as cooled as the term “cooled” might imply.

I don’t know if that actually affected anything, although #1 Son issued all sorts of dire warnings about melted butter and screwed-up texture.

So I baked the cupcakes and cooled them, and when they were cool I stuck a cake decorator into the top and gave each one a shot of Marshmallow Fluff. (The recipe suggests doing that from the bottom, but then I’d have to have taken them out of the cupcakes papers, and I didn’t wanna.) The ganache (the yummy, yummy ganache) covered the Fluff completely, and so it came as a lovely surprise when the family bit in. We had some Edy’s cherry chocolate chip ice cream alongside, which was the perfect complement.

The verdicts?

Husband: Structurally, they were just gorgeous. That ganache on top was lustrous. I don’t think the Fluff added much to the taste, but it was a great throwback to cream-filled Tastykakes. The cupcake itself was really good.
#1 Son: They were good. The Fluff was kind of a nonentity, but it was fun. The flavor was good, but a little blunt, not a whole lot of depth or subtlety. It was good with the cherry ice cream.
#2 Son: The ganache was really good, very melt-in-your-mouth. The cupcake was good. It was delightfully cakey, and the Marshmallow Fluff was a pleasant surprise.

I thought the cake was dry — I never really like cake. It’s just an icing delivery system. The Fluff moistened it up quite a bit. And the ganache, as previously mentioned, was yummy.

The cupcakes looked pretty, and if I ever for some reason needed chocolate cupcakes, I’d certainly consider using these.

f you want to see what all the other TWD bloggers did with this recipe, check out the blogroll. And if you want to try them yourself (use the Fluff, or maybe some pastry cream or even jelly!), Clara will have the recipe here. (It’s not too late to make them for Halloween!)