Hostess Cupcakes

Cups of cake.

The wave of sin continues this week, my dear friends, with this little nugget of rich, chocolate-y goodness.  I've had an article torn out of Martha Stewart Living for well over a year.  An article that centers on CUPCAKES, the craze of the recent food world, spawning hundreds of cupcake shops the country over.  Shops selling cupcakes, only cupcakes, nothing but cupcakes, and bestowed with twee names like "sprinkles" and "sparkles" and "barf reflex."

Maybe not that last one.

Let's talk frankly here, friends.  Everybody loves cupcakes.  They're personal little cakes, they're miniatures (alone a factor of love for me), they're sweet and sticky and covered in frosting.  In the immortal words of Joey, "What's not to like?"

But this whole cupcake craze and darling "designer" cupcakes just strikes me as a bit much.  Cupcakes are good, but do we really need to go gaga over them?  Are they that special?   Aren't there a hundred other fairly common desserts (cherry pie; key lime pie) we could celebrate arbitrarily with the same fervor?  I guess I just don't get it---I have a hard time believing that there is a market for 30 cupcake shops in the city.  Especially when these shops sell only cupcakes--they aren't bakeries, they're just cupcake factories.  Whaaa?

Well, I'm missing the cupcake craze boat I suppose, but that doesn't mean I don't like cupcakes.  I just enjoy them the old-fashioned way--by making them myself.  Which brings us back to Martha and her lengthy, informative tutorial on how to make many types of cupcakes, mix-n-match frostings, and a whole slew of creative ways to decorate them.  When A's brother's birthday celebration was planned, I knew that, somehow, I had to make some cupcakes.

And with a glossy photo like this, is it any wonder I chose the Hostess Cupcakes?

Who wouldn't get drawn in by that photo?

Well, friends, as you can surely tell, my cupcakes turned out nothing like the photo.  Having professed before my impatience and lack of skill when it comes to baking, I accept a large share of responsibility for the 3-hour cupcake cooking fiesta that ended rather miserably.  But, Martha, you have some share of the blame too.

The one-bowl chocolate cupcake recipe turned out perfectly--easy, quick, and good (if a bit dense).  But I wanted dense, to hold the filling I was going to insert into the recipe, despite its lack of presence in the original article.  Finding a recipe for cream filling was easy, but it turned out a little to wet (why did I choose the only one that called for a tablespoon of cream?  If none else do...maybe I should have listened to the majority).  So my too-soft cream got injected into each cupcake, a little messier than fluffy but tasting good just the same.

Messy, cream-filled moist cakebombs.  Ugly, but gooood. 

The real problems started with the ganache glaze.  The recipe states, with almost nothing left out: "Heat cream in small saucepan, then pour over chocolate.  Dip cupcakes in glaze and let set."  

This should have been a warning flag, especially given chocolate's temperamental attitude when it comes to baking. No more information, Martha?  I should have asked, heat the cream to what temperature? Scald it or boil it?  How best to incorporate into the chocolate?  What cocoa level in the bittersweet bar?  Are you sure this glaze will set?

Because it didn't.  It just didn't set at all.  Instead of that shiny, draw-upon-able surface in the glossy, my cupcakes looked like they were dipped in chocolate soup.  Pretty soon, all that soup soaked into the cakes, leaving these bald, misshapen cakes with melting cream oozing out the top.  PANIC MODE!

So I ate a cupcake to calm myself down. 

I fixed it the next day buy just buying chocolate frosting and covering up the mess, but with the soup and wet cream these were dense little cake bombs.  They are good, don't get me wrong, but they aren't delicate or dainty or anything other than a full-on cupcake explosion.  

And, Martha, you and I (and Rachel and Food and Wine and many others) need to have a little chat about 1.) Recipe testing (DO IT!  Don't just slap in untested, mishmash recipes from week to week!  Take the time to get it right, balanced, and good); and 2.) Photos of food.  Seriously, guys.  So often your photos don't even resemble the finished dish (like yesterday's Lentil Soup---the photo in the magazine CLEARLY showed a blended, homogenized soup, whereas the recipe itself called for nothing of the sort.)

That's the end of my rant...for now.