I finally had a chance to try out one of the (teeny bit) daunting recipes on the awesome blog cupcake bake shop which I link to over in the side bar. Unfortunately she’s suspended posts on this blog, but fortunately something even better is coming down the pike in a month or two, and you can still access all of the recipes on the old blog. I was looking for a good office birthday cupcake that would combine chocolate, which is always a crowd pleaser, and something fall-like so the pear and vanilla bean filled chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean icing seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Although I was warned several times that the chocolate cake portion had to be measured out perfectly in each cupcake wrapper, I still ended up with overflows on the first batch. Luckily, the recipe made a bazillion cupcakes, and I got enough good ones out of it to share. The rest we crumbled up to make chocolate cake ice cream – I’m not really sure how to make it, but they serve it at our favorite bakery, Veruca, and we thought we might just dump the cake crumbs over some premium ice cream and take a beater to it. Frankly, I don’t really think you can mess it up. Mess up the kitchen perhaps, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
Anyway – the cupcakes were quite good. They actually had a pear filling, so the top portion of the cupcake was carved out, filled with pear stuffs and put back together. The icing was a nice glue on top, and the decorative bit was dried thinly sliced pears (which sound good, but were a little flavorless). The recipe took quite awhile because it was really four recipes in one, but I would recommend them for a fancy event when you want a nifty looking desert with chocolate and fruit. And I wasn’t up all night making them, because someone goes to bed before it’s hardly even dark outside. She can’t even make it through a book anymore.
