Chocolate-Spice Cupcakes

Hoppy Easter! Get it? Hoppy... like a bunny? My brother texted me that this morning and I thought it was clever. In honor of the holiday I suppose I should have made something better suited for the occasion, but I didn't. Well, that's not entirely true. I made "bunny bait" for my future in-laws a couple days ago (my parents get flowers, Dad really loves them) and shipped it to them so they'd have it in time for the holiday, but I didn't document it. Forgive me. Hope you enjoy the holiday in whatever way you choose to celebrate it, along with these chocolate-spice cupcakes (no link on Martha's site... I'm sensing a theme).

I was looking forward to these cupcakes because I haven't made anything chocolate in awhile and people like chocolate. So, when I took these to work I knew people would eat them. People are skeptical when you say you have chai-tea mini cupcakes. People are less skeptical when you say you have chocolate cupcakes. Human nature I suppose. But, the more cupcakes I can get rid of, the less I eat. Everyone wins. The only thing I wasn't really excited about when it came to these cupcakes was having to butter and flour the pan. Only this time instead of using flour I had to use cocoa powder. Wanna know what really makes a mess? Lining a cupcake pan with butter and then dusting it with cocoa powder.

Making the batter was easy, however messy, or perhaps splattery would be a better term. I didn't enjoy that part very much. Because I have a high-powered hand mixer (even when it's on the lowest setting) I know that certain things are going to make a mess. For instance, for the last couple recipes I've made, small pieces of butter and brown sugar have flown about when I mix them. But, they're for the most part solid substances so it's not so much of a mess. However, once I had mixed the butter, brown sugar and egg I added the molasses and water combined with baking soda to the bowl and as soon as I realized the consistency of what I had, I knew I was in trouble and there wasn't any way to avoid it. So, I did my best to put my arm around the bowl to try to hold in as much liquid as possible. Thankfully my t-shirt took the brunt of the mess and the walls, countertop and items sitting on the counter were left fairly unscathed. I don't enjoy cleaning up messes so I try to keep them as contained as possible.

Since the recipe told me I would only get 12 cupcakes from the batch I only buttered and cocoa powdered one cupcake pan. If I had a significant amount of batter left over I was just going to use liners for the rest. I really don't like making cupcakes without liners, it makes such a mess. The recipe said to fill the pans halfway. Confession. I filled them more than halfway. Again, since I was only supposed to get 12 cupcakes I figured using all of the batter on one batch would be okay. It was okay, but most of the cupcakes ended up being bigger than I wanted them to be, and some were a pain to get out of the pan after they were baked. Next time around I would probably not force all the batter into one batch. Had I not this time, I probably would have gotten around 14 cupcakes. The cupcakes were baked for 20 total minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time. I let them cool for 15 minutes in the pans and then removed them and let them cool on the wire racks while I made the ganache.

I have made this chocolate ganache glaze many times, but this time I was extra careful to very finely chop the semisweet chocolate because I didn't want any lumps in my glaze. Last time I made it I had some small lumps. While it was fine, I didn't like the look of the lumps. I wanted it to be silky smooth this time, and it was. Success! I spooned the glaze over the top of each cupcake and let it set.

The only thing left to do was add the candied ginger garnish. Does anyone need any candied ginger? If you do, I'm your girl. I have a ton of it. I knew candied ginger would be the hardest thing to find at the grocery store, but I was able to find it. Of course it was in a decent sized tupperware (like the size of a tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter), cost $4.79 and was labeled as crystalized ginger so I may have bought the wrong thing. I don't really know. But it looked right. The worst part is I only used the garnish for one cupcake, the one in the photo above. I didn't want to garnish all the cupcakes because I didn't want anyone at work to be scared away by the ginger garnish. My mission is to always get rid of the treats so I don't eat them. And in my rule book, as long as I make at least 1 cupcake from the batch exactly how the recipe says I have successfully completed said cupcake. I did that in this instance therefore, in my eyes, I successfully conquered these cupcakes.

I was also told by a coworker or 2 that these were the best cupcakes they've ever had. Now, that is a very lovely compliment, but I'm not quite sure if I believe that it's true. As a lover of cupcakes, this was not the best cupcake I've ever had. Even though I made it I can still be objective. Though I suppose everyone has different preferences when it comes to cupcakes. It was quite yummy, but not the best. I'd say that maybe the cupcake I'll be making next week has the potential to be the best. But, between you and me, I looked ahead to see what it is, and there's pretty much no way that's going to happen. And just to keep you in suspense and to keep you coming back for more... I'm not going to tell you what it is!

Ginger and Molasses Cupcakes

I have baked with ginger before, but not fresh ginger. I've baked with the kind of ginger that's dry, comes from a small container and costs about $7 (why are spices so expensive?). Fresh ginger is not ground up and dry, it doesn't come from a small container and doesn't cost $7... unless you buy a lot of it. I will say that due to the amount of work fresh ginger requires I prefer the $7 container, but I was happy to finally try using fresh ginger in a recipe.

When shopping for this recipe fresh ginger was the only thing I needed to buy (hooray!). Though I'm a fresh ginger novice when it comes to baking or cooking with it, I know what it looks like and felt confident I could find it at Stop and Shop and not have to make a bunch of trips to various grocery stores. I was right. Yeah me. The recipe said to buy about 2 6-inch pieces of ginger to yield what I would need. I bought 1 large and 2 small pieces thinking it would equal what I needed. I probably could have weighed it to see if it was the number of ounces the recipe specified, but that would have been a smart decision. Smart decisions are things I don't always make.

When it came to prepping these ginger and molasses cupcakes I started with the ginger. First I peeled all the pieces and tried to remove the "nubs" to make it easier to peel. Then, I minced. I actually looked up the difference between mincing, chopping and dicing (love me some Google) so I would now exactly how small the pieces of ginger were supposed to be. I assumed mincing was the smallest because I didn't think having giant chunks of ginger in these cupcakes would be very good. I was right again. I am on a roll. And, in case you're curious in terms of size of the pieces of whatever you're working with, from smallest to largest it goes minced, chopped, diced. You're welcome. Back to mincing. It was fairly easy to do, some of the pieces of ginger were harder to chop than others, not sure why, but overall it was a pretty painless, though sticky process. In an exciting not normal turn of events my eyes proved to be great measuring cups this time around because I got the perfect amount of ginger that I needed for the recipe. Chances of that ever happening again... 1 in never.

The rest of the recipe was easy, except for one minor hiccup. Before going grocery shopping I checked my molasses supply to make sure I had the 2/3 cup that was necessary. I looked in the cupboard, and the jar looked to have enough molasses. Of course when it came to measuring out the molasses while preparing the batter it turned out that I didn't have enough. Using my perfect measuring-cup eyes I concluded I was a little less than 1/4 cup short. Crap. I was tired and now annoyed, I had already worked all day and I didn't feel like making a trip to the store for one thing. I did think about it for about a minute and then decided that being roughly 1/4 cup short of molasses was not a crisis and couldn't possibly make that much of a difference.

During the baking time I added 2 minutes to the total time since these weren't quite done after 20 minutes. When I poked them with the toothpick after 20 minutes I still had batter on the toothpick and the middles sunk in a little. After a little more time in the oven they were fine. When I tasted them I didn't notice anything missing due to the small amount of molasses that I didn't have. Then again, this was the first time I tasted them so I didn't really have anything to compare them to. Ignorance is bliss!

As many of the cupcakes so far in this project have been, these were topped with whipped cream. I made the whipped cream while the cupcakes were baking since it's so easy and put it in the fridge in a Ziplock bag until I was ready to frost the cupcakes. When it was frosting time I noticed that the whipped cream had become a little liquidy (may or may not be a real word) even though I left it in the fridge. I decided to re-whip it in my stand mixer to get it back to the consistency that I wanted. Worked like a charm and I was proud of my head's-up thinking. I did forget one thing. To garnish the cupcakes with the $7-container ginger before I served them and took their pictures. Next time I'll remember the garnish and I'll have the required amount of molasses... unless I forget.