Cupcakes!

I mentioned in my last post that Carter has a sweet tooth. But truth be told, he gets that from his mother! I do a lot of baking because...well...I crave chocolate and cake and anything sweet. And it's fun. So today I tried my very first filled cupcakes. The recipe from Skip to My Lou looked easy enough, the ingredient list was fairly short, and they sounded soooo good.

I started with these ingredients...nothing out of the ordinary.

First, we just mixed up a batch of Betty Crocker chocolate fudge cupcakes. I say "we" because the little man helped me put the liners in the pan and dump the ingredients into the bowl. We didn't finish without a mishap though...poor Carter fell off the chair he was standing on as I was pouring the batter into the muffin tins. Luckily, I think it just scared him. So after lots of kisses and TLC from his mommy, he was ready to help again.

Once the cupcakes were baked and cooled and Carter was sound asleep for his afternoon nap, I made the cream filling. In my mixer, I just combined these ingredients:

1 7 oz. container marshmallow creme

1 stick softened butter

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1 tablespoon water

1/4 teaspoon salt

Then I scooped the cream mixture into a small ziploc baggie, sealed it shut, and cut one of the corners of the bag off. At this point I was kicking myself for not buying a piping bag last week when I saw it at Hobby Lobby. Argh. If I had had a piping bag, I would have put on a large tip, shoved it into the center of the cupcake, and then squeezed in some cream. But instead, I had to be creative. I first made a slit in the top of the cupcake with a sharp knife and then cut the tip off one of the upper corners of the baggie. I had the baggies with the little zipper, and so the top of the bag was stiff enough that I could actually shove that down into the cupcake. Then I just squeezed some filling in.

Once I'd filled all of the cupcakes, I had quite a mess. And marshmallow filling all over my hands, mixer and countertop. And it was goooooood!

Lastly, I made the ganache frosting. I just put a package of milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips in a bowl, poured 1 cup of heavy whipping cream on top, and cooked in the microwave about 1 minute. I stirred it and let it sit until it was at room temperature. Then I mixed it with an electric mixer until it was fluffy. Lesson learned...do this in your stand-up mixer. After 15 minutes on my hand mixer, I gave up, poured it into my stand-up one, and finished washing the dishes while it mixed for another 5 minutes or so. Ahh...mulitasking.

Then I just frosted the cupcakes and let them chill in the fridge.

The finished product....Yummy! Now, where am I going to get rid of 24 cupcakes? I definitely don't need them in my fridge all weekend!