I made these cupcakes for my son's program and open house at school last week. I spent the week leading up to the program in complete indecision about what to make. Nothing really sounded that good to me. I looked through countless cookbooks and blogs, nothing. I talked to Julee about it and made the comment, "when it comes to dessert I like to go big or go home". I guess that is true for me. I want it to be the best dessert and I want it to look great and I want it to be memorable. I tend to take things over the top a bit. So after much thought and a trip to the store I finally decided on this combo. They got great reviews, were pretty easy to assemble and looked great. I used a slightly modified recipe for an old fashioned chocolate cake and chocolate icing. The icing was seriously the best part and while a little tricky to work with, I think it will be my go to chocolate icing from now on. Here is a little tutorial of how to do these and the recipe of course.
Bake 350, make 36 cupcakes or three 8 inch layers
Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake Recipe
2 Cups boiling water
1 c. cocoa
2 3/4 c flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 c butter
2 1/2 c sugar
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
Mix the boiling water with the cocoa and stir until smooth. Let sit to cool off. In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder, soda and salt. Combine the butter and sugar in a large bowl and mix until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and eggs one at a time, beat until combined. Add the flour mixture in three parts and beat until combined. Add the cocoa mixture to the batter slowly and beat until well combined. Scrape down the bowl several times during the mixing process.
Old Fashioned Chocolate Icing
16 oz good quality semi sweet chocolate melted (I used Ghirardelli)
1/2 a bag confectioner sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 cup butter at room temp
Melt the chocolate chips. In the bowl of your mixer add the melted chocolate and the butter. Mix until well combined. Add the confectioners sugar 1 cup at a time. Add the milk. Beat a few minutes until well combined and fluffy. This icing is pretty soft to work with, but does set up to a pretty firm consistency.
If you are going to ice your cupcakes as heavily as I did you will need a double recipe.
Line your muffins tins with cupcake liners. Spoon just enough batter into each cup to cover the bottom. Place a sandwich cookie into each cup.
Cover with more batter, filling the cups 3/4 full. Bake at 350 for 15-18 minutes. These cupcakes are really fudgy so testing them is difficult.
I pull mine out when they no longer jiggle when I lightly shake the pan.
After the cupcakes have cooled completely place about 1/3 c of icing on each one and using a butter knife shape into a dome shape.
Place some chocolate jimmies into a shallow container.
Gently roll the edges of the iced cupcake in the jimmies.
Cut your remaining sandwich cookies in half.
Let a cute chocolate smeared kid put one half of a cookie on top of each cupcake.
Here is what these yummies look like on the inside. Crazy right?
Here they are posing for a picture.
-Kim
