I was not aware of such a cupcake. The "Irish car bomb" cupcake came to me through Pinterest, another hobby of mine ;) Just in time for St. Patty's day! I thought as I re-pinned this curious post. And perfect for a bunch of engineer guys I was sending a sampler off to the Friday before 4leafcloverday.
This is the Lord of Lady CUPCAKE I think: a chocolate stout coffee cake - and by stout I mean Guinness Lager, and by coffee I mean reallllly strong coffee, filled with a bourbon vanilla whipped cream and topped with a Baileys white chocolate buttercream. Whoa. I hope those guys were able to engineer straight after one of these babies. I have yet to find a white chocolate ganache recipe that works because that was the attempt before I settled with the buttercream frosting, which still tasted quite yummy anyway. Technically you are supposed to add Jameson Whiskey to the batch but I didn't have that on hand, that's where my vanilla bean infused bourbon came in *note: save your scraped vanilla beans and add to a small bottle of bourbon, whiskey, vodka....*
So there you have it! Lord of the cupcake! Do a little jig.
Personally, I find leopard print a bit too 'vegas' and flashy but PINK leopard print? Okay, that's pretty cute especially when I get to paint the print onto marshmallow fondant hearts for a baby girl's shower.
If you are the artsy type, you will LOVE edible markers. They allow you to take cake decorating to the next level where you can reproduce a master's painting onto fondant if your heart was so inclined. For me, it was re-creating a pink leopard print :) I googled leopard print cupcakes and came across a helpful site called "my cake school" .com. She had a small tutorial specifically for leopard print cakes; I used her tutorial to help me with the leopard print but used my markers in place of multiple bags of icing and Viva paper towels - but that method looked great too. Here's her link:
http://www.mycakeschool.com/blog/leopard-print-cupcakes/
I made my special spiced chai cakes with a vanilla bean frosting; adding the seeds from one vanilla bean per batch of frosting makes it taste like vanilla ice cream. Yum.
February went by in a whirl, mostly because there are only 28 days in the month, but also because I think I lost track of the days due to sickness hovering over our little apartment. Finally on the mend - a trip to Florida must have helped! - I have finally found the energy within to sit down and update this blog. And what an update huh?! Yes, "cupcake couture" is now the even more sophisticated "lady CUPCAKE"...I think it has a nice ring to it and I feel like I've earned the title since I've been ms. cupcake for the past almost 4 years. And watching multiple episodes of "Cupcake Wars" I feel also legitimizes this change of name ;)
So what has the lady been up to? Well, Valentines has been long over and Easter is well on its way but here are the cakes I made for V day: Chocolate raspberry truffle cupcakes and spiced chai vanilla bean cupcakes. I made a yummy ganache and piped some in to the chocolate cupcakes by steaming some heavy whipping cream and then adding chocolate and raspberry preserves. I let this mixture chill overnight and then whipped it up the next day. For the chai cakes, I brewed my own tea with loose leaf black chai tea, some star anise, crushed cardamom pods, a cinnamon stick and fresh ginger. I let the tea steep overnight in the spices so that the flavours would come through nicely in the baked cakes, and they did :) For a finishing touch I piped some chocolate decorations in the shapes of hearts and 'love' to top the cakes - note: chocolate candy melts harden better than melted chips!
