Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

It's 9 am and this morning I get to make another one of my cupcakes..what a pleasure & what a joy! Unfortunately, my camera is reading, "Batteries Exhausted" and I don't have any other AA batteries so this (post with no pictures) will just have to do.  Hopefully by the time, I've got my cupcakes complete I will

at least have photos of the finished product!  Well so far, I've already got my raspberry coulis ready.  I just took:

one cup fresh raspberries

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tbsp of lemon juice

And brought them to a boil in a medium saucepan.  Based on a recipe that I found here.

I then added 1 tablespoon of that coulis to my chocolate ganache which is also done & the rest of the coulis went to the fridge.  For that amount of berries, it couldn't have made more then 1/2 cup of liquid after I drained the seeds out through the sieve.

The chocolate ganache was:

2 egg yolks

1 1/4 cup evaporated milk

10 oz. 60% cacao reserve chocolate

But I will get to how I made that later.   Now we're on the making the cupcakes.  I want to get them done so that I have time to work on my buttercream, chocolate swiss buttercream that is ;-)  Hope hat you're enjoying the journey! :-)


(Btw-my professional dark chocolate brown cupcake liners have come in, but since these cupcakes are for a men's meeting, I am going to use some of my store-bought powder blue liners first).

Here's the recipe that I am using for the cake part of this cupcake.

First, I started out with 4 heaping tablespoons of regular classic roast Harris Teeter-brand ground coffee.  Then I added that (a coffee filter obviously,) and 2 and 1/4 cups water to the coffee maker.  Now I am going to start on melting my chocolate.

Okay, I've just blended together all of my dry ingredients-the cocoa powder, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  And now I am going to get my paddle attachment and stand mixer ready to do my eggs and such...the wet ingredients.

(1 hour and 22 minutes later...)

We're ready to go.   I've got my eggs in my mixer & I am getting ready to add the rest of my wet ingredients.

The Next Step in My Journey

So the next step in my (cupcake) journey is picking up where I left off last year.  "What are the things that I did?"   Back track my steps..and let me start over again.

Well, last year, I:

* Looked into a website called, "Bake It Pretty".com.  Looked over some things, nothing really stood out.

* I also went around to a series of cake and cupcake shops (and also to their sites) and started asking questions.

* Last but not least, I entered a craft fair to sell my cupcakes...but didn't actually end up selling any of my

cupcakes, but rather cupcakes in a jar.  Like these.  In fact, these were the site that I got my recipe from and

I sold some of them there (at the craft bazaar).

But I never took the time to actually perfect the "making" of the cupcakes.  So, here we go.

Picking up from then, the first thing that I did was I went back to my original site where I looked for my supplies at Bake it Pretty.

Second (just last week) I ordered one of those "Best Ever Cupcake Icing" Kits that they have on their site.

Now, let me say that I had (since last year) gotten one of those cupcake kits from Michael's and it never worked for me...or maybe I should say, that "I" never worked it enough, but I think that this one will do.  I do have one of the tips that already comes in this kit but I don't know, it might not be the same size.  Also, this kit offers a 16inch featherweight bag which I don't have. 

The next thing that I did, last year, was I looked around to see what kind of icings were out there from the good bakeries that I'd want to buy cupcakes from.  And the one thing that I found that was the common denominator was somewhere along the lines of a swiss buttercream, if you will.

Now that brings me back to something else.  Last year, my hubby sent me up to a speaking event uptown by a former food Food Network's star, now sucessful cake business owner, Warren Brown.  Well, long story short, I bought his book, Cake Love, got it autographed, took a picture with him and took the book home to then, literally eat it up!  I was facsinated and amazed by his vast knowledge of cakes and how to make them from scratch as well as his recipe for the meringue (icing).  I left off last summer, with saying that I was going to perfect some of his cake recipes (and later incorporate them into my cupcakes).   And honestly, I made one cake and that is where I left off..

It is from there that I will now pick up.

As of today, my Best Ever Cupcake Icing Kit, has officially arrived in the mail!  (It must have arrived yesterday because we all know that mail doesn't come on Sundays:-).  So it's here.  I am excited to open it and see what's it in.  Secondly, I am awaiting my chocolate brown cupcake liners.  I think that all cupcakes, to look professional, must or should be either in a solid black or solid chocolate brown liner.  That's just my thought.  So, I've got my muffin liners on the way-and they should be here soon.  In the meantime, I just need to get a handle on what's in the bag (from Bake It Pretty) and then next move on to making my cupcakes and swiss buttercream, and then the actual icing of the cupcakes...that is the area that I have failed in the past.

I am taking this slow because I want to be complete and finish my course.  So in case you got lost, the next step is opening my best ever kit, getting my liners, and heading to the icing.

This all takes courage but I believe that I can do it.

Sweet dreams,

Chemeeka