Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans
September 2, 2008
Woo! It was a busy weekend in The CPB Gallery Kitchen. I made a batch of Chocolate Mousse Cupcakes and Taste Tester made a batch of Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Semi-Sweet Glaze. Both recipes came from one of my favorite cookbooks, Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans. I have expressed my love of this book before and I’m going to do it again - I’m not sure how many times I’ve made each of this two recipes from it, but this time only reminded me how much I love them.
Taste Tester requests that I make these Peanut Butter Cupcakes quite often and I guess he got tired of waiting so he went and made them himself. He’s been baking so much lately, I might have to give him a new nickname since he’s been doing a lot more in the kitchen than just “tasting”. He did a fantastic job preparing these cupcakes, despite his self-deprecating comments over his lack of ganache applying ability. The reason we love them so much is that the cake is really peanut buttery and dense, just moist enough and is complemented perfectly by a bit of semi-sweet glaze. We even eat them for breakfast around here because they are rich and hearty tasting and don’t have a ton of sugary frosting like most diabetic coma inducing cupcakes.
And the Chocolate Mousse Cupcakes… mmmmm… Klivan’s chocolate sour cream cake is very light and goes well with the light fluffy chocolate mousse filling. Both layers are topped with a deep chocolate ganache that really enhances the full-body chocolatiness of these cupcakes. I sneak in the fridge here and there for a bite which turns into two… three… four bites… they are frighteningly hard to put down. Gobble with caution - to your waistline. Taste Tester couldn’t wait until the chocolate cakes were cooled and filled, so he took a hot one right out of the pan and ate it with a slathering of peanut butter. I got a bite and it was awesome.
Both cupcakes were equally delicious, but Taste Tester’s came out significantly prettier than mine did - and it was his first time working with ganache! I think the warm weather worked against me a little - the mousse was soft and the weight of the cupcake tops and ganache was a lot for it to handle so they got a little droopy. I might recommend that you wait til it gets a little cooler out before giving this recipe a shot, or do the non-economical thing and crank your AC. I had to try really hard to get attractive shots of the Mousse Cupcakes… this was the best I got:
Not the prettiest, but man are they good.
The shots of Taste Tester’s PB Cupcakes might make you fall off your chair:
Still on your chair? Dang. How bout now?:
If you’re not drooling yet, it’s probably because these are just on your screen and not actually sitting in edible form in front of you. So go out and buy Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans immediately so you can have some asap. All of the recipes I have made from this book have been fantastic. Don’t even get me started on her German Chocolate Cupcakes. Drool!
You can also get the recipe for Chocolate Mousse Cupcakes at Epicurean and Peanut Butter Cupcakes at Sweet Treats Baking Blog. The only adjustments we made were to use semi-sweet chocolate instead of milk for the PB Cupcake glaze and we topped them with chopped Reeses PB Cups!
P.S. Thank you to Carla D for the fun cupcake rack!