Happy Valentine's Day! Lemon Mousse Cupcakes

Today is the day for lovers. Or for anyone who loves sweets! After gorging myself on chocolates earlier in the week, I was ready for something a bit lighter.
With not a lot of time, I rummaged around in my fridge for inspiration. Here's what I came up with: whipped cream, meyer lemon curd, a few lemons, and a little bit of French buttercream. After a quick internet search, I found that combining whipped cream and lemon curd results in lemon mousse. So I naturally made lemon mousse cupcakes.

I used my vanilla cupcake recipe, and added about 1 tablespoon on lemon zest, which lent a slight lemon flavor to the moist and fluffy cake. After cooling, I cored each cupcake.

I mixed together the whipped cream and lemon curd. I had about 1 cup of curd and probably 1 and a half cups of whipped cream. I filled each cupcake with the lemon mousse, then with the leftover, I added the French buttercream. It gave it more stability. Then I piped the rest on top.

I felt the cupcakes needed something else, to jazz them up for Valentine's Day. I had baked them in cute red striped wrappers. I decided to melt some red candy and pipe out hearts onto wax paper. After a quick chill in the fridge, the hearts popped right off the wax paper. I made big ruffly hearts and little ones too. I gently placed them on top of each cupcake, and they looked perfect! Such a sweet treat for the holiday, or any day. So cute!

Martha Challenge #46- Black Forest Cupcakes

Keeping with the German theme, I made Black Forest Cupcakes. When we were in Baden-Baden, we samples some authentic Black Forest Cake, or Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.
This is a decadent dessert, a chocolate cake layered with kirsch (cherry schnapps), cherries, and whipped cream. So good! I even found real Black Forest kirsch at the liquor store.

So I made Martha's version, but changed it quite a bit. She says to cut the cupcakes in half horizontally, like a layer cake, and layer it with pastry cream and cherries. I decided to make it more like the original cake, and used whipped cream.

So, made the cupcakes, a delicious dark chocolate cake. I also added a bit of kirsch to the batter, but it was too subtle to taste after they baked. They rose very high, and reminded me of the mountains in the Black Forest. Then I drained the maraschino cherries, and soaked them for a while in the kirsch. Half the cherries I chopped up to fill the cupcakes, and half I left whole to top the cupcakes. I made the whipped cream, and also a chocolate ganache for the tops of the cupcakes. Once everything was prepared, I set up a filling station.


I cut cones out of the cupcakes with a sharp knife, and took out some cake to make room for the filling. Then I added a few cherry bits, squirted the inside with a mixture of the cherry syrup and kirsch, added a dollop of whipped cream, and replaced the top.

To finish, I spooned chocolate ganache on top, let it set in the fridge, then piped on some more whipped cream, and added a cherry on top. So I have all the elements: chocolate, cherry, and cream.
They looked super cute, and I was so curious that I cut into one to see how it looked. The filling was great, evenly distributed.


My only concern is if the kirsch/cherry flavor is strong enough. I soaked the cakes directly in the kirsch, which has a 45% alcohol content, but I'd be interested to know if my taste testers thought it was strong enough.
Overall, I preferred my method to Martha's, since it stays truer to the original cake.

Martha Cupcake Challenge #22- Tres Leches

The next installment in the cupcake challenge is Tres Leches cupcakes. This translates to three milks, which is exactly how these are made.
The cupcake itself is a variation of a sponge cake, very light and fluffy. Once they are baked and cooked, they are soaked with the tres leches mixture. It's condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream. Super rich! I tried pouring the milks over the cupcakes, but it was too messy, so I ended up using a turkey baster. It was perfect!


There's so much milk mixture at first it seems like it won't all get absorbed, but I just waited until the first bit was fully absorbed, then added more. I ended up with 21 cupcakes, which took 3.5 cups of milk mixture.
I covered them and let them rest overnight in the fridge to make sure everything was fully incorporated. Then I made sweetened whipped cream, and topped each cupcake with a sprinkling of cinnamon.
According to my official taste tester, these were amazing! Definitely going on the menu.

Cupcake Challenge #11- Blueberries and cream cupcakes

Blueberry-Vanilla cupcakes topped with Whipped Cream and Blueberries. I made 24 minis and 24 regular sized.
These were simply vanilla cupcakes, with blueberries mixed in, topped with fluffy whipped cream and fresh blueberries. The recipe called for 2 cups of blueberries for the batter and more to put on top. I used a whole 2 pints in total, because I wanted to make sure each cupcake had enough blueberries. The regular ones had 3 or 4 a piece, but the minis had only 1 each.

Here they are right out of the oven, smelling fantastic!

I dug around my cupcake cabinet and found these blue striped liners. I love how you can see the blueberries through them, it lets you know what to expect when you take a bite! These would have been good also with just a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

Here's a finished cupcake all by itself.

This was a good recipe for the summertime, as blueberries are in all the markets. The whipped cream on top is light enough to not take away from the fresh taste of the fruit. The minis can be devoured in one bite!

Here's the inside, with the yummy blueberries.

I was concerned that they'd all fall to the bottom of the batter, but that didn't happen. I'm guessing it's because the blueberries are light enough, as opposed to a heavier fruit such as raspberries. In that case, most recipes recommend dusting the fruit (or whatever else) with flour before folding it in, so they will remain suspended in the batter and not fall to the bottom.

So, next recipe coming up is zucchini-spice, but I may hold off. When baking today, it got sooo hot in the kitchen, it was really unbearable, being 110 degrees outside. We'll have to wait for a day when it's only 105 before baking again :)