Saturday, August 15, 2009

Martha Stewart Cupcakes August Challenge

One of the blogs that I enjoy reading regularly, Eat My Cupcake, decided to host a Martha Stewart cupcake challenge. Each month, a big 'ol group of foodie bloggers will each make a cupcake recipe selected from the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book. I am such a cupcake nerd, I pre-ordered this book from Amazon.com so that it would be delivered to our house on the day it was released!

The first cupcake challenge was the Chocolate Salted Caramel cupcakes with Dark chocolate frosting. I read the recipe a few times over, and was a little intimidated at first. But, I love a challenge (especially a cupcake one!) so I went for it. Unfortunately, I had too much chocolate and butter on my hands constantly, so I didn't take many preparation pictures.

The cake was simple enough to make. I used regular Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder, mostly because I can never find the Dutch unsweetened cocoa that many recipes call for. The cakes were incredibly shiny and glossy. After they had cooled completely, I cut cone shaped holes in the cupcakes to make room for the salted caramel I was about to make. I managed to get six and a half dozen mini cupcakes from this recipe, even though the book said it would make 56 total minis.

Next up was making the salted caramel filling from scratch. This was a first for me. In the recipe, it stated that the mixture may splatter, and it sure did! It actually scared the crap out of me, but with stirring, it quickly calmed down and turned into a smooth caramel. And it was YUMMY!

Then came the dark chocolate frosting. It was very easy to make and incredibly chocolately! I'm not a real big fan of dark chocolate, but this frosting was good. Very rich, easy to work with, and it had a beautiful glossy sheen to it.

I had a event to cupcake cater at this morning, so I made these for the event. Here is the final results, along with the Red Velvet cupcakes I made. The pictures didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.


A close-up:




The event was a success for Jovie Salon, and the salon called me to let me know that a client of theirs wanted my contact info to place an order...yippee!!!!! :)

11 comments:

Kayte said...

Wow, your cupcakes look lovely and the catered event looks so beautiful. How fun to get to see it all. Beautiful job on the cupcakes...I loved making that caramel, too! Such fun.

k.a.r.e.n said...

The event is gorgeous, as well as your cupcakes!

Caroline said...

Great job on those cupcakes. It took me awhile to find the Dutch-process cocoa but I'm glad Hersheys worked out well for these as well. And you got paid for making these?!? Awesome!

Nina said...

All those cupcakes look beautiful together!

<3

Unknown said...

It looks like your cupcakes turned out beautifully! Congrats on the catering gig! I thought these were delicious.

mike said...

Well you did a smashing job I must say! Everything looks fantastic - and good enough for orders to be placed - wow! Yes, there was a few "steps" involved, but I agree, it was fun taking on the challenge. Hm... Hershey's sells a dark cocoa (dutch-processed) on the shelves now! Nicely done!

betty geek said...

WOW, I love how dark and chocolatey your cupcakes turned out, especially that frosting!

Look at that table! A display of sweet goodness!

Thanks so much for baking along with me this month!

Looking forward to following you on your future cupcake adventures!

Melody said...

Those look amazing! Good luck with the cupcake biz! That's awesome! I've been thinking about doing something like that. I'm going to follow so I don't miss any cupcake goodness!

Hindy said...

Your cupcakes look lovely! glad your event was a success.

baking tragic said...

These look amazing!! Great to know that they aren't too tricky either, I'm planning to catch up on this recipe soon. Beautiful cakes :)

Marthe said...

These were yummy!