Marmie's Cupcakes

Last night we celebrated my mom's birthday. My sister was there with her new baby, Mom's first grandchild, who is only 20 days old. Mom wasn't crazy about being called Grandma or Granny or anything like that, so she and my sister settled on "Marmie", which is what the girls call their mother in Little Women. Very cute.

To celebrate, I made cupcakes using the recipe for Hershey's chocolate cake. It's a great recipe that has been around for years - your mother or grandmother probably made it. Ok, I actually made some cakes and cut them out into little flower shapes, but I wouldn't recommend doing that. It was extremely messy and I ended up wasting more cake than I used. I think I'm going to make the scraps into a mint chocolate chip trifle. Next time I'll just make plain cupcakes.

So anyway, I brushed the cupcakes with a lot of simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, heated till the sugar dissolves) to make them nice and moist. Then I made up a ganache (melted semisweet Ghirardelli chips and cream) and cut out little holes in the center of each little cake. I spooned the ganache into the hole, for a little chocolatey surprise. Then I made an orange-white chocolate buttercream. I put that in a pastry bag and squeezed little rosettes on the top of each cake, and finished it all with some powdered sugar tapped through a sifter. They were a big hit, and my sister asked for the buttercream recipe, so I thought I'd just put it on the blog. It's a standard swiss buttercream recipe from one of my baking textbooks, except I added white choc. and orange.

This recipe makes 5 to 6 cups. I made half this amount for 8 cupcakes.

1 c. egg whites
1 1/2 c. sugar
pinch cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 c. unsalted butter, softened, cut into chunks
2 tsp vanilla extract

for orange-white choc. variation:
1/2 c. white choc. chips
1/2 c. cream
juice and zest of 2 oranges

The egg whites are unpasteurized, so you need to pasteurize them. Do this by puting them in to a metal bowl over lightly simmering water. Whisk gently until heated to 140 F.

Then add sugar and whisk until dissolved. Add cream of tartar.

Whip this mixture to stiff peak with a mixer. (Stiff peak is when you pull the whip out of the mixture and the peak stands up and doesn't fall over.) This will take a while. Also, be careful not to overwhip them. Stop just when they get to stiff peak. If you're in doubt, it's better to have them a little underwhipped than overwhipped.

Add salt (don't freak out if the whites kind of collapse. Just keep whipping and they will come back to stiff peak) and then put mixer on med. Toss in softened butter chunks a few at a time. (Again, don't freak out if it looks all lumpy and separated. It will come back together. You may need to stop the mixer and stir it with a rubber spatula.) Add vanilla. The consistency should be like icing. You know what that looks like, right?

If you want to add the orange-white chocolate flavoring, put those ingredients in a metal bowl and melt over the pot of simmering water. Then cool it down to room temp, and gently fold into the icing.

And you're done!! Keep it in the refrigerator until you're ready to use it, and then you may want to let it warm up a little at room temp until it's a spreadable consistency. It can also get too warm, in which case, obviously, put it back in the fridge for a little while. Happy icing!