Designer Chocolate Baby Grands

Last year at this time, I probably would have groaned when I looked at this recipe and saw the three different components. When I'm down to just 35 more cakes to go, however, the three-component cake seems as easy as 1-2-3.
The Cake
The cupcakes are basically Rose's German Chocolate cake in cupcake form. We've made these before, so I won't go into great detail. They're richly chocolate because of the cocoa dissolved in boiling water technique. I've made a big dent in my new, rich Italian cocoa, and I'm not disappointed in it.

Then we just add egg yolks and oil, the dry ingredients, and, finally, the egg whites. It makes a rich, chocolatey batter.

I have better luck when I weigh the batter as I fill the cupcake pans. Then I have evenly sized cupcakes. I tried to sort of count the blips of batter as they went into the cups, but blip-counting is apparently not completely accurate.

These little babies only take about fifteen minutes to bake, which is a plus on a hot nearly-August morning.

The Ganache Syrup
When I first started this project, Woody and I bought some bulk chocolate. I bought lots of dark chocolate, a lesser amount of white chocolate, and just a little milk chocolate. The dark and white chocolates are gone, but I still have some milk chocolate left. I guess we don't use milk chocolate that much. I loved the ganache in these cupcakes; they added a nice all-American quality to the cakes.

I'm very fond of poking holes in cakes and watching the ganache soak into them. I do understand that if someone asks you what you did all day, and you say you watched ganache soak into cakes, most people will not say, "Wow, that sounds like fun!" In fact, I would not recommend that you tell anyone that this is your idea of a good time. I find that while people are perfectly willing to eat any cake that you might produce, their eyes glaze over if you go into the details.

The Glaze
And, speaking of glazing over, this is the third time we've done this fantastic glaze, and I think it was my shiniest rendition so far, despite the fact that I forgot to add the cream before I brought the mixture to the boil. So I just heated the cream and added it after I strained it.

I thought I had the correct cupcake liners, which are foil with a thin white paper inner liner. But when I tried to detach the paper liner from the foil, I just couldn't do it. Jim tried too, and he finally said, "There is no inner liner." He was right--it was just a thick foil liner. So I had two choices: I could simply pour the glaze over the cupcake while it was still in the liner or I could remove the cupcakes from the foil, and then put them back in new foil liners after the glaze was dry. I chose option #2 even though (or maybe because) it was the more complicated option.

I'm glad I did because the glaze was pretty runny, and they would have been a big sticky mess if I'd done the whole process in the liner.

As it was, I let the glaze dry for a few hours (it didn't dry, but it got tacky and a little more solid), and then I transferred the cakes into clean foil liners. Of course, the foil liners no longer hugged the cupcakes, and I wished I would have had some very charming cupcake wrappers, which I didn't buy. You have to draw the line somewhere.
As I said before, we shouldn't have done another chocolate cake this week. I try to alternate because, although I love chocolate as much as the next person, I think that the non-chocolate cakes are often more interesting. I wouldn't want to say no to a serious blast of chocolate, but it's often just that--a blast. I liked this cake because it had the three different tastes of chocolate; it was the perfect size--big enough to satisfy your sweet tooth but not so big you wished you hadn't eaten it; and the texture was lovely. But I'm really looking forward to the plum and blueberry upside down torte which has nary a drop of chocolate in it.

TASTING PANEL:
Jim: "Excellent chocolate taste. These might be a little bit sweeter than usual, but not too sweet."
Karen: "Nice texture. I like the ganache and the glaze together."
Gabe: "I love chocolate!"