Ringing In

For New Year's, my husband and I were invited to party (like rock stars of course) at a friend's house. So the old brain got a thinking, and came up with cupcakes to bring along. After many different flavors and decorating ideas, I settled on making dark chocolate cupcakes with chocolate champagne ganache and marshmallow fondant. I had a lot of fun putting these guys together, and I was really happy with how they turned out. Little know fact, I have very high expectations for the things I make, and if they don't come out to look exactly like the picture in my head, I'm not happy with them even if everyone else loves them. So I was really pleased with these particular cupcakes and I hope the following pictures can do them justice.

I tried a new technique this time around... putting a filling in the middle. It's very simple and makes a nice impact when you bite into the cupcake. Take a round cutter and simply cut a circle out of the top of the cupcake.

Fill the hole with what ever filling you choose to, in this case it was chocolate champagne ganache. For those of you that have never heard of ganache before, it is type of icing, a filling for pastries and a glaze. It can also be used to make truffles. All in all, ganache is just wonderful stuff. And it's super easy to make. The basic recipes consists of two ingredients, chopped chocolate and heavy cream. Just take 3 parts chocolate to 1 part heavy cream. Heat your heavy cream in a saucepan, remove from heat and add chopped chocolate. Stir until all the chocolate is melted. There you go, you have ganache.

Now, back to the cupcakes...replace the circle that you cut out of the top of the cupcake.

Frost the cupcake with more ganache, making it as smooth as possible.

Cut out circles of marshmallow fondant to cover the tops of the cupcakes. With you hand, stretch out the circles a little. Place on top of the cupcake and use your palm to smooth out any pleats.

Then decorate how ever you wish.

Initially when my friend sent out the invitation , she hinted for me to bring dessert. They only problem is she asked for desert, which I in turned asked if she would like the Sahara or the Gobi. So for fun, I made her a special batch of dirt dessert, but instead of Oreos, I used vanilla wafers, thus making it look like sand.