Cupcakes for my Birthday

I love my birthday.  And I kind of think everyone else should too.  I’m a little surprised I don’t wake up to heralding angels blowing their trumpets so all the world knows its time to celebrate.  At the very least Congress could act to make the day a national holiday.  Maybe next year.

My husband, who would prefer to let his own birthday slip by unheralded and once chastised me severely for having the audacity to wish him a happy birthday on Facebook (the horrors, how could I be so thoughtless!), knows how much I love my birthday and tries to make the day special.

He is not particularly handy in the kitchen, however.  Making a cake mix and opening a tub of pre-made frosting taxes his culinary skills.  (I was hospitalized for several days once, and one of the children asked him with all sincerity, “Daddy, are we going to starve to death?”  Thank goodness the church ladies stepped in, disaster averted).  I am sure when the children learned to cook it took a great weight off his shoulders.  They have taken over making my birthday cake for him in the past couple of years.  Results have been mixed:

That’s the world’s flattest angel food cake.  When its made with that much love it tastes delicious no matter what.

 

This one has Oreos mixed into the frosting.  And doesn’t that bright yellow message just scream “Festive!”?

My daughter came to me in her pajamas late on the eve of my birthday saying she had almost forgotten to make my cake, and oh by the way she wasn’t feeling well.  It took some time, but I was finally able to convince her that since I love to bake, I had a specific cupcake recipe I wanted to try, and if she was really getting sick I didn’t want her near my cake, it would be okay if this year I made my own birthday cake.

The recipe I had my eye on was this rich looking chocolate cupcake with fluffy strawberry marshmallow frosting dipped in a decadent chocolate coating.  The recipe was from Shanna at zsazsabellagio.blogspot.com for Chocolate Covered Strawberry Hi Hat Cupcakes.

http://zsazsabellagio.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2014-02-09T18:36:00-08:00&max-results=5&start=2&by-date=false

This is her photo.  Don’t those cupcakes look amazing!

Of course, I’m the queen of the shortcut, and I don’t need gluten free cupcakes. I whipped up a batch of chocolate cupcakes just like it said on the box (or pretty close–I don’t always measure).

Then I started in on the strawberry marshmallow frosting.  I don’t own a double boiler, so I improvised with the bowl from my stand mixer nested neatly onto a medium sauce pan.  I had to dig my portable mixer out of the deep recesses of my kitchen storage.  (The hand held mixer was a gift from my husband when I blew up my second stand mixer in as many years and I was in the middle of a batch of divinity fudge.  He can be so thoughtful sometimes.)  I put the whip on it and started frothing those egg whites.

 

Seven minutes is a long time to hold a mixer over the steamy heat, especially when you usually use a stand mixer.  And I most definitely didn’t have stiff peaks at the end of my seven minutes.  Perhaps because I never turned my speed up past 2.  I probably would have realized this sooner if I hadn’t been playing Candy Crush on my phone while I was beating that frosting.  But hey, seven minutes is a long time to sit there and watch egg whites.

After the egg white mixture finally firmed up, I whipped in the strawberry jam and beat it some more.

Add the strawberry jam a little at a time.

But apparently not enough.

Actually, I had a couple of fails at this point.  I tried to use a ruffly tip to pipe the frosting onto the cupcake.  The miniscule pieces of strawberry in the jam promptly plugged two of the slots and frosting that did squirt out looked sickly.  Fortunately, since it wasn’t stiff enough, the anemic ruffles morphed back into one blob of frosting.  I changed to a plain large round frosting tip.

Then I melted my chocolate chips and coconut oil.  I’m trying to find a better way to melt and dip chocolate.  I hate the mess, I hate wasting chocolate, I hate cleaning out whatever container I use to melt it in.  So I tried lining a custard cup with a coffee filter.  It would have been a great way to demonstrate capillary action to my kids because the coconut oil wicked up the sides of that coffee filter.  Over all the coffee filter worked pretty well though–it certainly helped with clean up, and I will continue to experiment with it.

So I gripped my cupcake, inverted it and dipped it into the luscious molten chocolate.  Did you notice the beautiful Dairy Queen-like curlicue adorning the top of Shanna’s inspirational cupcake?  I was hoping by the end of batch of cupcakes to master that as well.

I lifted the cupcake from its chocolate bath, and all of the marshmallow frosting stayed behind.

Deep breath, don’t panic.  I grabbed a spoon and plopped the molten mess onto the top of the naked cupcake.  Then I, ahem, destroyed the evidence of that horrible flop, while I contemplated what went wrong.  I always think better with a little food in my tummy.

So I squirted and scraped all that frosting back into the mixing bowl.  I whipped that frosting (using the top speed on my mixer right from the start this time) until it was stiff and much more workable.  And when I dipped them this time, the frosting stayed put.

But I never did manage the curlicue on top.

Strawberry Marshmallow Frosting

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

4 tsp powdered egg whites

1/4 t cream of tartar

1/4 cup strawberry jam (or to taste)

Combine the sugar, water, egg white powder and cream of tartar in the top of a double boiler.  Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until all ingredients are incorporated.  Place over boiling water and cook, beating constantly on high speed till frosting forms stiff peaks, about 7 minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in strawberry jam, beating several minutes more until frosting is thick and spreadable.