Tonight, to kick things off, for my first post I decided to try my luck at making Mint Chocolate cupcakes. I love mint and chocolate isn't so bad either so I'm hoping I can't go too wrong here. I guess I should start from the beginning and let everyone know/warn you, that I am not the best baker. Some of you may remember my infamous "valentine's day pancake cupcakes" or the dry attempt at the "peanut butter filled cupcakes" from Martha's Cupcakes that I tried to make for Sarah's going away party. (By the way-Thanks for humoring me guys, I noticed most of them were gone despite their lack of deliciousness). So what I want to get out of participating in this blog is really a reason to force myself to bake more and hopefully, with practice, get better.
This brings us to the task at hand and now, with my new Kitchen Aid mixer (I think I'll call him Big Blue) fired up and ready to go, I started by measuring everything out into dishes. I did this for a few reasons. First, like Sarah, I also like to pretend I'm in a cooking show when I try to follow recipes that aren't printed on the back of a box. And second, in the past, many of my baking woes were caused by the wrong measurement of ingredients (See "valentine's day pancake cupcakes").
So with the ingredients laid out I took our trusty recipe book and started throwing contents into Big Blue. Quickly, I realized that I need to add the special Kitchen Aid Pouring attachment cover thing to my christmas list because as Big Blue churned away, a clous of sweet cocoa powder and flour started to waft around my counter. Not entirely a bad thing but a paing in the neck to clean, so in the future, we'll try to avoid that.
This recipe was really easy despite the heck of a time I had trying to find Dutch process cocoa powder. (By the way, I went with the half and half stuff Hershey's makes that I found after going to 6 different stores-count 'em-6).
So despite my less-than cocoa ingredient, everything seemed to be going accordingly. once Blue was done his thing, I had a slight moment of panic....was the mixture supposed to be so soupy? Did I mess up on the measurements somehow?? AGAIN?!? Alas, I reminded myself of the laborious pre-measuring I had done in order to avoid this and so put my second guessing aside.
I dutifully poured the batter into the paper cups and slid the pan into the preheated oven. So far so good asides for a little burn on my thumb. (Note to self, even when sliding in a cool pan, where oven mits because those rackes are wicked hot). One halfway turn of the pan, 20 minutes passed, and voila! Do I dare say we have success? Only time will tell. Well, really the taste testers at Clark can give me their rating tomorrow but for now I'm going to sit back and enjoy the minty chocolate smell wafting around the house.
-->Editor's note here: You might as well all know now that I'm kind of terrified of the homemade frosting recipes in the back of this book. They intimidate me to no end and for now logical reason so today I decided to use store bought frosting and add some peppermint oil to it myself - a technique we use often in my house. So don't be fooled, the frosting goodness you see here and some of you will taste tomorrow was not at all made by me. Also, instead of trying my hand at making chocolate mint leaves, I decided to crush up yummy soft peppermint candies to use as a topping because well, I'm not that patient and probably not that creative.
Until next time!
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