Chocolate cupcakes v2.0

Chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel filling

Cuspcake rating: 3.5

So, everything you've read about poorly designed muffin pans being a pain in the arse is right. My $20+ muffin pan from Cold Storage (double what I expected to pay in a supermarket) has no "handles", which led to me dropping it and ruining five cupcakes.

I kinda like my souffle cups better.

It also makes it a real pain to turn, or to hold at all with an oven glove on. (Although I'm certain it'd be more of a pain without one). Absolutely annoying.

Tried the chocolate cupcakes from primrose bakery, have to say, was a little disappointed with them right out of the oven. They were very fluffy and the texture is great, seemed perhaps a touch dry (which might be my genius pan, anyway), smell fantastic, but tasted somehow...bland. Decided to make the salted caramel filling to zing them up.

Strangely enough both the cupcakes and caramel taste better the next day. Perhaps I was tired? The cupcakes are chocolatey and the texture is velvety (it settles down a little overnight, i kept them in a box at room temp), like red velvet. I did mix in cake flour, perhaps that makes a difference too.

The caramel that I filled the cupcakes with the night before got half absorbed by the cakes, I suppose because it's meant to be a sauce not a filling. The sauce was rather a pain to make, but I think my mistake also is making all the components of more complicated cupcakes at the same time rather than spacing them out at a more leisurely pace. It took much longer to reach all the stages described than you'd think – from the sugar dissolving to the caramelising to the thickening.

Also, I tried the custard buttercream I made successfully on my birthday morning, but it was runny and ugly because I mixed the butter right into the custard before creaming it with sugar. Heh. At least I've learnt that doesn't work :) It tasted good but looked awful though.

All in all, they seemed a hit at work, I was surprised, until I ate one myself. They taste pretty good, even after they've been fridged, and do keep well for three days out of the fridge as well. Could this be the chocolate cuspcake recipe I've been looking for? Perhaps. Will have to try them in my regular souffle cups to see if the slight dryness can be managed, and with a plainer topping to see if they can hold their own.