I couldn't handle the seeming failure of last weeks cupcake test, even though they were gone in no time flat. So this week, I redid my White Chocolate cupcakes with White Chocolate Buttercream Icing. There's no link, as this was off the top of my head. The cupcakes were simple - a French Vanilla box mix, with some of the white "chocolate" ground in my food processor mixed in -about 6 ounces. (This is the block of stuff that I request from Mom each Christmas!) Then, because I couldn't leave well enough alone, I dolloped a bit of jam in pre-baking. I wanted to do lemon, but got talked out of that, and I still think it could really work. Instead I did a half dozen each of cherry, blueberry, and peach and left a half dozen "plain".
Notes the first: The cupcakes were sticky in the trays and didn't want to let loose when it was time to remove them. They also didn't rise very much. The jam and any larger chunks of chocolate simply sank to the bottom of the cupcake. The white chocolate chunklettes actually got a little brown in the bottom of the cups. If I were to do these, yet again, I would skip adding the chocolate and jam to the cake batter, and instead do a soft white chocolate ganache to pipe in as a filling. Maybe something like this?
Then came the frosting. I looked online and there a bazillion ways to make a buttercream frosting. Some use eggs, some don't. The ratio of chocolate to butter to sugar varies from recipe to recipe. After looking and figuring, and knowing what I personally like, this is what I came up with:
White Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
8 oz of white chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli), melted in top of a double boiler
1 cup of salted butter, softened
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
4 1/2 cups of confectioners sugar, more or less
Heavy whipping cream, as needed.
Melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler. Once the chips are smooth and creamy, take them off the heat and let them cool for a bit. You don't want it to harden, but if it is too hot it will melt your butter. While you are cooling the chocolate, go ahead and cream the butter in/with your mixer. You want it to be light and fluffy. Then, pour the still warm chocolate into the butter and immediately start the mixer on high. My butter melted just a bit, but once it was whipped up, everything solidified. Add in the vanilla, and then start adding the confectioners sugar, one cup at a time. You may use more or less of the confectioners sugar, depending on how stiff you want the frosting to be. If it gets too stiff, you could whip in some heavy cream, one teaspoon at a time, to loosen it back up again.
Notes the second: I prefer the double boiler to the microwave as you can see what's happening the whole time and there is less chance of burning the chocolate. Also, it's easy to "make" a double boiler if you have a metal bowl larger than one of your pots - just don't let the bottoms touch, or let the bottom of the bowl touch the boiling water. Most recipes use unsalted butter, but I prefer the bit of salt found in salted butter. It's kind of like adding salt to caramel. This frosting piped out of the bag just like a dream. Although I tried to make chocolate curls, all I got was shards. That would need more practice.
Tasting Notes: Me - I was able to try the cherry and blueberry, and as I said above, I'd skip the jam and chocolate and just do a ganache filling instead. The chocolate was not noticeable in the cupcake. The frosting was fabulous. Although still recognizable as a buttercream, it had enough chocolate in it to taste like you would expect a white chocolate buttercream to taste.
Mark - This was wrapper licking good. The white chocolate buttercream made him moan and he has declared it by far his favorite. But he is a huge fan of white chocolate.
Work - These disappeared even faster than the last batch. Even though the delivery dates were Monday and Friday.
An Update: StO and I looked for the ingredients in the Chai Cupcakes linked to earlier and we could not find any Instant Chai. BtB, can you send me the recipe you had when I visited? I still think they sound really tasty.
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