A friend had a birthday celebration this weekend, and when I asked him what kind of cupcakes he wanted, he mentioned the caramel macchiato cupcakes I made a few months ago. I wanted to keep this cupcake in the same theme, but I didn't really want to repeat myself, so I came up with this raspberry white chocolate mocha cupcake. It's a coffee cupcake with raspberry pastry cream filling, whipped white chocolate ganache frosting, topped with a bittersweet chocolate drizzle and a chocolate covered coffee bean.
It's definitely an intense and time consuming cupcake, but he's a good friend, and another friend visiting from New York said it was better than anything he'd ever had at Magnolia Bakery, so ultimately it was worth it.
I started with Chokylit's coffee cupcakes with a few small variations. I do still want a more intense coffee flavor, so I should have taken my own advice from last time and added some espresso powder. Next time for sure.
Next I made a standard pastry cream and added fresh raspberries. Delicious, but I made way too much. I've got a ton left over in the fridge that I'll have to find some use for. I would also like the raspberry flavor to be a bit more intense, so next time I'll probably do a few things differently. I'll increase the raspberries and decrease the pastry cream, and I'll probably add some sort of raspberry syrup or framboise to up the flavor a bit. All in all it turned out great, but the white chocolate was definitely the dominant flavor.
Last up was the white chocolate ganache. It's a simple mixture with good quality white chocolate and cream, simply melted together, cooled and then whipped until fluffy. I will caution you, though, this is not a warm weather cupcake. Portland was on the warm side yesterday, and this frosting was not forgiving. I ended up loading the cooler and a bag of ice in the car just to transport these to the party.
I felt like these might be just a little bit too sweet, so at the last minute I decided to melt some bittersweet chocolate and drizzle it over the top. It turned out to be a nice touch, and the balance between the white and dark chocolate was just right.
Oh my god white chocolate is my favorite thing ever. These look amazing.
Posted by: Rebecca | July 30, 2008 at 08:55 AM
Rachel! It's your cousin Crystal's best friend Kelly! Write me- I need you for something.
Posted by: Kelly from Almost Frugal | August 05, 2008 at 01:15 PM