Last month, some friends hosted a cook-off. That night I became wildly impressed by the culinary abilities of the people in my department! Anyway, my contribution was a dessert (what else?)--it was early March then, so I may have been jumping the gun a bit, but I was eager to welcome spring. That inspired the butterfly cupcake project! I knew I wanted to try the Swiss Meringue Buttercream again, but I was feeling pretty indecisive about the cake, so I ended up with some Devil's food, some yellow, and a handful of marble cupcakes.
This was an interesting experiment for me--the Devil's food and yellow cake recipes were from two different sources, but were almost identical in terms of ingredients and process, so I assumed they'd be fairly similar with respect to texture. Wrong. They were about as different as possible. Both tasted good, but the Devil's food had a beautiful crumb, and the yellow... less so. I'll probably try it again (perhaps when I'm not making two batters in tandem?), but for now we'll stick with the chocolate.
Devil's Food Cupcakes
-1 1/2 c. cake flour
-1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
-1 t. baking soda
-1 t. baking powder
-1 t. salt
-3/4 c. Dutch-process cocoa powder
-3/4 c. hot water
-1 1/2 c. unsalted butter
-2 1/4 c. sugar
-4 eggs
-1 T. vanilla extract
-1 c. sour cream
1. Whisk together flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Combine hot water and cocoa powder and whisk until smooth.
2. Melt butter and sugar in a saucepan, stirring. Remove from heat, pour into a mixing bowl, and beat for 4-5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and cocoa mixture.
3. Alternate additions of flour mixture and sour cream; beat just until combined.
4. Divide into lined cups. Bake for 20 minutes at 350* F, rotating tins halfway through.
Hard to tell in this photo, but the Devil's food baked really beautifully--see how nicely they domed? And the yellow cakes were kind of flat.
Buttercream. A weakness of mine.
Some chocolate and candy butterflies (which took shockingly long to make--I wanted to document the process, but that would have required about 18 more hands). Also, I was going for more of a yellow frosting color; something weird happened there, but I think it still worked.
Happy spring!
