Shadow Cupcakes

There's more than one way to celebrate a birthday.

So long as it includes cake, of course. You can have layer cake, sheet cake, angel food cake, chiffon cake, cheesecake, coffee cake... or cupcakes... and really, even if you don't like cake, you probably like cupcakes. Who doesn't?

My mom always wants the same kind of cake for her birthday: what she calls "shadow cake," which is chocolate cake covered in vanilla buttercream and drizzled with dark chocolate ganache. She likes it made with Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake mix. Hahahaha. No.

Unfortunately, I have yet to master the art of devil's food cake from scratch that is a) dark, b) rich, c) moist, and d) fluffy (aka not dense). And since I don't use cake flour, the going is even tougher. But I make wonderful chocolate cupcakes, that are proven popular to her palate, so this year, I did that instead. And they're vegan, to boot (which nobody seems to care about, since rarely do I feed them to vegan people). Complete credit for just about everything I used goes to Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero for the masterpiece Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. That is a book worth getting for anybody that makes cupcakes, vegan or not.


SHADOW CUPCAKES

"Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
"Fluffy Vegan Buttercream Frosting" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, only I used butter instead of margarine and cream instead of soymilk, and cut the recipe in half (nobody was vegan, and we already had butter, so why not? it's less processed anyway)
"Quick Melty Ganache" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

1. I can't tell you exactly how to make these cupcakes. But I'll sort of walk you through the basic steps, if for no other reason than to show you that it's easy. You really should get the book.

Anyway, like many a baked good, you start by preheating your oven and preparing your pans. In this case, line a muffin pan with cupcake papers. A word to the wise: even the neatest, brightest-patterened papers will be lost to chocolate cupcakes. You just won't be able to see them. Foil liners work well, or plain liners. I used these nice parchment ones.

2. Then you want to curdle your milk/soymilk with some vinegar for a few minutes. After 10 minutes or so, put it in a medium bowl with some oil, sugar, and vanilla.



3. Get ready your dry ingredients. Flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. You can sift it all together, and then whisk it up. Or, what may be better (but I haven't tried) is to whisk it up first and then sift it together. This part I like, because it looks like cake mix. Heehee. It kind of is, too.



4. Take the wet ingredients and beat them up good with a whisk. It should get good and foamy.



In two batches, add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients. In the first addition, stir gently to mostly incorporate it. When you add the rest, you can whisk it nicely until it just looks like batter. Not super lumpy batter, but don't beat it to death, either. 10 seconds of whisking heartily should do it. There should be no dry pockets.



5. Put it in your liners, which should be ready, if you've done the thing properly. It works awfully well to have an ice cream scoop with a release mechanism on it, so you can portion out roughly 3 tbsp of batter per cup. But if you don't, gently pouring it or using a small ladle should work fine. If you get some on the pan, just get it with your finger and have a taste. Try and clean messes off the pan before you bake, especially ones between the pan and a liner, because it will be very tough to get the cupcake out intact if there's stray, unbound cupcake between the liner and the pan. It acts as a nice adhesive.



The top of the batter should be a little ways from the top of the liner. Try and get them relatively even.

6. Pop in the oven and bake for a reasonable amount of time. Take them out when they're done (do the toothpick test on the largest one. This is where having a good oven comes in handy. Cheap, old, and no-good ovens like to see-saw their temperatures around when you're baking, causing the cupcakes to become confused and fall either in the oven or just after you've taken them out. Fortunately, cupcakes with chocolate seem less prone to this problem, and my mother has a good oven.



It's ok if they're a little domed, but they shouldn't be all muffiny on top, lest some schmuck calls them "muffins." If someone calls your cupcakes "muffins," do not give them one.

7. Cool the cupcakes in the pan on a wire rack 10 minutes, and then on a wire rack naked but for their papers until they're room temperature.

Taking them out of the pan can be tricky if you're a novice. I start by gently turning them with my fingers. If they turn easily, they are not stuck and will be easy to remove. If they don't, then I gently pull the sides away (again, with my fingers, or a knife if you're brave) until they can turn. Keyword: gently. And then, deftly grab the sides of the top with your fingers, pull it straight out and pop it right into your palm (the less time you spend holding the top and not the rest of it, the less likely the top is to come right off). Put it straight down on the rack (liner side down). Be careful with metal liners, they're hot. And the whole thing may take some practice; I certainly got a lot of practice picking up hot, just fried donuts and dunking them in toppings when I was a baker at Mighty O Donuts. The worst thing ever is to pull off the top and leave huge, awful fingerprints in the sides. Do not do this.

8. After (and only after) the cupcakes are cool, make the buttercream. I almost always use the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes when I make buttercream, which is equal parts of shortening and non-hydrogenated margarine (I used non-hydrogenated shortening and butter, in this case, because I had some), beaten together with sifted powdered sugar added, with a little bit of soymilk (I used cream, as it gives it just a little lightness, when you beat, it that I like). You beat it a few minutes until it's fluffy but not lumpy (if you beat it too long, it gets lumpy). And then, if you have a pastry bag and a neat fat spiky tip, load it up :)



9. Pipe a swirl on each cake. I start at the center, straight out to the outside, in a circle coming around back to the center again. But you can do it however you want. Or just spread it on, which tastes just as good but doesn't look as fancy.



When you're done, they'll all look kind of the same. This part actually only takes about 30 seconds (for all the cupcakes put together).



10. Make your "shadow" part using dark chocolate and cream. Heat up the cream first, and take it off the heat when it's steaming and stir in chocolate. Keep stirring until the chocolate is melted. You may then put it in a baggie with the teeniest bit cut off the corner. You can also use another pastry bag with a small tip. It's a bit too thick to drizzle with a spoon, and if you try it might just land in large glops and destroy your nice piping work.

Depending on how fast you are making cupcakes, it shouldn't take you too long. Maybe 2 hours start to finish. They actually cool quite fast, provided their wire rack is not sitting atop the oven the whole time.

And watch out for cats. They'll eat your work. They'll eat it right out of the pan; right off the rack. My suggestion is to put it in a cabinet to cool, or atop the refrigerator if your cats are old and relatively infirm and/or incapable of jumping up there. Unless you want to watch it cool, which is an option as well, but no promises that your cats won't eat your work while you're looking at it, too.