Girl Scout Cookie Cupcakes

I love Girl Scout Cookies. I stalk the usual bank and grocery storefront locations this time of the year, impatiently awaiting their return. I am a sucker for anything peanut butter chocolate and would pay substantially more than $4/box for the Peanut Butter Patties. If I had to make a list of 3 things I wanted if stranded on a desert island, a box of Peanut Butter Patties would make the list, hands down. We make so many candy or cookie related cupcakes at the bakery daily that it seemed imperative for us to create cupcakes using Girl Scout Cookies.

We used Thin Mints, Peanut Butter Patties, and Caramel Delights today, and used our chocolate cupcake base for all three flavors. 

 

Best Ever Chocolate Cupcake:

1 cup hot coffee

½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

2 ½ cups flour

2 ½ cups sugar

1 ½ cups unsweetened cocoa powder

¾ tsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 ½ tsp salt

4 eggs

¾ cups vegetable oil

1 ½ cups buttermilk (full fat, shaken)

2 tsp vanilla

These pictures were taken in the bakery while making a large batch of chocolate batter. Please note that the proportions you see in the pictures do not match those of the recipe.

Melt chocolate chips in hot coffee.

Meanwhile, whisk flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

Beat eggs until slightly thick and lemon colored (about 3 minutes).

Add coffee/chocolate mix and vanilla to the eggs and beat.

Alternately add dry ingredients, oil, and buttermilk to the egg mixture and mix until well combined. The batter should have a medium consistency.

 

Put Girl Scout Cookies into a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to create crumbs.

Add enough melted butter to moisten the cookie crumbs then tamp into cupcake liners.

Scoop batter into cupcake lines (about ¾ full).

Bake at 300 degrees until they spring back when touched (about 15 minutes in a convection oven).

 

Top with buttercream (see recipe below). Coarsely chop several Girl Scout cookies to sprinkle on top of the buttercream, then drizzle with chocolate ganache (see recipe below).

Vanilla Buttercream

 1 pound butter (room temp)

2 tsp salt

4 tsp lemon juice

4 tsp vanilla

8-12 cups powdered sugar

8-12 Tbs heavy cream

Cream butter and salt then add lemon juice and vanilla. Alternately add powdered sugar and heavy cream until desired consistency is reached. The buttercream can be flavored with caramel, peanut butter, or chocolate ganache after all ingredients are mixed. For mint buttercream, simmer fresh mint leaves in the heavy cream. Allow to cool, then add the heavy mint cream according to recipe directions (omitting vanilla).

Chocolate Ganache

 2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup of heavy cream

Add all ingredients to a microwaveable proof dish and heat on high for 30 seconds. Stir and repeat until smooth (about 2 minutes total).

Life is Good!

Making Fondant

Making Fondant

So, I learned to cover a cake with fondant by watching Cake Boss. Yes, that is right. No culinary school. No Wilton Fondant course (I did take the beginning one and I was not impressed). I tell my children all the time that they will rot their brain by watching too much TV, but perhaps I am being a little harsh. In the winter of 2010, I was a religious watcher of Cake Boss, Cupcake Wars, and The Baby Story (I was 8 months pregnant). We had not bought the bakery, although I was deep in the over analyzing phase of “I want to own my own business and not teach school”. I was also planning the owl themed baby shower of my good friend, Amber. “It can’t be that hard to make fondant” I thought one day as I was watching Cake Boss. So I searched until I found a recipe that I had all the ingredients for in my kitchen and headed to work. It seemed so daunting that I wrote down two pages of directions to accompany the recipe. It is the recipe we still use at the bakery and it really isn’t difficult, although weather will affect the quality of the fondant:

Marshmallow Fondant

One 2lb bag of powdered sugar

One big bag of marshmallows

2-5 Tbs water

*crisco

*optional: 1-2 teaspoons of extract

First cover all bowls and utensils with Crisco. You will be happy that you did. Melt the marshmallows and water in the microwave at 30 second intervals, stirring each time it beeps, for 2 minutes or until the marshmallows are melted. Dump the marshmallows into your mixer with the extract, if desired. Using the greased dough attachment add about ¼ of the bag of powdered sugar and mix until combined. You can color the fondant either while you are adding the powdered sugar or while you are kneading the finished fondant. Slowly add the rest of the powdered sugar until as much is combined as the mixer can possibly handle. It will be strained. Turn out onto the counter and knead in about a teaspoon of Crisco until smooth. Put powdered sugar on the counter if the fondant is sticking. This is really the only tricky part, as the amount of Crisco and powdered sugar will depend on humidity and temperature. The fondant should not be sticky, it should feel like firm play dough and have some stretch. Wrap it in plastic wrap until ready to use. It will keep well wrapped in the plastic (you may want to double bag it) for a month. If it seems too difficult to roll out, it can go in the microwave for a few seconds until it is soft (don’t over do it). Use powdered sugar on the counter when you roll the fondant. If you have a plastic rolling pin, it will work better than wood. This fondant won’t dry quite as stiff as store fondant, but it tastes WAY better!  

I hadn't decided to try this fondant cake until about three days before the shower. Don't get me wrong, I had never intended to buy a baby shower cake, that just isn't my style. I have been a "do-it-yourself" kind of girl since way before Pinterest made it cool. I am the person who crochets, sews, paints and reads the farmers almanac like a 90 year old woman as opposed to the 30 something that I am. And don't even get me started on how my choice of music has never fit into the norm (when Kelly Osborn came out with Papa Don't Preach, I though it was an original). Believe me, it isn't cool when you grow up in a small Appalachian town and beg to take private art lessons but the only teacher is one who talks to her collection of baby dolls. For whatever ingrained reason, I insist on making things on my own. So, I made baby Caroline her first fondant cake.

Baby Shower

 It took forever. I thought it was because I didn't know what I was doing, but it still takes me a long time to make a fondant cake. I didn’t have cookie cutters for the owl and tree pieces so I free handed them with a knife and I had put the fondant in the fridge the night before I rolled it out (absolutely not necessary) and then spent hours the following day just trying to roll it out since it was so cold. If you zoom in too close you can see all kinds of problems. Flaws or not, I enjoyed the process and the product. It made people smile. You get to know a person when you make them a fondant cake. Their likes, their style....This is the cake that made me want to open a bakery.

 Here are Caroline’s first and second birthday cakes so you want to see the progression of skills one can have over a few years of continuous practice (and diligent TV watching).

1st Birthday

2nd Birthday

 

What I learn from each fondant cake I design (and I have made a lot) is that I have more to learn. The actual process of covering a cake with fondant can be a bit tricky. I will post pictures of the process in a future post, but the only way to really understand how to cover a cake is to give it a try.