Debut of the Mini

Many tasters of my cupcakes requested and suggested that I do mini cupcakes. Give the people what they want, right? The mini cupcakes had their debut at my moms club playgroup meeting - the second combined playgroup-cupcake tasting event last Friday.
I had prepared the components of the mini cupcakes two weeks in advance. On the suggestion of the moms, I did a lemon cupcake and a chocolate raspberry cupcake. I wanted to have more "adult" flavors (containing alcohol) so I did a mocha cupcake with Kahlua syrup and Tiramisu cupcake with marsala syrup. Tiramisu was suggested by my cousin Terry. I think it should be included as one of my core cupcakes; Tiramisu is one of the most popular desserts.
The lemon cupcake was the easiest: lemon cake, cream cheese frosting, a drizzle of lemon curd, clear sugar crystals. Each component I've done before but never put them together. I was very happy with the taste. The lemon cake has a real (not artificial) light lemon flavor. The cream cheese frosting had both tang and sweetness and the lemon curd had a strong lemon taste and sweetess to balance it. I have to say presentation was lacking. My cream cheese frosting is a bit sticky and runny and doesn't allow for clean piping. Next time I will decrease the proportion of cream cheese. The clear sugar crystals gave the cupcake some interesting crunch.
The chocolate cupcake with raspberry frosting was the second easiest. Chocolate and raspberry is a classic combination. I was doing raspberry frosting for the first time. But fairly confident that it would be yummy - I used my strawberry frosting recipe (one of my most popular frostings) and substituted the strawberries for raspberries. It worked beautifully. Then topped it with a fresh raspberry. As expected, this cupcake was a winner too. The flavor of the raspberry frosting and the rich chocolate taste of the cake were equally matched.
The mocha cupcake was originally supposed to be a coffee cupcake. The coffee frosting that I made was unsatisfactory, I think, because I used an inferior instant coffee to flavor it. I had made mocha frosting a few months ago and I remember it being pretty good, so opted to do mocha instead. It's made up of chocolate, heavy cream and espresso powder. With so few ingredients, I had to make them count. I already had a reliable dark chocolate which I use all the time. Heavy cream - there is not much variation there in terms of taste. It seemed I've looked every where for espresso powder - Safeway, Whole Foods, Starbucks. Then when I went to get the raspberries for the chocolate raspberry cupcakes at another local Whole Foods-type market, I found the espresso powder and it was the brand that my chef instructor had recommended.

Chocolate is a pretty strong flavor which might overpower the coffee flavor, so I decided to brush some Kahlua simple syrup on the cupcakes before frosting them. The final product was very chocolatey, but can't say I tasted any coffee flavor. I've heard that coffee accentuates/complements chocolate nicely. Perhaps more espresso powder in the frosting next time. I also added a little Dutch-processed cocoa, intended to give the frosting a darker color, but didn't seem to have that effect. Next time, no cocoa which may further allow the coffee flavor to come through.
The tiramisu cupcake was to be my exciting new flavor. I found a recipe online for marscapone frosting which contains marscapone, heavy cream, marsala, powdered sugar. Marscapone AND heavy cream TOGETHER?!! It cannot go wrong! And it didn't. This frosting was yummy straight out of the gate - no adjustments. I brushed the cupcakes with some marsala simple syrup, piped a swirl of marscapone frosting and sprinkled with chocolate shavings. The frosting is what made it.

The previous night assembly of the cupcakes took 4 hours. I was able to fit two trays of cupcakes in 9" X 13" box. I carefully engineered the top tray by using Laura's empty plastic Gerber containers as stands. I had at least 2 dozen of each flavor - anticipating that there would be about 10 moms at the playgroup - each getting 2 minis per flavor. By the way, about 4-5 mini cupcakes equals one standard size cupcake.
Unfortunately, many babies were sick and couldn't make the playgroup. In total, 4 moms showed up INCLUDING me. They were impressed and loved them and the fact they were minis. Tiramisu and Mocha were the favorites.

Since not many moms showed up, I had a lot of cupcakes left over. After the playgroup, disappointed that there wasn't a larger turnout, I immediately call Alec telling him that I'm sending over cupcakes. That day, his company had a beer bash and before everyone arrived, he very neatly and orderly laid out my cupcakes on the dessert table. The cupcakes won out over the store bought birthday cake that lay next to them - one lady had to personally serve the cake in order to get rid of it. My favorite comment was from Alec's coworker, Carlo who said about the mocha cupcake, "This is what I would change about it...nothing." Now, I can say it was worth all the work.