Small Talk

White Chocolate Cupcakes with Cranberry Filling & White Chocolate Ganache Frosting

Long overdue, that describes this post so very aptly. In fact, this post was supposed to be on last year. Well, at least in terms of lunar years.

I baked these cupcakes for my friend's order and they turned out beautiful! Alright, they weren't the perfect cupcakes but for the amateur baker in me, the results were more than satisfactory. In fact, i would say they were quite a success. This batch of cupcakes turned out fluffier and lighter than previous batches, probably because i folded in the flour manually instead of using the electric mixer.

For their white counterparts I adapted a basic vanilla cupcake recipe and turned it into a white chocolate cupcake by adding white chocolate, both melted and in chunks, into the batter. I don't know if the addition of chunks of chocolate managed to up the white chocolate factor but the white chocolate did creep up slightly from behind all the buttery goodness. I confess, I'm not an advocate of white chocolate. You see, I'm a bitter chocolate fan - the higher the cocoa content the better - and, well, white chocolate? Let's just say it doesn't have what it takes to be really considered a chocolate. They lack character: not much of a unique identity in terms of the tongue test and most commercially available white chocolate that I've gotten my hands on end up tasting like a solid of overly sweetened milk. I am, however, fortunate enough to find a not-so-sweet white chocolate for baking in the store from which I get most of my baking supplies. Because I used a white chocolate ganache as the frosting, I opted for a cranberry jam filling for these babies to balance the tacky sweetness of all that was white chocolate with a bit of tang.

The end result? Do I really have to tell you?

Breakfast for you?