Sunday, September 12, 2010

French Vanilla & Chocolate Marble Cupcakes

I don't want every cupcake I make to be from a recipe I found via Google because I feel that is the easy way out, but that doesn't mean that most of them won't be. ;)
This cupcake was an experimental, mix a few different recipes together to create the cupcake you want, kind of cupcake. My husband, Brad, wanted a French Vanilla Marble cupcake, which I thought sounded delectable! Naturally, I couldn't find a recipe for such a cupcake, so I had to get creative. I did a Google search for French Vanilla Cupcakes and another search for Marble Cupcakes. I combined the two of them to create my desired flavor. This was the recipe I used:

French Vanilla & Chocolate Marble Cupcakes:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups of sugar or vanilla sugar
1 large egg, room temperature
2 egg yolks, room temperature
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup of cream
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean
1/3 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/4 cup boiling water

Preheat your oven to 350. Beat butter on high until soft for 30 seconds. Add sugar. Beat on medium-high until light and fluffy. Add eggs and egg yolks one at a time, beat for 30 seconds between each. Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda, in a bowl. Measure out milk and vanilla extract in another glass. Cut open the vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds and add them to the milk. Mix in the flour mixture then the milk mixture, alternating between the two and ending with the flour. Mix thoroughly.
To make chocolate batter, measure out 1 cup batter, and transfer to another bowl. Combine cocoa and the boiling water in a bowl. Stir into reserved 1 cup batter.
Fill prepared cups with alternating spoonfuls of vanilla and chocolate batter, filling each three-quarters full. Run the tip of a paring knife or wooden skewer through batter in a figure-eight motion to make swirls. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until tops are golden and a cake tester (i.e. toothpick) inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

I had to do some searching for the Vanilla Sugar and Vanilla Beans, but I found them at a store called Penzey's, thanks to my friend Alyson who told me to go there. (I, then, fell deeply in love with Penzey's and I could easily spend my entire paycheck buying tons of spices from there. Swoon.)
Now, let me take this time to mention that I do not have a picture of these cupcakes because they did not come out exactly how I wanted. To be honest, I was really disappointed in how they came out. I blame this completely on my lack of actual baking skills and not the recipe itself, because the taste was perfect. The French Vanilla (which I learned isn't even really a flavor per-say, but it is the heavy use of vanilla in a recipe. Hence, the vanilla sugar and vanilla bean.) was very vanilla-y and had the perfect amount of sweetness to it. And the Chocolate was a great compliment to the French Vanilla. The problem was the consistency; the texture was much more like cornbread and not cupcake. So this will be a recipe that I will have to try again to get the consistency right, and I will definitely do an update. If you give this a try, let me know how they come out. :)
As for the frosting, I just used some leftover Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting to top them, since I had so much of it.

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