Yes We Can(dy) Cupcakes!

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No matter who your candidate is, you are bound to disagree with them on one issue or another. One of the biggest discrepancies I have with my candidate, Barack Obama, is that he doesn’t really like sweets. I’ve read that he likes pumpkin pie enough, but he is not much of a dessert guy. I’m not sure how a person can not like sweets. I am also not sure why someone who doesn’t like sweets all that much chose to mention pie so many times, but I digress.

Normally, I wouldn’t put my political thoughts on my food blog. But, I’ve also never felt compelled to bake something in honor of a great candidate. It’s really exciting to vote for someone because you want to vote for him–not simply because he’s not “the other guy.” Not that I don’t have plenty of things against “the other guy;” one of the biggest being that his first major decision as potential President was choosing a VP candidate who is a real…I’ll just stop there. This blog post doesn’t need to take a turn into a running list of negative adjectives. 😉

Anyhow, I decided to make some Yes We Can(dy) Mini Cupcakes, based on two kinds of candy/candy bars–Almond Joys and Whoppers. I had an almond joy bread from Peabody bookmarked for an eternity and then conveniently, she made Whopper cupcakes not too long ago, so I was set.

The almond joy cupcakes came together very easily. The frosting is maybe my new favorite frosting. Easy peasy. And so delicious! Mmm. Anything with coconut has my vote. So I moved onto the Whopper cupcakes. These spread a ton and didn’t rise a lot when I baked them. I knew I probably overfilled them, but I didn’t think that could be the only problem, and I was right. When I was transcribing the recipe, I put “2 tsp. baking soda” instead of “2 tsp. baking powder.” Doh! So these basically turned into one giant mass of chocolate cupcakedom. They still tasted good and the cake was still very moist, but they did not look very pretty. Which meant I needed to cut them into something resembling a cupcake before photographing them. That can be our little secret.

I had also planned on making these early so that for once I could use natural light to take photos. But, that didn’t happen either. Hey, you win some, you lose some. I’ll take the cupcake loss if I can be sure McCain will take the POTUS loss. 🙂

Because I want to be sure you see some pretty pictures, I will just go ahead and link Peabody’s blog rather than retyping the recipe.

I made the whopper cupcakes as-is, except for that pesky baking soda/powder transcription error. 😛

For the almond joy cupcakes, I made the recipe as-is, except I substituted plain yogurt for the buttermilk (since that’s what I had in my fridge) and doubled the coconut extract in the cake since I didn’t make the glaze. I topped them with creamy milk chocolate frosting from Cook’s Illustrated and some flaked coconut.

Creamy Milk Chocolate Frosting

1/2 cup heavy cream
pinch table salt
1 tablespoon light corn syrup (or dark)
10 ounces milk chocolate , chopped
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), cold, cut into 8 pieces

Instructions

  1. Heat cream, salt, and corn syrup in microwave-safe measuring cup on high until simmering, about 1 minute, or bring to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Place chocolate in workbowl of food processor fitted with steel blade. With machine running, gradually add hot cream mixture through feed tube; process 1 minute after cream has been added. Stop machine; add confectioners´ sugar to workbowl and process to combine, about 30 seconds. With machine running, add butter through feed tube one piece at a time; process until incorporated and smooth, about 20 seconds longer. Transfer frosting to medium bowl and cool at room temperature, stirring frequently, until thick and spreadable, about 1 hour.

Yes We Can(dy) Cupcakes!

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