Thursday 30 August 2007

Celebration cupcakes


I just returned from a whirlwind trip back to Asia. All in all I was away from London for less than 6 days but managed to visit both Singapore and Bali. As you can imagine, I'm extremely tired but not too tired to update my blog. I feel guilty for having been less regular with my blog this weekend so I thought tonight I'd make something to celebrate being back.

Actually, I've had my eye on this recipe since first reading about it months ago. Those of you who frequent food blogs will no doubt be familiar with Anita from Dessert First whose blog and photos literally have me salivating at times. Those of you who aren't, I highly recommend checking out her site. In any case, being a big fan of chocolate and hazelnuts, these cupcakes were just the thing to celebrate a homecoming.

As it turns out, perhaps making a 3 part cupcake at 7 pm in the evening was too ambitious given that I only landed at 7 am this morning and had to head straight to work. Part way through the recipe I started to feel the effects of jet lag so I made the decision to skip the hazelnut mousseline filling. I briefly contemplated substituting it with Nutella but decided that a chocolate cupcake with a coffee buttercream would be decadent enough, especially given the inordinate amount of eating that I did back home in Singapore. Since I left out the filling, I topped my cupcakes with some Valrhona chocolate pearls. The crunchiness of the chocolate provided a nice contrast against the velvety smoothness of the buttercream.

Next time, I'll endeavour to be true to the recipe and add in the hazelnut mousseline. For now, I'm off to catch some z's as there's more celebrating to be done tomorrow when yours truly turns another year older.