*barbiekins: devil’s food cupcakes with a failed frosting.

Ever since I read Ree’s post on Devil Dogs, I knew I had to do a replica of my own. It looked easy, except that I didn’t have a cookie cutter like she did, and I hated cutting cakes and brownies cos I just couldn’t get it right. The frosting looked pretty easy, too, especially with the tag “The Best Frosting I’ve Ever Had,” I knew I just had to give it a go.

So, since I suck at cutting cakes and brownies, I had to come up with something… Until I read one comment from NanaBread --

According to Wikipedia:
Devil Dogs are an un-frosted devil’s food cake sandwich with vanilla creme with round edged cake wafers resembling a hot dog created by Drake’s Cakes.

Devil Dog = hot dog shaped devil’s food snack cake w/cream filling

So that was it!

I thought of creating a devil’s food cupcake with cream filling instead. I got the cupcake recipe from David Lebovitz’s site, and I adapted “The Best Frosting I’ve Ever Had.”

Making the cupcake batter was a breeze, but I couldn’t say the same for the filling. To cut the story short, yeah, my filling was a major fail. :( It just didn’t look the same as the one on Ree’s site. Oh well.

It doesn’t look appealing, does it?

It’s a sin to throw the cupcakes away, so I came up with another bright idea: use an entirely different filling. That’s how the caramel glaze came into the picture.

Still doesn’t look very appealing, but WTH, it tastes good anyway.

Here goes the recipe. You might want to try it.. If it turns out well for you, I applaud you. ;)

Devil’s Food Cake
Adapted from David Lebovitz
5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1/4 cup strong coffee (or water)
1/4 cup whole milk

Adjust the oven rack to the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Line muffin pan with cupcake liners.

Sift together the cocoa powder, cake flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a bowl.

In another bowl, beat together the butter and sugar about 5 minutes until smooth and creamy. Add the egg, mix until fully incorporated. Scrape the edges of the bowl as necessary.

Mix together the coffee and milk. Stir half of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, the add the coffee and milk. Finally stir in the other half of the dry ingredients.

Divide the batter into individual muffin tins. You can use an ice cream scoop to make equal sizes.

Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

This was how they looked before frosting. (Poked holes on the tops for the filling.)

Ree’s “The Best Frosting I’ve Ever Had”:

5 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix is. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. It must be completely cool before you use it in the next step. Stir in vanilla.

While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. You don’t want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. If it looks separated, you haven’t beaten it enough! Beat it until it all combines and resembles whipped cream.

Hmm, maybe I haven’t beaten it enough?

To assemble the cupcakes:

When the cupcakes are cool and are ready for frosting, poke a hole in the middle of the cupcakes. You can use an apple corer or a paring knife. I used a knife, and here’s how they look like:

Before removing the top.

This is where the filling goes.

Pipe filling into holes. Unfortunately, piping isn’t something I do well.. So… That’s another reason why it was a fail. :))