Cupcakes for Kookybites!

Today is Steve's birthday, so what better way to celebrate than with cupcakes?! I love drooling over the great cupcakes I see online, but I rarely have the opportunity to make them - cupcakes + the CTA bus is an unfortunate combination. What's the point of making them so pretty if they're going to get shmooshed in transit? Since Steve has the luxury (in my eyes) of driving to work every day, it was easy to send him off to work with two dozen cupcakes.

I love Chockylit's blog...is is the ultimate cupcake droolfest. So, I decided to make her peanutbutter filled chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache. Simple, right? Of course - sort of...

I thought cutting the cupcakes open and filling them would be difficult, but that was a snap. They were chilled from the fridge, so it was easy to carve out the center...

...and fill with the (to die for) peanutbutter filling...


However, the chocolate ganache was a different story. After making it I thought it was a little too soft (silly me), so I popped it into the fridge for a bit. Needless to say, it completely hardened up and could not, would not, pipe onto the cupcakes. I tried to whip it up a bit and get some air into it, and added a little milk to the equation, but the results were still sub-par in my opinion. They just didn't look pretty enough...

However, taste completely wins out over beauty this time, because these cupcakes were absolutely phenomenal.

Thankfully this isn't my only opportunity to celebrate Steve's birthday via baking. I'm making two cakes over the next two weeks - one at his request for us to have at home and one to take to a party next weekend. In the meantime, I need to brush up on my cupcake skills...