I bought these cute little cases from the US so I decided to make popcorn cupcakes for Iron Cupcake XI: Celebration. It's hard to see the texture of the "popcorn" in the photo but it looks really good in person.
This is my second entry for this Iron Cupcake. I usually only make one entry but I really wanted to make minis decorated with chocolate butterflies but that failed miserably. I'd already made the minis so rather than let them go to waste I'm submitting them with a simple decoration. I am really pleased with these popcorn cupcakes. They came out really cute.
I decided to make chocolate marshmallow cream filled cupcakes topped with almond buttercream in 2 shades to represent the popcorn.
Cream-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes
Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs room temperature
1 cup sour cream, room temperature
1. Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C. Line buckets on 2 baking sheets. Whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the sour cream, and mixing until just incorporated after each.
3. Divide batter evenly among prepared cups, filling each three quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway though, until cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 15-20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 5 minutes.
I bought this cute cake tester
Marshmallow Creme
They have fluff on Ocado
Whisk 1 1/2 cups of Marshmallow Fluff with 1/2 cup of room temperature butter until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap, and chill until slightly firm 15 to 30 minutes.
4. Using a small knife cut the center of each cupcake out in a cone shape and spoon in marshmallow cream.
Trim cone shape piece of cake and place over the cream.
Almond Buttercream
adapted from Martha Stewart Cupcakes
3 cups unsalted butter at room temperature
2 pounds icing sugar, sifted
2 tsp almond extract
Yellow gel food coloring
1. With an electric mixer, beat the butter on medium-high until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes.
2. Reduce speed to medium. Add the icing sugar ½ cup at a time, beating after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed; after every two additions, raise speed to high and beat 10 seconds to aerate the frosting, then return to medium. This should take about 5 minutes. Frosting will be pale and fluffy.
3. Add almond and beat until frosting is smooth. Separate half of frosting into a separate bowl add small amount of yellow gel food coloring, and beat until color shows through.
Bag the 2 color frosting's. I used one round tip and one star tip to add some texture
I started with the white and left some space. I filled in the gaps with the yellow frosting. Overlapping slightly to give the look of a real popcorn bucket.
