Mini chocolate-chocolate cupcakes with raspberry and caramel filling
Holly over at PheMomenon is hosting a Blogging For Babies event called Little Wonders. Holly is raising money for the March of Dimes March for Babies in honor of her son Cole. Read all about her story on her blog.
The requirements of the event are simply to make something small. Since you all know I love making cupcakes, I thought mini-cupcakes would be perfect. The truth is, I have supported March of Dimes for quite some time myself. My 13 year old sister was also born premature. I was 14 at the time and remember being very scared. I was so scared in fact, that when the entire family went to see her for the first time in the NICU, I refused to go.
My sister has grown into a wonderful teenager girl (is that even possible?) She’s very intellegent and likes to bake just like me. We enjoy baking together when I see her, which unfortunately, isn’t often enough. Here is the most recent picture of us taken last Christmas. Yes, she’s a tall one.
Back to the cupcakes. I used my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe with my favorite chocolate cream cheese frosting recipe (without the chili powder). I made both recipes dairy free (the caramel was not dairy free).
I usually use the cone method to fill cupcakes. I knew this wouldn’t work very well with mini-cupcakes. Instead I used a special cupcake filling tip that came with my piping bag set. It took a while to get the hang of it, but in the end it worked out fine. I filled some with leftover caramel I had and the rest with some leftover raspberry preserves. Both tasted amazing.
Definitely be sure to check out Holly’s story and support her team for the March of Babies.
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
Seriously how cute are these? They looks awesome!
This is a good idea! I make the same kind of idea but with hershey’s kisses. If you are able to get the square pretzels (snyders makes them… their shape is called butter snaps or something like that) you top them with a hershey kiss. Then you pop them in the oven on 200 degrees for a few minutes. You will know they are done when the chocolate looks shiny. After that, you can either press down the kiss a bit to join it with the pretzel, or top the pretzel with another pretzel to make a pretzel and chocolate sandwich. They are yummy and super easy! 🙂
This is, quite possibly, the worst recipe I’ve ever made. The only redeeming quality about this is the taste.
So, the first issue is that there was WAY too much liquid in the cake batter. This is where everything went to hell. I decided to make these in cupcake form since I didn’t have round cake pans. The cake crumbled as I attempted to remove the cupcake wrappers.
Next, the marshmallow filling. This was literally the worst trying to put sticky filling into a crumbly cake.
For my surviving cakes that didn’t crumble to death, I attempted to cover in ganache. The ganache was too dang thick for this delicate cake.
So, as I sit here on Christmas eve writing this review, I have toppling, crumbly ding songs sitting in my freezer as I make my last attempt to save these monstrosities.
Afterwards, I will promptly burn your recipe and enjoy it.
I am sure you are a very wonderful person and meant no I’ll will, but this recipe must be destroyed.