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My dear mom’s birthday was earlier this month. I asked her if she wanted me to pick her up a cake at our favorite local bakery or if she wanted something different this year. She gave me very specific instructions…

Cupcakes. Chocolate.

Since the bakery doesn’t have cupcakes (I know, weird isn’t it? They have every dessert, except cupcakes.) I offered to make her some. After some recipe hunting I decided on Devil’s Food Cupcakes. The recipe made somewhere around 32. Thats a lot of cupcakes for a small party so I decided rather than having a ton of cupcakes of the same flavor I would spice things up a bit. Two of her favorite things are coffee and raspberries, so I filled half of the cupcakes with raspberry jam and the other half with an espresso buttercream filling.

I first baked the cupcakes then let them cool completely. While they were cooling I made the espresso filling. The recipe I found was a bit too sweet for me but everyone seemed to love it. I found the recipe here. I had tried different methods of filling cupcakes before so this time I wanted to try to just pipe the filling in. For both fillings, I used a wilton #12 tip, just poked it in and squeezed gently as I pulled upward. I clearly overfilled the first one. It was oozing filling out the sides. That’s okay though, it still tasted good.

For the top of the mocha cupcakes, I made Chocolate Ganache Frosting and topped them with a Starbucks Mocha Truffle. Man those things are good! It was all I could do to put them on the cupcakes, not in my mouth. They can be a bit pricey if you have a lot of cupcakes but I found some on sale for about $3 dollars off. They have other yummy flavors also like espresso, vanilla bean and milk chocolate chai truffles. Update: I just heard that Hershey is no longer producing the Starbucks chocolates. This is very sad news indeed..

Mmmmm… the cupcakes were perfectly moist and the espresso filling with the ganache was to die for. Chocolate paradise!

I frosted the raspberry filled cupcakes with Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I had a minor change of plans with this frosting. I really wanted to use fresh raspberries to flavor it. I bought a container at the grocery store, got home only to realize the middle of the package was completely moldy. So plan B, I took the left over jam and added it by tablespoons until I had the right amount of raspberry flavor. I also dropped in a bit of red food coloring to make it pink because the jam wasn’t really adding much color; it was more of a murky reddish-grayish color.

I’m not sure which was my favorite. I really love mocha, but the raspberry tasted so fresh and summery. I think I will just call it a tie. But the most important part… Mom loved them! As did everyone else.

Recipe Links:

Devil’s Food Cupcakes
Espresso Buttercream Filling
Chocolate Ganache Frosting
Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream

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In a quest to find a good, fruit inspired breakfast muffin I came across a recipe for Lemon-Raspberry Muffins from EatingWell. So keeping with my bite-size obsession, I of course made mini muffins. Somehow I happened to have everything on hand thanks to a bag of organic frozen raspberries in the freezer that needed to be used.

These aren’t your normal muffins. They are actually pretty healthy. Low calorie, fat, sodium, and cholesterol!

I know what you might be thinking… healthy=bland. I was thinking the same thing…

My goodness was I wrong. So very wrong!

The lemon. The raspberries. The lemon-raspberry combo. Yum. My kitchen smelled like a bakery for a good 3 hours after they came out of the oven. I think I’ll bake them again just for the smell. If only I could bottle it…

Also, they freeze for up to a month! Just wrap the muffins individually in plastic wrap and when you’re ready to devour one (or two), pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds wrapped in a paper towel (without the plastic wrap of course). I will be keeping some on hand for those mornings when there really isn’t time for breakfast.

Lemon-Raspberry Mini Muffins
adapted from EatingWell

Notes:
I used regular whole-wheat flour, not whole-wheat pastry flour and they came out just fine.
For regular size muffins, bump up the baking time to 20-25 minutes. Makes 1 dozen regular muffins.
Also, the original recipe says to serve warm; while they are excellent warm, they are also really good room temp or cold.

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