Making cupcakes, crossing off resolutions

Earlier this year, I made resolutions, and one of them was to learn how to make a chocolate cake from scratch that wasn't horrible, that wasn't the consistency and smell of play dough, and that more or less looked like the kind you could get from a store, with the added bonus of being delicious. Well yesterday I accomplished all of those things and more. I went to this blog, and made their homemade "ding dongs".

Another blog I peruse, had mentioned that they tried to make these, and they took all day, that worried me a bit, but after looking over the recipes I realized that these bad boys would maybe take 2 at the most. In reality, from the time I walked in from the grocery store to the time I ate one it was an hour and a half later. That included the cooking and cooling time.

These delectable little treasure, just melt in your mouth with a flavor, laden with chocolate goodness. The filling was absolutely delicious, and the funny thing is, it is basically a Bancroft pudding, whipped into frothy delight and put inside, I think I will use the same technique for my Bancroft pudding the next time I make red velvet cake. It would make it much more portable.

A few notes, however, the cakes took about 25 minutes to cook, not the 15 stated in the recipe, the ganache, should not be doubled. The little amount it has you make would be enough to frost at least 24 cupcakes, probably closer to 30. I doubled everything including the ganache, and frankly it is so rich, we hardly used any, plus it took over 40 minutes to thicken enough, and that included time in both the fridge and freezer. But now I have a lovely ice cream topping, just have to get some more ice cream to put it on.

Cakes filled with vanilla cream, not yet frosted

Also due to the light texture of the cake batter, I had more than enough for 24 cupcakes, some of them overflowed quite a bit, I think you could safely use a small loaf pan to put the excess batter. Or an extra muffin tin. I had enough for about 4 extra cakes. I used a medium sized cookie scoop to fill my molds.

The finished product from the inside, mmmmmm...

The kids loved these so much, that 2 of them requested these as their Birthday treat. I think the secret to wonderful cakes is Buttermilk. Seriously, I used it last week for my sons birthday pancakes, and they were the most amazing ever, then this week in these little cakes,  it has become my new kitchen staple.