Chocolate "Butterfly" Cupcakes

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.  ~Voltaire

In the past couple of months I've made a couple of desserts and  haven't had time to blog about them. I'm trying to catch up with a couple of posts today, so that in the up coming weeks I can post about the treats as I'm working on them! 

So, I made butterfly cupcakes sometime in the early summer. They were for a friends birthday (and basically just an excuse to try out something new). To date these are my fav cupcakes, I got the idea from a cupcake book and have been wanting to try them forever. They are not so easy to make however... take a look!

So right off the bat, i'll say that these were a lot more complicated then I thought they would be. First of all I must have been doing something wrong when working with the chocolate "butterflies". It was a disaster! Next up, placing them ON the cupcakes wasn't as easy as advertised, they kept sliding off and sinking into the cupcakes.

If you want to make these all you  need is:

                                                                   

 -Your fav vanilla cake recipe or a box mix.

 -Your fav vanilla frosting recipe or can of frosting

 -Dark chocolate wafers

    -Orange chocolate wafers

 -1/2 cup of chocolate frosting

Once the cupcakes are made, cooled, and iced (tinted with a bit of yellow & red gel coloring). You need to make a simple butterfly wing template with a sharpie, preferably between 2-3 inches. Then melt your dark chocolate wafers and orange wafers in two separate ziplock bags. Once they have cooled off a bit, cut the TINIEST hole in the corner of the ziplock bag. Place a piece wax paper over your template, trace the outline a couple of times in  dark chocolate, then fill the center with the orange. Give the wax paper a shake, the two chocolates will blend together, then take a toothpick and drag it from the edges of the wing into the center. Next, sprinkle (if you have some on hand) some nonpareils onto the top corners of your wings.

When you have aprox. 6 pairs of wings, place your wax paper in the freezer to dry. Use a piping bag or a ziplock with a small hole cut in the corner of the bag, pipe out a straight line of chocolate frosting in the center of the cupcake. When the wings are ready use the chocolate frosting as a glue to keep the wings in place on the cupcake.

Unfortunately, this is a really bad shot but it gives you an idea of what it looks like when the butterflies are "in-flight". It is not easy to keep the wings vertical, my tip is  to cut very narrow slits into the cupcake below to help anchor the wings in place.

These area lot of fun to make and look great when bring them to a friends house.

What are some of your melted chocolate tips for me?

Hope you get surprised with something delicious today

  

Pie? Or Cupcake?

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. ~ Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright, Pavarotti, My Own Story

This past summer my husband and I were all about the summer BBQ's with friends. And being invited to a BBQ only means one thing... bringing the hosts creative cupcakes!! I debated with myself for about 10 minutes in the aisle at the grocery store on Sunday morning. I had a bbq to go to in the afternoon. I really needed to come up with a dessert idea. I was already making  a rice dish and roasted potatoes & sweet potatoes. I thought of a variety of frozen desserts like some of these, which would be perfect for a bbq, however they needed a minimum 3-4 hours of freezer commitment- time I didn't have! So without thinking I picked up the ingredients to bake a cake and a can of pre-made frosting. I didn't know then that they would materialize into faux mini pies, I just thought i'd throw something together. So getting home, I started to make my other dishes while the cupcakes baked in the oven in little foil liners. After 20 minutes I pulled them out and set them to cool on a wire rack. I took this time to run and get changed for the party. By the time I got back to the kitchen, they were cool enough to decorate. Decorating only took 12 minutes. It was soooo simple too! However I cannot claim the idea as my own- I got the idea from a cupcake book. When the book said they were EZ I could have never imagined they would only take 12 minutes.

I chose the above picture, because as you see- I forgot to flip one of the M&M's upside down. :P Also, up close the the pies don't look that "nice" but once your done and they are all together on a serving dish, the end result is amazing!

Making them is a cinch, and I wish mine looked a little cleaner... but I was pressed for time! I guess the most difficult (creative) part is trying to adjust the color of the "crust" icing, which is simply a bit of yellow icing coloring and about a tsp. of coco powder. You can play with the amount of the cocoa powder make it look more or less cooked. once you get the icing color sorted, all you need to do is add a dollop of frosting to the top of the cupcake and spread into a very fine layer on top of the cupcake this will act as a glue to the M&M's. 

You can make all your faux pies with red M&M's or red and blue (Strawberry and blueberry) If you want to get funky with them you can try Orange (peach pie like I did above)  or mixing pink, red and purple like a wild berry pie.

Overall these were a big hit, the cupcakes flew off my serving tray less then 3 mins after I arrived! Best feeling ever!!!

             Until next time, deliver something yummy to someone you know.