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| Cupcake topped with a Chocolate Covered Strawberry |
I made these cupcakes in 2009 for an office party and every time I mention making something for an office party I can't help but think about how spoiled and lucky my coworkers are ;) I wanted to make a cupcake that was impressive, detailed, and just screamed, "CHOCOLATE!!!", but also had something to complement the chocolate. At the time I was on a gluten-free diet and wanted to make cupcakes that were not only gluten-free, but so insanely wonderful that no one would miss the gluten. This isn't really hard to do with chocolate. I replaced the flour in my recipe with quinoa flour and no one ever knew the difference.
I made dark chocolate cupcakes (using Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder) and filled them with homemade strawberry whipped cream (cream, sugar, vanilla, and freshly squeezed strawberry juice).
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| Dark Chocolate Cupcakes filled w/ Strawberry Whipped Cream |
I frosted the cupcakes with a whipped milk chocolate ganache. Since the cupcakes were dark chocolate I wanted the frosting to be a slightly sweeter, lighter chocolate.
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| Frosted with Whipped Chocolate Ganache |
At this point I had chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting, and a strawberry surprise in the middle. In a way the cupcake itself was a chocolate covered strawberry :) For a lovely edible garnish and decoration I added a chocolate covered strawberry as a cupcake topper.
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| Final Product: Cupcake topped with the strawberry |
The chocolate covered strawberry was made with white chocolate and sprinkled with mini semi-sweet chocolate chips. The black, white, red, and green really made the cupcake look spectacular! There's something about chocolate covered strawberries; they look beautiful, sophisticated, and luxurious without really requiring a lot of work to get that appearance. I'm sure I was in some Food Network state of mind and became concerned with the plating of my dessert in addition to the deliciousness as I ended up making a dark chocolate sauce to swirl onto the plate. This cupcake had multiple textures, chocolates (dark, milk, semi-sweet, & white), and the wonderful strawberry which made it divine.
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| Divine: Dessert with a Halo |
Wow, I haven't done anything gluten free! (They didn't cover it in school!) Is it your recipe? Can you usually just swap out with quinoa flour? Interesting! I love how you decorated these!! The ganache looks soooo good. I'm allergic to strawberries, but I love how they look. It's very tempting just to take the risk and bite it!
ReplyDeleteThank you :) Yes, it was a recipe I threw together when I was experimenting with gluten-free baking. I found that quinoa flour made a great substitution for regular flour. It adds a bit of density I think and quinoa does have a slight nutty/grain taste to it (not a bad one), but the chocolate definitely covers that up in baking. Sorry to hear you are allergic to strawberries! I was as a child and luckily grew out of it. I love them so much now.
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