Deep Chocolate Rosebuds Cupcakes

This week's Heavenly Cakes assignment is the simple and richly chocolatey Deep Chocolate Rosebuds Cupcakes. The original recipe uses a Nordicware Rosebud pan, which makes cute little rose-shaped cakes and hence the true name of this recipe. As you know by now I hate buying specialty pans so I used my silicone cupcake cups. A Deep Chocolate Rosebud by any other name would taste as decadent.

spilt open to reveal the gooey ganache center

September 1, 2011
Name of Cupcakes: Chocolate Puddlecakes
Occasion: HCB
Constituents: little chocolate butter cakes, with a slightly gooey ganache center

The batter for these cakes is a basic chocolate butter cake, with one exception. Rose usually uses water as the liquid for a chocolate cake, as she feels milk brings out a bitter edge. Usually the water is boiled and mixed with the cocoa powder to bloom the cocoa and makes a bit of a paste. In the case of this cake, a little extra water is mixed with the egg yolks and added in during the second stage of the two-stage mixing process. I suspect the reason for the extra liquid is to make the batter a little thinner, but maybe it is there just to make it easier to incorporate the egg yolks. I don't know; I'm just guessing here.

What takes this recipe from a simple chocolate cupcake to a deep chocolate cake is the teaspoon of ganache that is dabbed onto each cupcake right before baking. This little puddle sinks down into the cupcake as the batter rises around it, and leaves a little gooey center of serious unadulterated chocolate. The cakes themselves are the tender, velvety cake one expects from a Rose butter cake. There is nothing I would change about these cakes, including how rustic they look popped out of my silicone cups. (I did forget to grease and flour the cups, but most of them unmolded ok.)

These puddlecakes need no accompaniment, especially if you like your chocolate rich and strong. Otherwise, a little dab of vanilla ice cream would be nice, especially if you are serving the cakes while they are still warm.

Marie made these two years ago before the group bake through commenced (before Roses' Heavenly Cakes was published!). She used the Nordicware Rosebud Pan, and called the cakes cute enough for people to coo over.

I suspect the Molten Lava Cakes would be quite similar to these, as both employ dabs of ganache to get a gooey center. My Lava Cakes were quite a failure, so I don't have a taste or texture memory to compare to, just the memory of trying to make the recipe work for me :) With the Lava Cakes there was quite a bit more ganache per cake. With these Puddlecakes being as delicious as they are, I'm inclined to try the Lava Cakes again.