cupkait: Mini Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago, my parents came back from visiting Kentucky. They helped my grandma and aunt go through a bunch of storate items from my grandma's old house. My parents surprised me by bringing me a bunch of my great-grandma's baking supplies. Two mini cupcake pans came with it all. I've made mini cupcakes before and didn't have much luck with them. My small scoop wasn't the proper size to make the perfect amount of batter in the paper wrappers and neither was my moms. I've been itching to use the pans though. More and more on Cupcake Wars I've seen some of the people pipe their batter into the cupcakes. In my head I can't figure out why--because I know my scoop for normal sized cupcakes makes them come out perfect everytime. Well, I finally decided to try their technique with the mini cupcakes today. IT WORKED! The cupcakes came out to the perfect size. I did this out of boredom and wanting to use my pans. Since I'm in a wedding this weekend, I figured I'd just send these cupcakes with my husband to work. They turned out much better than expected. Also, I've been wanting to draw with ganache on top of cupcakes for a while, and now seemed like the perfect time to do so. These are a great snack to freeze and put into your child's lunch for school. You can get 72 mini cupcakes out of one boxed cake mix.

Ingredients:

Cupcake:

* 1 boxed yellow cake mix (you can use any type of cake mix, I just happend to have a yellow one and didn't feel like making my own batter!)

* ingredients needed to make cake

Vanilla Frosting:

* 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp

* 1/8 teaspoon salt

* 3 1/2 cups confectioners sugar, sifted

* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

* 1/2 teaspoon milk

Chocolate Ganache:

* 1/4 cup heavy cream

* 1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Make the cake according to the box.

2. Pipe the batter into the cupcake wrappers. I piped them a little less than half full.

3. Bale the mini cupcakes for 11 minutes.

4. Once removed from oven, let the cupcakes sit in the pan for about 3-5 minutes. Remove and then put onto a cooling rack.

Frosting:

1. Beat butter and salt on medium speed until light and fluffy. Aprox. two minutes.

2. Reduce speed to low, gradually add confectioners sugar. Beat until incorporated.

3. Add vanilla and milk and beat until smooth and creamy.

*Add additional milk, 1 teaspoon at a time, if frosting doesn't have spreadable consistency

4. Pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes. I tried out three different tips and was short frosting for about 10 of the cupcakes. I just put some extra ganache on top of those and it worked out fine!

Ganache:

1. On a double boiler, pour heavy cream into a pan (mine was dirty so I opted for a sauce pan) and bring to a boil. if you notice the cream to start to harden on the top--take it off imediatley.

2. Once the heavy cream is removed from the heat, pour chocolate chips into the cream and let sit for 30 seconds to 1 minute.

3. Stir the chocolate and cream until you get to a smooth consistency. If there are some lumps you can't get out you can just put the pan back onto the double boiler and stir until the lumps come out.