Starbucks Cupcake

Whew! That’s a mouthful!  And I loved creating it.  This was inspired by our walk down the Hauptstrasse in Heidelberg (almost always some part of our walk is on this Main Street).  We stopped at our favorite Starbucks, grabbed a comfy seat, and fired up our iPad minis (or is that iPads mini?).  I was sitting there listening to the patrons order their beverages…and the Caramel Macchiatosounded sooo interesting.  When I arrived back home, I ran a quick search on the Starbucks website and read all about it.

“I can put those flavors together…who doesn’t love cream and caramel?”  Add chocolate and the scrumptious factor goes up exponentially.

This was just a simple recipe I put together based on my go-to Hershey’s chocolate cake.  Hot tip: I always (yeah, I’m using an absolute) use Hershey’s Cocoa Special Dark for my chocolate cake.  When my life partner/husband asked me about my chocolate cake I told him I used dark chocolate.  He says, “But I don’t like dark chocolate.”  Last word on the subject, “Well, you like these and I’m not changing them.”  Anyway…for this cupcake, I replaced 1/3 of the boiling water with espresso.  I don’t think I tasted it – if you prefer a strong coffee flavor, maybe turn up the volume on this component.

The ganache went really well.  I follow a very simple formula of 12oz dark chocolate (somewhere between 63% to 70%), 8oz whole milk (or heavy whipping cream), 2t dark vanilla.  For the chocolate mocha, I replaced ¼ c. of the cream with espresso.  Again, I couldn’t taste it, but maybe it added a back note?  I let it cool in the fridge overnight and it piped on beautifully this morning.

The Vanilla Buttercream is my favorite and a star in my cupcake creations.  The Caramel Sauce is brown sugar, heavy cream, butter, and dark vanilla.  If I could, I’d spoon it on anything worth eating…seriously, it’s a gateway drug.

Then I had 30 cupcakes on my hands.  I called a friend; she was kind enough to stop by and take half off my hands.  And the other half is still here…