I LOVE Cadbury Cream Eggs. They are one of my most favorite candies and it makes my tongue very sad (and my waistline very happy) that they are only around once a year. Now that Cadbury is owned by Hershey I was concerned that the eggs would not be as good...fortunately that appears to not be the case at all :)Now I found this recipe using foodgawker but I have to give Peabody all the credit. She (I hope it's a she) created this recipe all on her own!!! I am only good at creating more savory recipes, never baked goods. Well, generally. But anyway. I posted the recipe to my facebook and it got such an enthusiastic response that I thought I might have to actually make them. I'd never made cupcakes with a filling before so I was very nervous, but a recipe as amazing sounding as this just might make it worth it.
I halved the recipe because I really did not want to spent a fortune on the eggs. They are EXPENSIVE before Easter and I couldn't hit the day after sales because I was going to be flying back to school that day. But when my amazing boyfriend found them for $1.50 for 4 eggs at his local supermarket I had to give in and buy them. It was a sign! Besides, these eggs are also my father's favorite thing in the world (after Lucky Charms) so at least I knew someone beyond me would eat them.
I wanted originally to make minicupcakes, since that was what Peabody recommended, but we don't own any minimuffin tins. Sad. I looked into buying one but really couldn't justify it for this one project. Also, if I was going to learn to make filled cupcakes I should learn it the real way. So I made them normal sized.
Devil's Food Cake (for the halved recipe):4 1/2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
2/3 cups cake flour (I used regular old flour)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp baking powder
2 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature (this is half a stick)
2/3 cups granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup whole milk
Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease the muffin pan.
Sift together the cocoa powder, flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a bowl.
Beat together the butter and sugar about 5 minutes until smooth and creamy in another bowl. Add the egg. (I did this all by hand; we don't own a standing mixer or anything like that. I basically just creamed the butter and sugar together and then added the egg to get the texture.)
Mix together the water and milk. Stir half of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, the add the water and milk. Finally stir in the other half of the dry ingredients. If you're like me you need to be extra careful to mix slowly; I made a huuuuge mess :P
Fill cupcake pans 2/3 of the way full with cake batter.
Apparently Peabody has a different definition of "2/3 of the way" because only filling mine about halfway I only got 10 cupcakes rather than the 12 promised, but knowing me I could have just miscalculated something somewhere.I baked mine for about 17 minutes and they turned out juuuuust drier than I would have liked so I would recommend 16 minutes. However every oven is different (duh) so I'd ACTUALLY recommend baking for 15 minutes and then checking and depending on where the cake is going minute by minute from there. Regardless, they smelled lovely and dark chocolate-y.
While the cupcakes cooled, I had to make the chocolate shell ganache filling and the egg filling buttercream frosting. Here are the ingredients for both; I made the ganache first because it has to cool to room temperature.Chocolate Shell Ganache:
5 ounces of chopped up Cadbury Crème Egg Shell, if you don’t have enough to make 5x ounces, then add some milk chocolate chips to it
1/2 cup heavy cream (I didn't have heavy cream, so I improvised with a substitute butter/whole milk mixture)
First you have to separate the filling in the Cadbury Cream Eggs from the chocolate shell. This was when the scary stuff started; the eggs cost more than probably the rest of everything else combined. I could screw up the cupcakes and not waste a lot. Also, splitting them neatly in half was WAAY easier than Peabody led me to believe. You just take a fairly large knife (one you're comfortable with) and line it up with the crease in the chocolate, where the halves were put together in the first place. Then you press gently. I think at most two eggs shattered, and even then only a little. Then I took a spoon and scooped out the filling into a bowl, using my fingers as a spatula. Let me tell you, that stuff is STICKY. But oh-so-delicious and licking my fingers was basically the perk of the job. This was probably the most time intense part.
For the chocolate shell ganache, chop up the shells until you have about about 5 oz of chocolate (just under 1 cup). If it's not enough add some chocolate chips or something. Mine turned out close enough so I was cool with it. I had way too much ganache as it later turned out, so half of the shells should be fine (I picked out the best 10 for decorating later).
Bring cream to a simmer in a saucepan and remove from heat. Pour over chocolate. Let sit 5 minutes. (I let it sit for less. I'm lazy.)
Whisk in chocolate until smooth. Let set up at room temperature. It smelled FANTASTIC! I love Cadbury chocolate anyway, and it smelled delicious and rich and creamy just like chocolate should taste. Wonderful.
Next is the Egg Filling Buttercream Frosting:
the centers of 10 Cadbury Crème Egg scooped out
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 to 4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 TBSP vanilla extract
milk to thin frosting
Mix the cream filling, butter, vanilla and 2 cups sugar until creamy. Add another cup of sugar (I only added half and it was too much). Use milk to thin.
I was a bit nervous that the frosting was too sweet but with the richness of the devil's food cake it was perfection, just as Peabody said. My major issue was that the powdered sugar had some lumps I couldn't get out. It had not been sealed properly and I'm too cheap to go buy some and too lazy to take the time to crush it all to the proper powery consistency before using it. I did my best while mixing to at delumpify the buttercream but it only sort of worked. Argh.
Time to fill and frost the cupcakes. I admit to terror. Fortunately I found this How To that made the whole process a gazillion times easier and less stressful. Of course that's not to say I did it 100% correctly, but I did a heck of a lot better than I could have.
I spooned the ganache into a ziplock bag for filling. It didn't work very well; after the first few the bag popped spilling ganache all over the countertop. I had to use a spoon to fill the rest. I also wimped out on the cones I cut into the cupcakes; they were mostly too small and shallow and there was SO much ganache left over which must be a crime in several states it was so delicious. I could have licked it off the countertop. (I didn't. I promise.)
Anyway, despite the issues with the cone system all ten cupcakes were filled and fairly nice looking with little trouble (other than my tears over wasted ganache). It was time to frost and decorate!!
Again I used the ziplock bag method to pipe on the buttercream, but MUCH more carefully. I'm not very good at decorating things neatly or prettily, so I was very happy for the shells to garnish with because it hid so many imperfections.
These tasted SO GOOD. I was actually in shock. My first bite was halfway decent, but once I got to the ganache with the buttercream and the cake itself--perfection. I actually just stopped and froze because I was so surprised by the brilliance in my own mouth. Major major kudos to Peabody for creating this bit of genius. It took me basically all day and a thousand loads of dishes (I didn't use the dishwasher, I needed to reuse too many things) to make ten of these things, but I can tell you they were worth it.
Happy Easter!!
