RHC: Deep Chocolate Rosebuds

No, no, I didn't bake two cakes this week--the Red Fruit Shortcake is my real cake-of-the-week. This one is another of the recipes Marie baked before the bake-along started, back in August 2009, and I baked it back in December 2009. (The group bake-along started in October 2009.) I forgot to blog this one for a couple of weeks, and then kept it out as a sort of reserve in case I couldn't bake one week. Now that I'm almost done with the bake-through, I'd better get it posted. As the memory has faded, this will be brief.


The Dark Chocolate Rosebuds are from the baby cakes chapter, and call for a miniature rose pan. I don't have one, so mine baked in miniature muffin tins. You make a chocolate batter, then a small dollop of ganache is placed on each cup before baking. When I turned out my mini cupcakes and swiped some of the cake that had stuck to the pan, I was thinking "this is perfectly acceptable, but nothing special". But when I bit into the ganache area of a full cupcake--oh, that was special!

I overfilled my cupcake pan and had flattened mushroom tops--these should be a lot prettier without that. And I think I would try pushing the ganache down into the batter a little so it is more in the middle of the cakelet. You want every bite of the cakelet to have some of the ganache area.

My memory says that these were terrific when still a little warm, but not so special after they cooled. The ganache melded with the cake and while it was still a nice chocolate cupcake, that rich moistness of the warm ganache was gone.