Nurturing-esque Instincts

Posted: October 31, 2010 | Author: Alyssa | Filed under: Alyssa | No Comments »

I work with teenagers pretty much all day every day, so its hard to avoid caring about them and having some slight maternal instincts towards them.  The especially comes into play when I am on duty over a weekend.  Most of the kids can go home for the weekend but for the kids that live extremely far away, thats not possible.  Its part of my job to help make sure that they feel at home here and they like staying on the weekends.  to me, this means baking for them.  The majority of my last on duty weekend was spent in the dorm with cupcakes and Disney movies hanging out with the girls.  I had decided that I wanted to make them cupcakes because to me, they are the most comforting of the desserts.  So I started on a quest to the grocery store to pick up one ingredient for simple chocolate cupcakes with white frosting, and by the end of the 4 mile drive I had decided to go all out and try chocolate toffee cupcakes with buttercream frosting.  I’m not going to give you too many details because my mind is a scary abyss of sad, but here is the basic format of how I got from point A to point B:

Hooray Cupcakes!! –> I love cupcakes, the girls are going to be so happy, I haven’t brought them food in a while –> Last time I brought them cookies –> mmm…I miss grammy’s cookies –> What were the ones that I always loved the most –> defintely the Skor cookies, those were pretty bomb –> oh god, the teenage slang is rubbing off –> wait, cookies, I like cookies, especially cookies with toffee….

And I feel like you can figure it out from there.  SO when I got back from the store, I went to it.  I used a pretty standard chocolate cake recipe:

5 oz Butter – softened

5 oz superfine sugar

6 oz self-rising flour

3 eggs

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

I just throw everything in my mixer and mix for about 2 min on medium until everything is incorporated.  Then I threw in about 6 oz of toffee chips.  Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

While the cupcakes are baking, you can throw together the butter cream.  You need

2 cups unsalted butter

2 cups powdered sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup buttermilk

3 oz toffee chips

In a small saucepan melt 1 cup of butter and the toffee until fully incorporated, then set aside to cool.  Once the mixture is cool, blend it with the remaining cup of butter and the sugar using a hand mixer.  Add the remaining ingredients and beat until fully incorporated and viola!  Toffee buttercream!

I frosted the cupcakes and topped them with a couple of remaining toffee chips.  The only issue I had with these was that the toffee chips had a tendency to sink toward the bottom of the cupcakes, so I’m not sure how to combat that issue.  But overall these were delicious, and the girls loved them which was the ultimate goal.