Mini Brownie Cupcakes

As much as I love pastry, it just can't pay my bills yet, so by day I work in GIS doing nerdy geo-stuff for a small training and consulting company. This week, all of my co-workers were able to get together (which is a rare occurrence, because we are all off at different sites and in different cities). They have got to be one of the most awesome groups of people I've ever had the privilege to work with. So, to celebrate the occasion, I baked them goodies!

I decided on miniature brownie cupcakes because they're cute, bite-size, and fun to decorate. Also, I love making these brownies because they are so gooey and delicious and you can't even tell that they're gluten-free! I dipped them in some of my trusty dark chocolate ganache and topped them off with some vanilla buttercream and rainbow nonpareils.

So much fun and so tasty!

WoW Cooking Hour: Tasty Cupcake

Sometimes you just want a delicious pastry, you know? It was on this rainy Sunday afternoon that I decided I was in the mood for a cupcake. A tasty cupcake. Well, isn't it lucky, then, that WoW has a recipe with that exact name?!



And look! The cupcake makes you happy! Such fantastic luck that I sh--

WTF is this? Ingredients: simple flour and an egg? Flour. Simple flour. And an egg. That's it? And this is going to make a tasty cupcake that will make me happy?

I have to admit that after my last WoW baking adventure, I was slightly optimistic, yet also a bit leery about these in-game recipes. Certainly there was some magic involved in turning two gooey spider legs into a delicious pie! But folks, I just couldn't bring myself to believe that any kind of Blizzard magic would turn simple flour and an egg into anything tastier than the most boring "bread" anyone's ever tasted.

Because I always give the benefit of the doubt, I decided I'd at least try this "recipe".

Mise En Place

Well, there's not much to it, is there? Simple flour and an egg.

(I actually added a little water to make it a somewhat decent consistency, but don't tell anyone.)



What do you know? It made enough for TWO cupcakes! Maybe this will turn out all right after all...

The Finished Product

I don't know about you, but I don't think this looks much different than it did before I put it in the oven. (In case you're wondering, it was hard as a rock, and I couldn't even bring myself to taste it.) Well, let's see what the final product looks like in-game.



Okay, this looks nothing like that. And on top of that, it's supposed to yield FIVE cupcakes, not two! What a rip-off! I found this whole thing rather unacceptable, friends. So unacceptable, in fact, that I decided to let Blizzard know about it.



Ahhh.... After letting off some steam (even though my message got cut short, god damnit), I decided to make myself a cupcake that was actually tasty.

A Real Tasty Cupcake

And since I'd been looking at, and expecting, a cupcake that looks like the one in the picture, I decided to make mine look like that. Once again, it's a chocolate-looking cake and a berry-looking topping. Well, I deviated a slight bit; hope you don't mind.

Rich Brownie Cupcake with a Red Buttercream Rosette

A REAL Tasty Cupcake (excuse the poor image quality; my camera's battery died so I had to take this photo with my phone.)

I used this Best Cocoa Brownies recipe, using my own gluten-free flour mixture as usual, and baked it in mini muffin tins instead of in a brownie pan. I made a pretty typical American buttercream, colored it red, and piped little rosettes on the top.



These are so effing delicious, it's a good thing I made them in miniature size so I can ration them out!

I also made some with a fresh banana buttercream glaze (which doesn't look that pretty, sorry), which you can see here.