martha's tiramisu cupcakes

as a rookie baker, Martha stewart’s cupcakes book is my first Martha book and boy, I love it! I first got into baking is when I saw tower of colorful cute mini cakes in seventeen magazine, few years ago. There was the recipe for those mini cakes which apparently named cupcakes but juggling with teenage hormonal, high school and jerk boyfriends left me no time to bake cupcakes. Time flew and two years ago I asked, well, forced my mom who isn’t a baking person at all (well, she bakes actually, only some traditional cakes with no exact measuring, duhh!) to buy a tiny weeny electric oven (yesss! There wasn’t a real oven in my mom’s kitchen until that time) and take me to supermarket to buy the ingredients. I got the recipe for classic vanilla cupcakes from cupcakes.net by the way.
Okay, so it was time for my first cupcakes, I followed the recipe from a to t and the result was MEH! Super MEH! I threw them to garbage immediately. But I didn’t give up, I tried and tried again, I started to buy baking books and browsed more about baking and cupcakes.
So here I am, still a rookie even after two years ☺ but with real gas oven.

On to martha’s tiramisu cupcakes which is reeeeaaally good! The cake is one of the best cakes I ever bake, so spongy and lady fingers-alike.. though I tweaked the recipe by omitting the vanilla bean and used rum instead. Oh sigh, I do lot of tweaking in my baking experiences, I rarely following the exact recipe (is it bad?) sometimes I even just throw the ingredients according to my insting (I don’t have recipe for my buttercream frosting) maybe that’s why I always a rookie in baking.

Anyway, the frosting isn’t really a mascarpone frosting because the mascarpone I have is ruined already, I don’t know why, it didn’t pass the expire date also.
So I just whipped the whipping cream and frosted the cupcakes. i topped them with chocolate shaved, generous amount of chocolate shaved.
Well, its still a good tiramisu cupcakes! really good! I certainly will make them again.

Martha stewart’s tiramisu cupcakes
From Martha stewart’s cupcakes book
Makes 18

1 ¼ cups cake flour (not self-rising) sifted there is no cake flour here so I made my own following
¾ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon coarse salt
¼ cup milk
1 vanilla bean, halved length-wise, seeds scraped and reserved I omit this and used rum instead
½ stick unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into pieces
3 large whole eggs plus 3 egg yolks, room temperature
1 cup sugar
coffee marsala syrup (recipe follows)
mascarpone frosting (recipe follows)
unsweetened cocoa powder for dusting I used chocolate shavings
1.preheat oven to 325 F. line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together cake flour, baking powder and salt. Heat milk and vanilla-bean pod and seeds in a small saucepan over medium just until bubbles appear around the edge. Remove from heat, whisk in butter until melted and let stand 15 minutes. Strain milk misture through a fine sleve into a bowl and discard vanilla-bean pod.

2.with an electric mixer on medium speed, whisk together whole eggs, yolks and sugar. Set mixing bowl over a pan of simmering water, and whisk by hand until sugar is dissolved and mixture is warm, about 6 minutes. Remove bowl from heat. With an electric mixer on high speed, whisk until mixture is fluffy, pale yellow and thick enough to hold a ribbon on the surface for several seconds when whisk is lifted.

3.Gently but thouroughly fold the flour mixture into the eggs mixture in three batches, stir ½ cup batter into the strained milk mixture to thicken, then fold milk mixture into the remaining batter until just combined.

4.Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full, bake, rotating tins halfway through, until centers are completely set and edges are light golden brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks and cool completely before removing cupcakes.

5.To finish, brush tops of cupcakes evenly with coffee-marsala syrup, repeat until all syrup has been used. Allow cupcakes to absorb liquid 30 minutes. Dollop frosting onto cupcakes, refrigerate up to overnight in air-tight containers. Dust generously with cocoa powder just before serving.

Coffee-marsala syrup rum in my case
Makes enough for 18 cupcakes

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon freshly brewed very strong coffee (or espresso)
1 ounce marsala
¼ cup sugar

stir together coffee, marsala and sugar until sugar is dissolved, let cool.


Mascarpone frosting
Makes about 2 cups

1 cup heavy cream
8 ounces mascarpone cream cheese, room temperature
½ cup confectioners sugar, sifted

with an electric mixer on the medium speed, whisk heavy cream until stiff peaks form (be careful not to overbeat or cream will be grainy). In another bowl, whisk together mascarpone and confectioners sugar until smooth. Gently fold whipped cream into mascarpone mixture until completely incorporated. Use immediately