Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache Filling and Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

A birthday isn't a birthday without chocolate cake with orange frosting. By those standards I almost didn't have a birthday this year. But never fear, the birthday was made complete almost a week after the fact. January is a busy birthday month for my family...2 cousins, my niece, my nephew, my sister and me. And though my own came and went without my favorite cake...I got together with my sister this past weekend to celebrate both our big days, which was the perfect opportunity to make our traditional cake.

My grandma made this cake for most family birthdays for as long as I can remember. It is truly my all time favorite. This year I made cupcakes and decided to try out a new recipe for the cake. Truth be told, grandma always used a boxed chocolate cake mix. And I had a box of Duncan Hines Devil's Food cake on hand. But I wanted to make it a little extra special and I found a version on Duncan Hines website that called for sour cream. (On a side note, I was browsing the Duncan Hines site and saw a lot of great recipes, several of which I bookmarked.)

The cupcakes baked up nice a full with a soft springy texture to the touch. My batch only made 18 cupcakes (rather than 24) because I think I was a little generous filling them. The sour cream makes the cupcakes incredibly moist. Though I thought the cake didn't have enough chocolate punch so I decided to make some chocolate ganache to fill them.

Filling a cupcake is easy (this was my first time). Cut a cone shaped cylinder out of the center of each cupcake and fill with your desired jam, frosting, ganache or other tasty filling.


Once filled, place the piece of cake you cut out back in.


Since this was my first time filling cupcakes I didn't think to keep track of which cut out went with which cupcake.


But it really doesn't matter because you are going to cover them up with delicious frosting.


The ganache sets up and the center of the cupcake is just like a soft dark chocolate truffle.


I didn't have enough ganache for all 18 cupcakes so 6 of them went ganache-less.


The frosting is homemade cream cheese frosting with the zest of two oranges mixed in. If you haven't had chocolate and orange together before, you must try it. So delicious!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache and Orange Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe
Cake:
from Duncanhines.com

1 box of Duncan Hines Devil's Food cake mix
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sour cream
4 large eggs

Blend cake mix, water, oil, eggs and 1 cup sour cream in large bowl. Beat at low speed until moistened (about 30 seconds). Beat at medium speed for 2 minutes. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full of batter. Bake and cool according to package directions. Mine baked for 20 minutes at 350.

Filling:
Chocolate Ganache
from Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy

6 ounces best-quality semisweet (58%) chocolate
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup

1. Coarsely chop the chocolate and place it in a medium bowl.
2. In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat the heavy cream until scalding, or until the cream is steaming and tiny bubbles have formed along the edges. Do not boil.
3. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Let stand for 5 minutes, then whisk until smooth. Stir in the corn syrup.

Cut a 1/2 inch cylinder in the middle of the top of each cupcake and reserve the cut outs. Fill a pastry bag or ziploc bag with ganache filling and pipe about a tablespoon of filling into each cut out. Replace reserved cake cut out over the ganache filling.

Orange Cream Cheese Frosting:
1 stick of room temperature butter
1 8 oz container of room temperature cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 lb of confectioner's sugar
Zest of 2 large navel oranges

Beat butter and cream cheese together. Add confectioner's sugar in batches until completely combined. Beat in vanilla and orange zest. Spread a generous portion of frosting over each cupcake.