Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

These sounded simple enough.

Life has been pretty busy this last couple of weeks with final projects, massive rewrites on my dissertation proposal, and holiday parties. I have learned one new thing about holiday parties this season:

When you are asked to make some kind of food to take, don't make very much. The more food there is, the more you will have to take home. I had planned to use the Christmas season to make lots of different cupcake recipes, with the idea that, by the time I had to start back into school, I would have knocked out a considerable amount of recipes, and be able to limit myself to one a week. Unfortunately, I've had some trouble getting rid of the last three batches of cupcakes I made, and I end up schlepping them from party to party.

As I write this, I have four different kinds of cupcakes in my tiny apartment. 83 total. I think I went overboard.

But this recipe takes the cake. So to speak. It starts out with a simple, one-bowl style chocolate cake base, to which you add peppermint extract. This was slightly complicated by the fact that I dropped an eggshell into the batter and had to use a colander to strain it out, which I did.

Then, it starts to get difficult. The frosting is a mint buttercream. It seems like I should have been able to add mint extract to a batch of Swiss Meringue buttercream. I'm sure there's a reason that Martha did not have me do that. It can't just be that Martha wants to make things extra difficult for people attempting this recipes. It can't. Because in order to make mint buttercream, I had to cook egg yolks and sugar with mint leaves and milk, and then whisk in egg whites cooked with more sugar.

Then, I added the butter and held my breath while my KitchenAid combined all the ingredients. At first, I wasn't sure that it would ever look like buttercream.

You'd think that I'd get over the fascination of watching my mixer churn out buttercream, but it gets me every time. But it doesn't end there.

For some reason, the only way Martha could think to finish off this recipe is to melt chocolate and brush it on the underside of a mint leave, chill it, and pull the leaf away. It was at this point that I started calling her by her new nickname "Stupid Martha." Clever, I know.

This process was complicated by the fact that I dropped my candy thermometer and broke it. This made melting and cooking things on the stovetop slightly more difficult.

After making this recipe, I have to say that, were I to make it again, I probably will skip the mint buttercream in favor of a mint cream-cheese frosting. It would definitely be easier, and I actually prefer the taste of mint cream-cheese frosting over buttercream anyway.

Here's a link to the recipe and the buttercream, which saves me typing it out and makes me feel less guilty about making so many of Martha's recipes available to the public.

As of Saturday night, these cupcakes have made an appearance at a work party, an ugly sweater party, and a baptism. If there are any left, I will be taking them to Mix and Munch tomorrow.