Heavenly Cake Bakers: Iffy Chocolate Baby Grands

Rose calls her version of these cakes 'Designer' Chocolate Baby Grands. Due to some improvising and some bad reading of directions, that's not exactly what happened to me. They taste good, but there were some textural issues. The recipe is a three step process, beginning with cupcakes made from Rose's German Chocolate cake recipe, also the base for the recent ice cream cake.

The cake is an oil cake, and is soft and not ridiculously sweet, using only cocoa in the batter. I misread the instructions slightly, and instead of filling the cupcake wrappers less than half full, with 3/4 of an inch left over, I filled them 3/4 full. I should have caught on when I didn't have enough for all of the wrappers, but I just figured mine were bigger, as I didn't use the double foil wrappers Rose recommends. It was only when I realized that my last little underfilled wrapper had risen to exactly the right height that I took another look. This is baking before breakfast.

The next step was to poke a lot of holes in the cupcakes and soak them in a milk chocolate glaze. No problem there. I made a half-recipe of glaze because I was low on cream. This will be important later. With my lower cupcake yield, half was perfect.

The final step was the infamous Heavenly Cakes laquer glaze, which is made with gelatin for extra shininess. It is also made with cream, and I was now out of cream. Having already made the laquer glaze twice already this year, I decided that it was fine to experiment. I took some leftover ganache that was sitting around in the refrigerator, and added some gelatin, water, and corn syrup. The end result was kind of odd, like a very stiff chocolate pudding, although it tasted fine, these weren't the cupcakes I'd serve at a fancy event. I, however, plan to enjoy them very much. Several of you have been asking what fancy cake I'll have for my birthday. Behold.

UPDATE: I just ate one of these a few days later, straight out of the refrigerator, and it was surprisingly good in the lowest way possible, tasting of bodega snack cakes, a firm, glossy, stiff and chewy glaze. I kind of like them.