Boston Crème Cupcakes
Leave a commentOctober 24, 2012 by FHElessons
These cupcakes are seriously the most delicious cupcakes in the world! I served these at a party for my teenaged daughter, and I could hear her friends absolutely screaming in delight as they bit into them! If you’re looking for a way to bribe your teenagers to attend Family Home Evening with a good attitude, these cupcakes are definitely the way to go.
First off, I’m going to give you my super secret recipe to make cake mix from a box taste like it’s Nothing Bundt Cake. If, in the future, you start to see this recipe all over the internet, you will know that this is MY ORIGINAL RECIPE, and anyone else who publishes it is a plagiarizer! This recipe works wonderfully with Pillsbury cake mixes. It actually makes Duncan Hines mixes a little TOO most. They still taste delicious, but they tend to fall in the center.
The cupcakes made this way are so deliciously wonderful that they taste great without any frosting at all. Seriously. When I made this last batch, we ate 1/3 of the cupcakes before I could even get the filling made. We just ate them plain, no frosting, nothing. They’re that good. You can use the cream cheese and sugar addition to make any flavor cupcakes you make taste fantastic. Here’s the recipe:
Boston Crème Cupcakes
Step 1 – Bake the cupcakes.
Cake Ingredients:
- 8 oz. cream cheese (softened)
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 boxed yellow cake mix
- Eggs, water, & oil called for in the mix instructions
- 1 extra egg
(By the way, if anyone knows how I can make a list of things single spaced without making them into a bulleted list, please let me know. I don’t know if it’s this WordPress theme that forces the double spacing on me or what, but it’s fairly frustrating!)
Directions: Beat softened cream cheese and sugar together until light and fluffy (about 3-4 minutes on high speed). Beat in the oil called for by the box. Add the cake mix and water and mix well. Add the eggs (including one more than the box calls for) and beat until well combined. DO NOT overbeat! Let batter rest while you prepare the pans.
Fill cupcake liners in cupcake pans 2/3 of the way full and bake according to the box directions. The additions above will increase your yield by about 3 cupcakes and may also decrease baking time by 1-2 min. Bake until center of cupcake springs back when touched lightly with a finger. Do not overbake. Let cool 5 minutes and then remove to wire racks to cool completely.
While cupcakes are baking and cooling, prepare your filling:
Step 2 – Make the filling.
Filling Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 Tbsp flour
- 2 egg yolks, beaten
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
Directions: Combine sugar and flour in a saucepan. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and the milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and coats a spoon well (about 5-7 min.). FYI, coating a spoon well means that if you dip in a metal spoon and remove it, it will be white with the mixture (the mixture will not just slide off of the spoon). By the way, I have also done this cooking step in the microwave in a glass bowl (1 minute and then 30 seconds at a time).
Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Cover tightly (put the plastic wrap right down near the top of the custard mixture so there’s not a lot of air to form a crust). Refrigerate until cold all the way through but not yet set. This takes about 30 minutes. Be sure not to let it stay too long in the fridge because you don’t want it to set and be too hard to stir.
Beat the cream until it forms soft peaks. Fold it into your custard mixture. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
Step 3 – Make the ganache.
Ganache Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 3/4 cup heavy cream
Pour cream into a microwaveable bowl and cook for 1-2 minutes or until boiling. You can also do this in a saucepan on the stove, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in the chocolate chips. Continue stirring until they melt completely. You can put the mixture back in the microwave for another 30 seconds or a minute if you need to in order to get the chips to melt. But make sure to stir it until it is completely smooth and no lumps of chocolate are left. Let cool while you fill the cupcakes. You want the ganache to be warm enough to be pourable when you use it to ice the cupcakes, but you do not want it to be so hot that it will melt your filling. By the time you finish filling the cupcakes, it will hopefully be just the right temperature. Stir it occasionally while it cools to keep it from forming a crust.
Step 4 – Fill the cupcakes.
Fit a pastry bag with a decorator tip designed for filling cupcakes. You can find one HERE. If you don’t have the long, skinny tip especially for filling pastries, you may be able to use whatever you have. It will just leave a bigger hole in the top of your cupcakes.
Fill the pastry bag with your filling mixture. Roll down the top of the bag to seal it, and fill the cupcakes by pushing the decorator tip into the center of the cupcake and down towards the bottom. Squeeze out a couple tablespoons of filling into each cupcake. You can tell when the cupcake is full because the top will begin to puff. Do not overfill or the tops of the cupcakes will split open.
Step 5 – Ice with ganache.
Place your filled cupcakes on a piece of tin foil or plastic wrap to catch the drips. Spoon enough of the cooled ganache over each cupcake to completely cover the top. You can use the back of the spoon to spread it a little if you have to. Give it some time to run out and cover the top. If you put too much, it will get very messy!
Step 6 – Refrigerate until ready to serve (if you can wait that long!).
Here’s what the inside looks like:
Here are some I made for my sister’s baby shower. The theme was “Little Man”, so I piped on those words along with some mustache shapes. You can find details for a complete “Little Man” baby shower on my other sister’s blog HERE.
Hope you enjoyed this recipe! Make sure to let your family know they won’t want to miss out on the treats at FHE tonight!
