I'm told that I'm one of the lucky ones: I love my job. If my job were a food, it would be a ten course meal or a dessert it'd be the tasting course. Alas, I can't write an entry long enough for a ten course meal (nor should I be eating ten courses... though if you want to hear about my adventures in the Chicago Dining Scene, tell me how to use html to make a tab for it in my blog...).
Yes, my job. My job is divine. It's delectable, it's organized, it's neat, sometimes it's beyond chaotic, but it's always fabulous. Even when I'm at the office until 10pm and my eyes are crossing and I am starving and just want dinner and want the report to download, I still love my job.
On the outside, my job is just like any other job, I start at work at 9am and I leave at 6pm. On the inside, I do everything I love, but mostly I plan. It's in my job title: media planner. I do totally nerdy things like make pivot tables and format charts in Excel. But I also get to do fun things like figure out the best way to display the client's ads so that the target sees it and more importantly so the target wants to buy it. It's beyond interesting, but I don't think you're that interested.
Oh, I also get amazing perks that are beyond fabulous and I am forever grateful (if only because the base salary of a media planner is something like a bag of peanuts and postage stamps every two weeks). I do things like cooking classes at The Chopping Block (go if you can, the chefs are extremely knowledgeable, nice and patient. Some of them are also cute :) ), dinners at the newest restaurants in the city (again, someone people teach me how to make a tab for night life), lunch from the "It" place (hello, Grahamwich!) and cupcakes. We get cupcakes at least once a week at work. Cupcakes from Crumbs, Sprinkles, Molly's, Sweet Mandy B's, More (did you know there were this many cupcake bakeries in Chicago?). But this is relevant because my job is like a cupcake. Simple, easy to make, easy to understand, but also complex with layers to learn and with things ever changing.
But I love my job, how does that make this cupcake different. It makes it a chocolate (and gasp, I don't normally like chocolate cake.... don't tell my best friend, she'd disown me) stout (I always like stout) cake. I'd experimented with multiple types of cakes with beer in them. Always chocolate cake, but so many different stouts. The first I tried was with one cup of Guinness. It was dry. I don't know why, it shouldn't have been, but it was a shade below extra moist, divinely delicious. Then I made one with an Imperial Stout, also not the best. Good, but not great.
Then I researched my stouts and looked into it and realized, I'm making dessert. I should be using a beer that sounds more like a dessert. Chocolate Stout, Oatmeal Stout, Raspberry something Stout. I ended up using a Cream Stout, which I believe can also be called a Milk Stout. Perfect. This cake turned out to be the kind that was moist and decadent with the perfect amount of everything.
Then because my job isn't just a plain Jane kind of place, the cupcake needed to be filled. It needed to be filled with something out of this world. Normally for me, this means cream. But cream is too blase for a situation like this. Cream is too day-to-day. My job is extraordinary. It is a ganache. Again, easy to make, but sounds fancy and the resulting product is spectacular.
I went to the chocolate factory (Blommer's Chocolate) a block from my office (have I mentioned my job is great) and picked up a pound of bittersweet chocolate dots (similar to chips, but smaller and better for melting). It is important to pick up real chocolate, if you are buying it from a commercial store, buy a brick, I've read that manufacturers need to put more wax into chips to help them keep their shape. I don't know if this is true or not, but I can definitely tell a difference when using this chocolate. I also added a little bit of Jameson to the chocolate and cream mixture. Chocolate+Cream+Whiskey= Hello Happiness!
I used an apple corer (or a metal teaspoon) to dig out the center of the cupcakes and filled them with the ganache (using a frosting bag).
As if my job wasn't fabulous enough, I love the people I work with. They are the icing on the cake :)
And they are so FUN, we play on the same softball team, go out to baseball games, have dinner together and invite everyone to our birthday parties.
I topped the cupcakes with a fluffy, sweet, Bailey's Butter Cream Frosting. I used a star to pipe it on to the cupcakes and they turned out perfect. Easy and fun to make; even more fun to eat :)
Recipe to Follow
Happy Monday Cupcakes (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen's Irish Carbomb Cupcakes)
Stout Cake:
1 cup and 1 T stout (I used Sam Adams Cream Stout)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (straight from the fridge works just fine!)
3/4 cup and 1T unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream
Ganache Filling (Updated to double it, based on many commenters suggestions — thanks!)
1 1/2 c bittersweet chocolate dots (if you buy a brick of it, use about 12 ounces)
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
2 teaspoons Irish whiskey
Baileys Frosting
3 to 4 cups confections sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperatue (vital that it's room temp!)
4 tablespoons Baileys (if you happen to run out, you can add any left over heavy cream)
Special equipment: apple corer (I've used a metal teaspoon (measuring kind) before and it worked fine) and a piping bag (though a plastic bag with the corner snipped off will also work)- these are not the type of cupcakes you can just slather with frosting due to the filling
Make the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners. Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.
Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, rotating them once front to back if your oven bakes unevenly, about 17 minutes. I live in an apartment where it took my cupcakes 20 minutes to cook in a preheated oven- just keep testing them! Cool cupcakes on a rack completely.
Make the ganache (don't you love the way that sounds... gah-nah-shhh): Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until simmering and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth. (If this has not sufficiently melted the chocolate, you can return it to a double-boiler to gently melt what remains. 20 seconds in the microwave, watching carefully, will also work.) Add the butter (make sure it's room temp!) and whiskey and stir until combined.
Fill the cupcakes: Let the ganache cool until thick but still soft enough to be piped (the fridge will speed this along but you must stir it every 10 minutes). Meanwhile, using an apple corer, cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes. You want to go most of the way down the cupcake but not cut through the bottom — aim for 1/2 of the way. A slim spoon or grapefruit knife will help you get the center out. Those are your “tasters”. Put the ganache into a piping bag with a wide tip and fill the holes in each cupcake to the top. I have a hard time sometimes gauging how far to cut the hole- I usually do too deep in my first dozen and then have to scrimp on my second dozen. I've taken to just take the centers out of the first twelve and then filling them- if it seems that I have half the ganache left, I do the exact same thing I'd did before, otherwise, I make the hole shallow for the second batch.
Make the frosting: Whip the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, for several minutes. You want to get it very light and fluffy. Slowly add the powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time. Per Smitten Kitchen's Note, they learned from Martha Stewart that this makes the frosting less grainy and you don't have to add as much sugar.
When the frosting looks thick enough to spread, drizzle in the Baileys (or milk) and whip it until combined. If this has made the frosting too thin (it shouldn’t, but just in case) beat in another spoonful or two of powdered sugar.
Ice and decorate the cupcakes. [I used a star tip and made little "poofs" everywhere- the best part is, if your ganache didn't fill the cupcake enough, you can disguise the hole with frosting.
I've found even men & boys alike enjoy these cupcakes (i.e. men that say, oh I don't like sweets!, have been known to eat three or four in a sitting)
