Wish Me Luck!

I know I've mentioned before how much I love Bakerella's blog because you've seen my attempts at her adorable cake pops. Well, not that long ago I saw her post about a cupcake contest hosted by Scharffen Berger chocolates where they give you a list of adventure ingredients to choose from and you must create your own recipe. Since I enjoy baking so much I figured 'why not?' and proceeded to do a trial and error experiment to see if I could come up with something worthy to submit.

The list of adventure ingredients are stout beer, ricotta, buttermilk, coconut butter milk or cream, saffron, molasses, adzuki bean, fresh beet, sweetened condensed milk, fresh or dried chili pepper, bee pollen, meyer lemon, almond flour, and sumatra coffee bean. I choose to use ricotta cheese and coconut cream in my recipe and I think it could actually be a contender, but even if it's not, I had fun playing in the kitchen.

The end result, and they were just as good as they look! If I do say so myself. So wish me luck, the prizes are pretty sweet!

Here's the recipe if anyone is interested in trying them out. And the site for the contest in case you're interested in doing some baking yourself.

Chocolate Ricotta Cupcakes with Coconut Ganache

Cake
3oz. Scharffen Berger 62% dark chocolate, chopped
1 cup unbleached flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup butter room temp.
1 ¼ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ cup ricotta cheese
1/3 cup milk

Ganache
½ cup coconut cream
3oz. Scharffen Berger 62% dark chocolate, chopped
toasted coconut

Preheat oven to 350.

Put chocolate in heatproof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Stir till the chocolate is melted and smooth. Remove from water and set aside to cool slightly.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside

Beat the butter and sugar in an electric mixer on medium speed until smoothly blended and creamy. Scrape sides of the bowl during mixing as needed.

On low speed add the melted chocolate till just blended.

On medium speed add the eggs one at a time, mixing till each is blended into the batter.

Add vanilla and beat until the mixture looks creamy and the color has lightened slightly.

Mix in the ricotta cheese until there is no white remaining.

On low speed add half the four mixture until it’s just incorporated. Mix in the milk. Add the remaining flour and mix until the batter looks smooth.

Let the batter rest on the counter for 10 minutes, then spoon into paper liners in a cupcake pan and bake for 20 minutes.

Once the cupcakes have cooled, put the remaining chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set aside. In a saucepan, simmer cream of coconut until it lightens in color and bubbles in the center of the pan. Pour over chocolate and whisk together until the chocolate has melted and is smooth. Spoon over cupcakes a few at a time and sprinkle with toasted coconut before ganache hardens.

Enjoy!!