It's been almost a month since my last post and I have bright new shiny additions to my little cupcake family. Lately it's been all about the toppings, adding a little something extra to give a plain jane a sort of Henry Higgins once over into a showy over the top center of attention... if you're into that sort of thing. So new in town are double decked out leaves, white chocolate and dark chocolate paired behind a teeny sugar cookie like a pair of good and evil angel wings. I find that they go very nicely with the neapolitan cupcake and strawberry buttercream frosting. To make the leaves you paint melted chocolate onto fresh mint leaves, let it dry and then very carefully pull the mint leaf off with a pair of tweezers. The trick is to have cold hands as the chocolate tends to melt easily which leaves (haha) you with a bunch of broken leaves you are forced to feed to your boyfriend.The second topping I've been going bananas for are the butterfly cookies. I believe the cookie is called a tuile and I refrain from saying it outloud because I don't know how to pronounce it. It is a very thin, lightweight, crisp cookie and you can do all sorts of things with it. To make them you need a very thin mold ( I cut out the butterfly shape from a plastic lid) and the batter needs to be chilled as well as the cookie sheet otherwise the batter won't spread evenly over the mold, it's so touchy. The important step is not to walk away from the oven because they bake in 2-3 minutes and if you go check your e-mail you end up with burnt butterfly outlines on your cookie sheet and spend forever scrubbing it off... These also go well with any cupcake and tend to take on the flavor of the frosting, but you can flavor and color the batter as well. I have some ideas for more designs which I'm hoping to try soon.
