Cupcakes Spectacular 2008 - Donut cupcakes with marshmallow frosting

Arfi at Homemades is hosting a new blogging event - Cupcakes Spectacular 2008. This event requires you to make any kind of cupcake and decorate it with frosting or icing so that you end up with cupcakes that are edible, pretty and SPECTACULAR!

With that in mind, and inspired by the donuts and coffee cupcakes made by Cheryl at Cupcake Bakeshop, I decided to make donut cupcakes with marshmallow frosting. An additional motivation behind my choice is that the wonderful Ash was leaving work, and I wanted to make a leaving "cake" that would match his tastes. I knew that Ash likes (a) chocolate cake; (b) donuts; and (c) marshmallow frosting. Accordingly, I borrowed from several sources to produce these donut cupcakes with marshmallow frosting especially for Ash.

For the base cupcake, I chose chocolate mud cakes used as the base for the Florentine Cupcakes from The Australian Womens Weekly Cupcakes cookbook:

The recipe to make 24 of these cupcakes is as follows:

120g chopped dark chocolate

1 1/3 cup water

180g softened butter

2 cups brown sugar

4 eggs

1 1/3 cup sifted self raising flour

4 tablespoons sifted cocoa powder

2/3 cup almond meal

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius, and line 2 x 12 hole muffin pans with cupcake cases.

Place the chocolate and water in a saucepan and melt together over low heat until it forms a smooth "sauce". Beat the butter, sugar and eggs together until "fluffy". Fold in the flour, cocoa, almond meal and chocolate mixture, then spoon into the cupcake cases. Bake the cupcakes in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes, then remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

To crown the cupcakes, I made mini baked donuts using the recipe from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks, which can be found here. I won't reproduce it, as I think one in every four or so bloggers has already made these. I used the top of a champagne flute to cut out the donuts and the lid of a screw top wine bottle to cut out the donut holes. When you first cut them out, you think that the holes are way too big, but it is surprising how much the holes close up during baking. I ended up with about 24 mini donuts using half of Heidi's original recipe.

I was initially going to toss the donut holes, but then I thought that was too wasteful (given they comprised the majority of the dough!). I am glad that I didn't - the donut holes were delicious, and were just as popular as the cupcakes with my colleagues:

To frost the cupcakes, I made marshmallow frosting from the Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook and piped it onto the top of the cakes. I don't think I heated it for long enough, as mine ended up a little grainy, but still tasted delicious.

Here is the frosting recipe:

3 egg whites
480g white sugar
3 teaspoons light corn syrup (I used glucose syrup)
cream of tartar
150ml water
3/4 teaspoon vanilla essence
pink food colouring

Place the egg whites. sugar, glucose syrup, cream of tartar and water into a metal bowl and beat continuously with an electric hand mixer over a bowl of simmering water until the mixture forms soft peaks. Remove the frosting from the heat and add the vanilla and enough pink colouring to colour it your preferred shade of pink. Beat the frosting until it forms stiff peaks, then pipe onto the cakes in a swirl pattern.

I topped each frosted cupcake with a mini donut. Here is the end result:

Thanks to Arfi for creating and hosting this event, and do check the SPECTACULAR roundup of cupcakes from all over the world here. (You won't be sorry.)