Sweetness for my Sweetie

chocolate souffle cupcake with mint cream
 Gold Snake Plate by my daughter, thrown & fired to cone 5 with robins egg blue glaze and gold embellishments

My husband is a York Peppermint Patty lover.  I’ve made different versions of cakes and tortes with the minty-chocolate combination, and they never get fed to the chickens, but none have ever wowed me.   Today I went looking for something a bit more interesting.  I found this recipe for chocolate souffle cupcakes with mint cream on one of my favorite cooking blogs, Smitten Kitchen.  I like that they are flourless, and the promise of rich without being too sweet sealed the deal.   My daughter and I gilded the lily a bit with the white chocolate curls and chocolate hearts…but it is after all Valentines Day! They were a big hit with my sweetie (and the rest of us managed to choke a few down  😉 ).

While I’m not a huge sweets fan, I do appreciate a well crafted dessert.  This fit the bill nicely.  The addition of instant espresso powder tamed the sweetness much to my liking.  The only cupcake papers we had in the house were for minis.  Drat.  I found a couple of cupcake papers in my box of cookie cutters, but they were badly flattened out.  Getting them into the cupcake tin was a challenge…we needed to re-pleat them which was the most time consuming part of the whole endeavor.  I’d give the recipe a high five for sure.  Even though the term souffle sounds a bit intimidating, it really was not a difficult recipe to pull off.  If you’ve got a peppermint patty lover in your life, give these a go.

chocolate souffle cupcakes with mint cream.
serving piece: Hand built earthenware, glazed with Amaco gunmetal glaze, fired to cone 05

I hope you all had a bit of sweetness in your day too!

*anna