My husband’s softball team, The Fast & Furious is in the finals for their softball league tonight and has their championship game.  I wanted to surprise Dennis and his team, so decided to make them homemade cupcakes.  If they win their first game, they’ll play a second game.  I figured they may need a little energy boost!  I started with Ina Garten’s recipe for her chocolate ganache cupcakes.  I needed to make the recipe about one and a half times larger than she calls for since I needed a few more than 12 cupcakes.  What I did was cream together 3/4 lb. of unsalted butter with a cup and a half of sugar.  Once this was light and fluffy, I added 6 jumbo eggs, one at a time.  I then added two bottles of Organic Midnight Moo (20 ounces each, from Trader Joe’s) chocolate syrup to the mix along with a tablespoon and a half of vanilla paste.  My cousin, Molly (the best baker ever!!)  introduced me to vanilla paste.  It is quite a bit thicker than vanilla extract, but you use it in the same way.  Ina calls for vanilla extract in her recipe, but I didn’t realize how low I was on the extract, so used my paste.  I always find vanilla paste at Home Goods.  I go into Home Goods for a little vanilla paste and come out with a new candle holder and magazine basket.  It’s a definite win-win for me.

After this is all mixed together, I added one and a half cups of all purpose flour and continued to mix, being careful not to over mix.  I lined a couple muffin tins with paper muffin cups and filled each about 2/3 full (this equaled two cookie scoops worth of batter). I baked the cupcakes in a preheated 325 degree oven for 30 minutes.

While the muffins were cooling, I made the Genache. I heated a half cup of heavy cream with 8 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips and a teaspoon of espresso powder in a double boiler and when the cupcakes were cooled, I spooned a tablespoon of genache on each one.  Enjoy!

The Fast & Furious came in 2nd place!  Nice job guys!!

Until next time, Kris