Convenience store cupcakes-redone part one.

I barely made the cupcakes in time to commemorate my coworker's farewell. With preparation every night after work and an emergency frosting do-over in the morning, I was very tired by the time I was done. And cranky. Still, overall I am pleased with how they turned out.

I ended up doing variations of pre-packaged cake foods. The first one to be completed was the classic chocolate Hostess cupcake. My very first time making cupcakes as an adult was when my work was doing a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life. We had a bake sale, and I thought cupcakes would be the perfect thing to bring. One of the types I made was a variation of the chocolate Hostess cupcake. It was fun to revisit it four years later. They turned better this time around, but looking back on it, I am impressed with the effort I made the first time around. I had never made anything other than a packaged cake mix, and I remember messing that up at least once in my youth. But still I went balls out and made chocolate cupcakes from scratch, filled them, covered them with ganache and topped them with a white swirl. I didn't even know what ganache was.

So here is number seven on my quest to complete 26 cupcakes before my 26th birthday.

They got a little roughed up on the way to work.

I used this chocolate cake recipe from Kevin and Amanda. I don't follow any blogs religiously, but this is one I am always coming back to. Full of great ideas, plus Kevin, Amanda and their dogs seem so cute and likable.

The cream filling recipe was from Retro Desserts. I found it though Baking Bites.

For the ganache I used my old standby of 9oz semi sweet chocolate with 8 ounces of heavy cream. I topped it off with a royal icing swirl. This was my first time making royal icing. It made way, waaaaay, more than what I needed, so it felt a little wasteful, but I had to have the swirls. I ended up going with this recipe from Alton Brown.

Overall, these were delicious. The chocolate cake was nice and moist, the filling was creamy and the ganache was smooth and shiny. You can't really beat that. They were very, very decadent. I would say that they are so rich that you really can't finish one by yourself, but that would be a lie. But they are so rich that I could share half of one with somebody and not feel gypped.

These were wonderful -a little time consuming, but not incredibly difficult. The other cupcake totally made up for how easy these ones were. The tragic tale will be highlighted in number eight of my quest for 26 before 26.