Yep, it’s cupcake time again.  Still.  Abby had a vision of what she wanted to make … and this is the result!

I had made a raspberry marble cake once, I think.  It was for my mother-in-law’s birthday many years ago (and I think I gave a slice to one of my friends who had their birthday on the same day – you know who you are!).  It was a chocolate-raspberry-vanilla cake, with raspberry puree through it and a chocolate buttercream frosting.  And it was yummy, but I remember it as being a little dry, so I haven’t really made it again since.  

The recipe is definitely not in the realm of my recent baking exploits.  It is NOT gluten-free, dairy-free OR refined sugar-free, but I’m sure it could become so if I tried hard enough.  But I don’t really want to – I’ve got so many other things I want to try!

But Abby had a dream, and I tried to help her accomplish it.  And her dream was to change it up a bit (I think she’s been spending too much time in the kitchen with me and my experimenting!).  So instead of a brown-red-white marble cake, she wanted a green-blue-yellow one.  Hmmm … And she had all the flavors worked out as well.  The blue would be blueberry flavored, the yellow would be lemon flavored and the green would just be a food coloring for the vanilla cake.  And it would be blueberry puree through it all.  And it would be in cupcakes, rather than a full cake.  And she wanted to have a white chocolate ganache topping, followed by a pink buttercream frosting.  Good to have a dream, I guess – it’s not unusual for me to come up with weird and wonderful combinations (cough!!).

So, here’s how they turned out:

They look pretty good, don’t they?  I must admit, I was a bit skeptical of the whole buttercream frosting on top of a ganache, I thought the frosting would slide off!  But Abby had seen it a number of times on Cupcake Wars and she was determined to try it.  And she did.

The verdict?  Grant said there was a lot of flavors going on in a little cupcake.  Abby said they were a little more dense than what she expected, but she still liked them, and so did all her friends that she gave one to.  I didn’t try it – it was a good practice for me to be in the kitchen and not be sampling everything all the time … this time it was because I didn’t want to get sick from the gluten and the dairy, but it was still fun hanging out with my awesome daughter.

Stay tuned for the next installment of changing my cake and bread recipes into cupcakes … I’m sure there will be more!

Until next time, enjoy cooking at home … with kids!

Sarah