Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

 

Yum!  Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday.  For my office I made Chocolate Covered Strawberry Mini-Cupcakes.  After getting the idea for the dessert I decided that I wanted to make the cupcakes from scratch with real strawberries and that they would need a ganache for the topping.  I followed the Sprinkles Strawberry Cupcakes  Recipe.  I did the recipe adding 1/2 tsp baking soda and put in extra strawberry puree.  If you watch the video of Candance Nelson of Sprinkles Cupcakes making the cupcakes the recipe that they show has the baking soda included for whatever reason Martha posted the recipe with the typo.

The recipe is for 12 full size cupcakes I was able to make 48 mini cupcakes and 4 regular size cupcakes.  To fill the mini cupcake tin I used a sandwich bag with a very small hole in it.  Be careful not to overfill your cupcake tin, the first time I made mini's they didn't turn out so well.  I baked the mini's for 13 minutes at 365F and the regular size ones for 16 min at 365F.

After my cupcakes were cooked I made a strawberry chocolate ganache to go over them.  I did the following recipe

Strawberry Chocolate Ganache

3 tbsp strawberry puree

12 ounces of heavy cream

12 ounces milk chocolate chips

Add the strawberry puree to the heavy cream and let it set in the fridge for about an hour (while you bake the cupcakes).  Then put the strawberry heavy cream and the chocolate chips in a double broiler.  Use a whisk to periodically stir while the chocolate melts.  Then after the chocolate is melted and the heavy cream is entirely incorporated into the mixture lower the heat under your double broiler (enough so that the chocolate will cool a bit, but stay liquid).  

After the ganache was complete I dipped the tops of each of my cupcakes into it.  I allowed the cupcakes to cool and the chocolate to set slightly before storing.  I recommend storing them at room temperature.

If you have left over ganache you can store it in the fridge and then make truffles out of it the next day.  I recommend following the directions from Keegan Gerhard's appearance on 5 Ingredient Fix.

Everyone at my office thoroughly enjoyed the cupcakes.  They all disappeared during our Friday morning meeting.

One more picture of the cupcakes!