Sasha's Kitchen: Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

I've been on a bit of a kick recently making pies (with the start of pie season), which had led me to try and create some pie themed cupcakes. Recently, I baked an apple pie and a strawberry rhubarb pie, followed by some fabulous key lime pie cupcakes, complete with a graham cracker crust. The key lime pie cupcakes were just like a bite of the real thing, packed into a cute cupcake. So I decided that I could also recreate a Boston Cream Pie in cupcake form. These were just as good too! There are four components - a shortbread crust, a vanilla cupcake, a basic pastry cream filling and a fabulous light whipped chocolate frosting. Its really hard to say, but these are pretty high up there on my list of cupcakes I've made in terms of taste. Another trick - when most people fill cupcakes, they cut off the top, add the filling and reattach the top. Yet, this often makes the cupcake a bit messier to eat. Instead, I used a fairly thin fitted pastry tip and poked it into the top of the cupcake and "injected" the pastry cream into the cupcake. This works just fun and as you can see from the cross section photo, distributed the filling well inside the cupcake.

Sasha's Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

Crust:

3/4 cup pulverized shortbread cookies

2 T sugar

3 T melted butter

Vanilla Cupcakes:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 stick of butter

3 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup of  milk

Pastry Cream Filling:

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

4 egg yolks

1/3 cups sugar

pinch salt

4 tsp cornstarch

Chocolate Fudge Frosting: (adopted from this recipe as inspiration only to do it with melted chocolate rather than cocoa powder)

6 T butter

4 cups confectioner's sugar

1/3 cup to 1/2 cup milk

3 oz melted semisweet chocolate

First make the crusts. Melt the butter and combine with the sugar and pulverized shortbread cookies. Line paper liners for cupcakes with about a teaspoon and press to form a crust. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes until it sets only.

To make the cupcake batter, combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. Beat the butter and sugar in a mixer until fairly smooth, for about two minutes. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Then alternate beating in the milk and the dry ingredients until smooth and well combined. Fill the cupcakes 3/4 of the way to the top, and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes (the time depends on your oven) until a toothpick comes out clean, but take out before you see any browning action on the cupcake tops, as you don't want to burn them.

Allow the cupcakes to cool while preparing the pastry cream filling. Warm the heavy cream in a sauce pan. Combine the sugar, egg yolks, salt and cornstarch in a separate bowl. Combine over heat until it thickens into a custard, and stir in the vanilla towards the end. Chill for about 30 minutes before using.

Using a fairly thin tip (but not a micro thin tip) pastry tip attached to a pastry bag, pierce the top of each cupcake and squeeze the filling into the center of the cupcakes, using my "injection" technique. Don't worry if some oozes out the top as you will be covering that with frosting.

Now, the best part of these cupcakes is the frosting. I have made rich chocolate frostings with cocoa powder in the past, which are great, but a bit too intense for my taste. This is just the perfect, light chocolate whipped frosting! Beat the butter with the confectioner's sugar for several minutes on high speed in your mixer. Add 3 oz of the melted chocolate and the milk and beat until a nice frosting forms. Add the milk 1/4 cup at a time until the frosting reaches your desired consistency. I added between 1/3 and 1/2 of a cup of skim milk. Frost the cupcakes using a frosting bag with a fluted tip and devour immediately!