tea party cupcakes

My sisters came over for a tea party recently. My husband and I made these cupcakes for the party, and then my sisters helped me frost them. They are Oreo cream and Nutterbutter cream-topped chocolate cupcakes and white chocolate raspberry cream and strawberry cream-topped yellow cupcakes. Because we spent too long shopping, we threw the toppings on it a bit of a rush. I didn't have a big enough icing tip for the cookie crumbs to get through, so after the white chocolate raspberry, we gave up on making them cute and just slapped the whipped cream on. I liked this effect with the cookie crumbs, anyway.

chocolate cupcakes (Baking, Dorie Greenspan)

1 C flour
1/4 unsweetened cocoa
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cube unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 C sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 C buttermilk
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Grease 2 miniature muffin tins and line with muffin cups. Preheat oven to 350.

Mix together dry ingredients (except sugar). Beat butter until soft and creamy. Add sugar and beat 2 min. Add egg, then yolk and beat for 2 min. Beat in vanilla. On low speed, mix in half dry ingredients. Add buttermilk and mix until incorporated.. Mix in remaining dry ingredients. Mix in chocolate.

Fill muffin cups with batter. Bake until cupcakes pass toothpick test.

yellow cupcakes (The New Best Recipes, editors of Cook's Illustrated)

1.5 C unbleached all-purpose flour
1 C sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
8 TB unsalted butter, softened
.5 C sour cream
1 large egg, plus 2 yolks, at room temperature
1.5 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 2 mini muffin tins and line with muffin cups.

Mix dry ingredients. Add butter, sour cream, egg, yolks, and vanilla, and beat until smooth and satiny, about 30 seconds. Scrape sides of bowl with rubber spatula and stir by hand until smooth and no flour pockets remain.

Divide among muffin cups. (This may take more than two tins, I'm not sure.) Bake until cupcake tops are pale gold and cupcakes pass toothpick test.

To top the cupcakes, I whipped a quart of whipped cream and added some vanilla. I left 1/4 unsweetened and added white chocolate raspberry ganache (1 lb. white chocolate, 1 bag of frozen raspberries food processed, simmered, and strained, and enough cream [started with 1/2 C] to make it goopy; I just added it to taste to the whipped cream). The white chocolate raspberry whipped cream needs work--more raspberry, less white chocolate. It came out tasting yogurty and not very raspberryish.

I sweetened the remaining whipped cream and divided it into equal parts. I stirred crushed Nutterbutters into one part, crushed Oreos into another, and food processed, heated strawberries into the last. The strawberries I used weren't very flavorful and didn't work well. The Nutterbutter and Oreo whipped creams were great, although they have to be eaten quickly or the cookie pieces go mushy.