heart shaped 40th anniversary boston cream cupcakes

My parents were married 40 years in September! Dave and I joined them for dinner Sunday night and I made Boston cream cupcakes from a magazine my mom bought. My dad had book marked the recipe for me since he knows about me and cupcakes :o)


The cupcakes are filled by cutting out the center and slicing away the "cupcake innards," then filling with pastry cream the putting the cupcake top back on. I was pretty sure it would work best with full sized cupcakes so I broke out my heart shaped pan and did the rest in minis. Since I do love minis so.

My only real issue was they're baked without wrappers so the glaze can run amok down the sides, but the edges got a little dark on some of the minis. :o/ Not sure if it was the pans, position of the oven rack or what, because it varied by pan, but most came out good enough!

I thought I'd try piping the filling in on the minis, but no luck, since the cake is denser to support the filling, I ended up "coring" and filling them by hand too. I think it was 1:00 am by the time I finished. Plus I got excited to fill the cupcakes since this was my first filled cupcake, and I filled them all before making the glaze, then realized the glaze is supposed to sit. wah.

Here's my play by play for filling:

1) Slice out cupcake center


2) Slice away middle and save to layer with pastry cream and chocolate glaze for parfait later! :oD


3) Fill!


4) Reassemble the cuppity cake


Fabulous! Here's how they look cut into.


They're best at room temperature so the filling becomes pudding like, but we kept them in the fridge, and it was really hard waiting until they came back to room temp before consuming. The minis especially, you can eat them in one bite. Totally make the effort to fill them with as much pastry cream as possible, that stuff is orgasmic and it's what makes these cupcakes extra amazing.

More in the flickr page, as usual, plus a bunch of fall baking I have yet to post!