A week ago we had some guests over for dinner. I was making Italian and was a bit stymied about what to make for dessert. I tend to like making themed menus and always get stuck on Italian desserts, my favorite of which is zeppolis, but I was not willing to do the chore of deep frying, plus I needed to make my dessert in advance.
Among the guests were two kids—a second and a sixth grader—so I tried to think about what would have been an exciting dessert for me back in the day. With a little bit of surfing, I came across this recipe for Frosted Chocolate Malt Cupcakes. http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/frosted-chocolate-malt-cupcakes/8657664b-1648-4ef9-ade5-0369fc53aad7 I was relieved to see that the recipe called for Bisquick, since I only had bread flour and whole wheat flour on hand. I also happened to have a box of chocolate covered malt balls, which made the cupcakes dusted with malt powder even more impressive looking.
I did make a really cool discovery while making these cupcakes. I did happen to have a tub of chocolate frosting in my cupboard, but I wanted to be able to pipe firm frosting to top the cupcakes, and tub frosting is very soft and spreadable rather than pipeable. I added confectioner’s sugar to the frosting until it reached the consistency I wanted, which was just shy of two cups. The resulting taste was, surprisingly, not too sweet, but had a perfect bakery buttercream texture to it. Lesson learned! I will use this method again for sure.