SRC - Tiramisu Cupcakes

Time for another Secret Recipe Club reveal,  this month I was assigned the blog Pale Yellow. April is my birthday month and with the reveal just a few days before my birthday and once I read that Tracy calls herself a baking blogger I went right to the cupcake recipes to find something sweet to make for my birthday dessert.  

Tracy has a lot of delicious looking cupcake recipes, I was torn between the Sangria Cupcakes and these Tiramisu Cupcakes.  In the end I went with the tiramisu as a good tiramisu is probably one of my favourite desserts, so those flavours in cupcake form sounded amazing to me.  

I have made many different kinds of cupcakes over the years, but there is just something about espresso soaked cake topped with mascarpone frosting and a dusting of cocoa that made these one of my very favourite.

Cupcakes:
3/4 cup and 3 tbsp cake flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp milk
1 vanilla bean
3 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs and 3 egg yolks

Syrup:
1/4 cup hot coffee
1 1/2 tbsp kahlua
3 tbsp sugar

Frosting:
1 cup heavy cream
8 oz mascarpone
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 tap vanilla extract
cocoa powder for dusting
chocolate shavings

Preheat oven to 325, line a cupcake pan with liners.

To make the cupcakes, place the milk in a saucepan, split the vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds, place the seeds and the pod into the pan.  Heat until simmering.

Add the buttter, turn off the heat, stir until the butter has melted and set aside.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, add the eggs and sugar.  Mix until combined.  Place the bowl over a pan of simmering water.  Whisk until the sugar has dissolved.  Put the bowl back on the mixer and whisk until the egg mixture is pale and fluffy.  Add in the dry ingredients.  Remove the vanilla pod from the milk and add to the cake batter. 

Divide batter between cupcake liners and bake for 18 minutes.

While the cupcakes are baking, make the syrup by stirring the kahlua and sugar into the hot coffee.

Once the cupcakes are baked, poke holes in each cake and brush on the soaking syrup.  Leave cakes to cool completely.

To make the frosting, whisk the cream to stiff peaks.

Beat together the mascarpone, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy.  Fold in the whipped cream and pipe onto cupckes, dust with cocoa powder and top with chocolate shavings.
 

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