Baking Up a Storm, Part Two

I could not rest knowing I had messed up something that I try to pride myself on doing somewhat well (baking).  So I went and bought all new ingredients and vowed to make these cupcakes correctly.   It started off well enough, and the brownie batter I made the night before was chilling in the freezer.  I crafted the cake batter with my lovely  yellow stand mixer.  I adore thee.

I spooned these yummy, much thicker batter into the muffin pans for try numero dos.

Then, I plopped those frozen brownie bites in the middle again:

Squish 'em down nice and tight for ultimate intermingling.

While those baked, I crafted the to-die-for frosting.  And, this is where f up number two comes in.  It started off well:

You don't want to know how much butter is in this frosting. Ok, five sticks.  It makes SO much frosting.  Enough for at least 50 cupcakes.

I had added the nearly entire can of unsweetened cocoa, butter, powdered sugar and nearly entire bottle of light Karo syrup and it looked yummy:

This is where I screw up.  Topher returned home from a couple of errands and I plopped my bag of chocolate chips with some butter in the microwave, not paying much attention to anything but my adorable hubs. I promptly set the microwave for 1:30 like I was melting butter.  Oops.

I burned the chocolate chips.

See how the top one is sort of rough and the bottom one is nice and shiny?  Top=burned, bottom=not burned.  Can't see? Here's a close up:

Poor Topher had to turn around and head right back out for a new bag of chocolate chips for me.  Thank you husband!

The frosting was NOT overly liquid this time, and was a lighter brown due to my different choice in cocoa powder (Ghiradelli instead of Hershey's Dark.  I liked it better!)

Don't you just want to lick the bowl? Now?

This time, they were less crater and more yumz.   The density of the brownie still causes some sinkage, but the pudding mix adds that much needed connector to firm up the cake mix.

So perfect together. Time to frost.

A wider slice in the bag this time, and yet, still doggy poo looking. Oh well.

Now, I'm going to turn it over to my cupcake porn. Enjoy.

Please go make these now. Trust me.  Amazing.

Oh, and cupcake fail number two? I made some Funfetti cupcakes and at first the batter was all weird and liquid.  I added some more flour, and they turned out fine, but I give up on making cupcakes for a while.

Happy Hump Day!