Chocolate Birthday Cupcakes!

Today, my oldest chic turns six! I can't believe how fast these six years have gone! And how much my life has changed in such a short amount of time. I really love to celebrate the chics' birthdays. I hope that I make them feel special every day, but I can really go overboard on their birthday and not have to feel guilty about it!

The beloved Kindergarten teacher and I decided that because the Valentine's party was scheduled for the day of her birthday, we would celebrate a day early so I could bring cupcakes and not put the kids into a complete Valentine's party AND birthday cupcake sugar induced coma. The chic loves chocolate cake and her favorite has become Gourmet's Double Chocolate Layer Cake. Who am I kidding? This cake is everyone's favorite. The little heading to the recipe states that some of their staffers swooned over it, and I always think that's funny cause I actually have had people swoon after taking a bite. It is THAT good. It is the ULTIMATE chocolate cake. Really! The ULTIMATE!

(This is what the cake looks like in "cake form". This was for Mother's Day last year.)

So, anyway, there was no question about which chocolate cake recipe I would be making for her classmates. At least to her...I was unsure. First, I had never made the cake into cupcakes and I know that it's really just a time adjustment, but still... and then there's the frosting. It's a ganache frosting. Love the ganache frosting, and on the cake, it's glossy and smooth and gorgeous, but on a cupcake, it wouldn't be very pretty. I told her that I would make buttercream to top the cupcakes, but she insisted on the ganache. We were at a standstill for about a week until I came up with a compromise...I would top the cupcakes with buttercream and fill them with the ganache. She agreed.


I wasn't sure how this would turn out, so I made a few extras to test. I have to admit that I didn't think that anything could top that chocolate cake recipe, but I think the addition of buttercream and the surprise of the ganache filling did just that. They were so so good!

I also made some chocolate "6"s to stick into the top of each one. The chic didn't say much about them (after all, she's eaten this cake many many times) but the pictures that the beloved Kindergarten teacher sent say it all...the kids loved them!