After eating my lunch, I elbowed my way through the crowd that had swarmed around the desserts.  I stared at the table.  <gasp> It had an abundance of cupcakes, the most diverse assortment of beautifully decorated cupcakes I had ever laid eyes on!

The first cupcake I enjoyed was a deep, rich, red velvet with cream cheese frosting.  My second cupcake was a dark chocolate with an equally dark and creamy chocolate frosting.

I better stop now.  I can’t tell you how many I had (and still respect myself)!

To my surprise, I learned the cupcakes were made by a friend of mine who turned her passion for making cupcakes into a booming Milwaukee business.  The Milwaukee Cupcake Company makes, correction, crafts scratch-baked cupcakes. 

There are a number of classic varieties available, but it’s the unique and exotic that I can’t stop thinking about…

Here are just a few of the sensational cupcakes to choose from:

The Botanical Gardens
Delicate lavender rosewater cupcake, with orange zest, topped with fluffy vanilla buttercream, and sprinkled with crystallized sugar and lavender.

The Hog
Dark chocolate cupcake with baked-in bacon bits, dipped in luxurious ganache, and topped with bacon bits.

The Lake Park
White chocolate cake with a raspberry reduction ribbon running through it, topped with white chocolate cream cheese butter cream, a fresh raspberry and a white chocolate drizzle.

The Rishi Matcha
Green tea cake made with Rishi’s Matcha Japanese Green Tea, which is antioxidant-rich and award-winning.  The light, fluffy, buttercream is made with Rishi’s Sweet Matcha powder, which produces a beautiful color and delicate taste. Then it’s garnished with crystallized ginger.

You can order all you want from the Milwaukee Cupcake Company website, but if you need instant gratification, and happen to be in the Milwaukee area, visit their new retail counter (opening in May 2010) at 316 N. Milwaukee St. in the Third Ward… in the same building as the Coquette Café and Petaluna Floral.

I can’t wait to show off these beauties at my son’s upcoming confirmation party.  All I have to do is resist eating the whole darn tray before the guests arrive!

The staff here at Chocolate University Online have created a special 100th anniversary edition of this book and released it in a PDF download format.

In addition to the original text and 138 recipes, the book contains an all new introduction by CUO staff.  We also took each of the pictures and moved them to the same page as their corresponding recipes.  It’s much more convenient to see the picture right there rather than looking at various photo pages to get an idea of the finished product.

Furthermore, we added a great new alphabetical index.  Now if you know the name of the recipe you’ll be able to find it quickly.  That makes the book much friendlier than the original which, quite uselessly, listed all recipes in page number order.

The new version is for sale and immediate download at our Chocolate Store page.  Enjoy!

One those desserts that will forever stand out for me was the Molten Chocolate Cake.

Wow…

Yum…

Sorry for the pause.  I might have lost consciousness just now thinking about it.

Molten chocolate cake is a popular and luxurious dessert.  It is a combination of flourless chocolate and soufflé.

Sometimes it is called Chocolate Lava Cake (or even Molten Chocolate Lava Cake).

There is some dispute as to the inventor of the molten chocolate cake.  On the one hand, a U.S chef takes credit by exclaiming that he accidentally took a chocolate sponge cake out of the oven before it was done.  On the other, a French chef argues that such a dessert already existed in France.

In my opinion, it does not matter who invented it.  The most important thing is that it was invented!

Butter, eggs, sugar, and chocolate are the four main ingredients of a molten chocolate cake.  Typically, the eggs are whisked together with sugar to form a dense, thick paste while the butter and chocolate are melted together.  There is a lighter version that separates the egg whites so they can be whipped into a foam to create more lift when baked.

Have you ever heard the saying:  “A little too much chocolate is just about right?”  After eating a Molten Chocolate Cake, you’ll know what that means.

I should have purchased the recipe book from Royal Caribbean so that I could make their actual version.  But, alas, I did not.  Here’s another version that I hope you enjoy…

Enjoy!

Why is the cake called Devil’s Food?

Folk lore says that a group of Pilgrims that lived next door to a Chocolate House in Amsterdam in the late 1600’s, witnessed chocolate house patrons cavorting and making merry while they consumed chocolate.  The Pilgrims were convinced that chocolate was made from the devil.  They named chocolate “Devil’s Food.”   Later on, when dark chocolate cake gained in popularity, it was named Devil’s Food Cake for its sinfully delicious nature.

Devil’s food cake is moist, airy, and rich.  It is multi-layered and covered in lots of thick chocolate frosting.  Yum!

There are different variations of Devil’s Food cake such as Red Velvet, Red Devil, Waldorf Astoria Cake, and $100 Dollar Cake.

Red velvet cake has a more pronounced red color because the high concentration of baking soda caused a reddening of the cocoa powder when baked.  Today, red food coloring is sometimes used. 

Feeling a craving for Devil’s Food cake?  Here is a good recipe:

By the way, there is a National Devil’s Food Cake Day!  It is May 19.

If you enjoy baking cakes here’s a chocolate cake recipe book that might interest you.  It is published by Frances Moore of Painless Cooking.

By the way, the Devil’s Food Cake recipe above is not from this book.

For access to Frances time-proven recipes visit the Chocolate Cakes Recipes page.