You may notice that I am calling them high hat cupcakes rather than hi-hat cupcakes. This is simply because the English teacher in me refuses to cut corners. I made two batches of these cupcakes for Easter gatherings this past weekend. This was my first attempt at mastering this impressive form. I think I pulled off an okay final product. It was by no means the beautifully smooth mountain of swirly chocolate and frosting Martha Stewart boasts on her website, but it certainly tasted delicious. I definitely learned a thing or two that I will apply when I revisit these cupcakes in hopes that they will look just as lovely as Martha's someday.
For the cupcake, I used Martha Stewart's One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes recipe. It's a pretty simple recipe, and the cupcakes turn out moist and tasty, baking up with nice round tops.
For the first layer of frosting, I used a basic buttercream that I dressed up with some strawberry preserves and a touch of pink gel coloring to give it that Easter egg glow. I cut the tip off of a disposable pastry bag and swirled the frosting into tall peaks. I then gave the frosting time to set. If you have room, place the frosted cupcakes in the refrigerator to cool before you dip them.
For the chocolate coating on the frosting I melted one twelve ounce bag of Nestle Toll House White Morsels
in a Pyrex measuring cup
. It took about two minutes total to achieve the consistency I needed for coating the cupcakes. There was a recipe for chocolate dipped strawberries on the back of the bag. I followed the instructions for the coating, adding a bit of vegetable shortening to the melted chips to keep them shiny.I then took my chilled cupcakes and dipped them in the melted chocolate. I was initially worried that the sheer amount of frosting piled so very high on these cupcakes would not work well in a fully inverted position. How wrong I was. The frosting adhered to the cupcakes beautifully and even survived the dipping into the hot chocolate with ease. I quickly learned that if I wanted my coating to appear smooth, I would have to keep the cupcake upside down long enough for the excess chocolate to drip off back into the measuring cup.
The white chocolate, as it dried, turned out looking almost opalescent because it was just barely translucent, allowing some of the pink to show through. I tried coating one cupcake twice to make the chocolate appear more robust. This was a bit too much heat for my initial layer of frosting, and the lovely piled high design melted into more of a large, smooth hill. While this cupcake did turn a nice, opaque white, it did not have the swirl pattern indicative of a high hat cupcake. When I make these again, I will allow the cupcakes to fully cool in the fridge before attempting to dip them again.
The final product made a pretty centerpiece at our Easter meals. The chocolate cake was a delightful complement to the buttery frosting and the smooth white chocolate. The chocolate coating had just the right amount of firmness to make the texture combinations divine. I should have taken a picture of them cut open, but we ate them faster than we could photograph them.
For my next high hat experiment, I plan to use a butterscotch coating paired with banana cream frosting and a vanilla cupcake.
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