National Cupcake BackAthon: Mars Cupcakes

It's time for another BackAthon! This time, the challenge was to create a cupcake in honor of your childhood's favourite chocolate bar. No question, mine was (and is) the Mars bar. So I thougt of a creative way to stuff all of it's flavours into a cupcake. There are many recipes in the blogosphere it you search for Mars + cake, but none of it suited my needs. Melting some bars and putting this gooey messinto my cupcake batter - no thanks! I wanted to resemble each of the three parts of the bar in my cupcake. The filling had to be caramel, the topping with milk chocolate and the cupcake itself had to be this brown filling ...which is called candy cream. The recipe wasn't that easy to find as - of course - it's a secret. I only found out that candy cream is beatened/foamed (don't know if this term ist the correct one) sugar. I finally decided for a brown sugar cupcake recipe and added browned butter instead of normal one (because it's said brown butter intensifies the flavor). 

Mars-Cupcakes

Brown sugar and butter-cupcakes:

• 375 g all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 225 g  unsalted butter, browned**
• 300g  packed light-brown sugar*
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 50 ml buttermilk 

* The original recipe calls for 500 (!) g sugar, I found 300g were enough, but sweet as you like.

** For making the browned butter, look here.

Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Reduce speed to low. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the buttermilk.Fill tins and bake for about 30 minutes - only fill tins half otherwise the batter will overflow (it rises very much during the baking process).

Let cool and remove the center with a round cookie cutter, cut the top of and use as lid after filling (with the caramel cream).

Filling:

• about 12 tablespoons caramel cream/sauce (store-bought or self-made*)

* I usually make my own using the recipe from Trish Deseines book 'Caramel'

Topping:

• four small Mars-bars, frozen and sliced into thirds (frozen is better for cutting them)
  

 Milk chocolate cream cheese frosting 

• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon confectioners sugar
• 170 g milk chocolate (37% cocoa)
• 225 g cream cheese
• 50 g butter

Melt chocolate in top of double boiler over simmering water, stirring until just melted and smooth. Cool to room temperature. Using electric mixer, beat cream cheese, sugar and butter in large bowl to blend, then add cooled chocolate and cocoa. 

Assembling:

Top cupcakes with the cream cheese frosting using a piping bag - I used my brand new nozzle I bought two days before. Decorate with the Mars bar slices.