Hi guys! I'm Laura Vitale, and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen, I'm turning one of
my favorite doughnuts, which is a Boston Cream Doughnut, into a cupcake. We are making Boston
Cream cupcakes.
Let me know if you do want to see my Boston Cream Doughnuts, comment down below and I
will definitely bring those to you. But, these are one of Joe's, my husband Joe's, favorite
treats, because it's got a really moist cupcake, it's got a vanilla custard and it's got a
chocolate ganache, I mean come on.
They are perfect for parties, perfect for get togethers, kids love them. I mean, enough
said.
The ingredients you will need to make the actual base, you know, the cupcakes are very
simple ingredients. You will need all purpose flour, baking powder, some salt, unsalted
butter that has been softened at room temperature, a couple of eggs, some granulated sugar and
vanilla extract and some milk.
That's it.
Simple and easy.
Now I've got my oven preheated to 350. I also have a non-stick muffin tin or cupcake tin,
sprayed really well with non-stick spray. Now normally I would use cupcake liners. I'm
not going to do that because I'm going to cut these in half, and I tend to think there's
a little bit of a waste, it just doesn't look as pretty when I take off the wrapper to cut
them.
It just looks neater if I just take them from here, you know, and cut them. But you can
- if you don't have a non-stick muffin tin, I would definitely suggest using liners.
Okay, in this bowl, I've got my dry ingredients pretty much mixed in already, just with my
baking powder and my salt.
Now in this bowl I am going to cream together my unsalted butter and my sugar. Now if you
follow me on my vlog channel, which you definitely should, then you know I recently got this,
I ordered this. It's a, it's a cordless mixer, so I figured we would give it a shot.
I'm just going to cream this together. It'll take, I don't know, a couple of minutes maybe.
To my creamed butter and sugar I'm adding eggs and some vanilla extract. Now I just
switched to a hand whisk because I am impatient and that just takes a little bit longer than
I'm unwilling to spend making a cupcake batter, but it's really handy because it doesn't need
a receptacle for you to plug it in.
So I'm just going to cream these together.
I'm going to add my milk, do not panic if your mixture looks like it's curdling, it
just does. But then, the second you put in your dry ingredients all will be well with
the world, and isn't that always what we want. I'm just going to take my - whatever butter
and sugar I have on my spatula, I'm just going to take it off because I want that in my batter.
So just whisk that until it's nice and combined.
That looks so good.
Okie dokie, shake that all off there.
Take your spatula, run it along the sides just to get everything incorporated. And now
what I'm going to do is I am going to fill my muffin liner - my muffin tin - with my
batter. And I always use a handy dandy ice cream scoop as you all know, just because
it makes life really easy, all the cupcakes or muffins, or whatever you are using this
for, they all come out about the same size, which is great, because that means they all
will bake evenly, so you don't - you're not going to have any that are too cooked and
some that are not cooked enough, and you know, all that fun jazz.
Okay, now these are going into your preheated oven at 350F for about, I would say, anywhere
between 15 to 20 minutes, just check on them. It should be done around the 18 minute mark,
and then you're going to let them cool completely. But as soon as we pop these in, we're going
to make the vanilla custard. it's going to go in between - I mean it just, it's outrageous,
let's be honest.
Now, for the cream I am making my Nonna's crema de casa, which is just her traditional
cream that she uses for pretty much anything and I made a bigger batch of this for my fruit
tart that I did with her fruit tart with her while we were in Italy.
This is just a smaller - smaller amount, because we don't need as much. So it's really easy
and really simple. In this saucepan I'm adding all my ingredients which is some whole milk,
egg yolk, and I've got sugar, flour and a pinch of salt. And I am going to whisk this
to combine it with my little silicone whisk. And I'm using this whisk, I've got a lot of
questions why I'm using the red whisk in my saucepans, and it's just because this is a
silicone whisk and I don't want to use like a wire whisk or anything like that, because
it will scratch the bottom of my pan, and I don't want to do that.
So, once you have everything mixed in, I'm going to add in - this is vanilla paste, you
can use Vanillina, or you can use vanilla extract of course. But because I want this
to be pretty strongly vanilla flavored, because a lot of people use, an instant vanilla pudding
for this. I don't like to do that because I don't think it truly tastes that good to
be honest, I always like to make my own, because I like to control what's in it.
I am just going to cook this over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens, and
it will only take, I don't know, 7 minutes or so, so keep an eye on that, and then I've
got a bowl with a sieve because I am going to strain this once it has thickened beautifully.
You can see that has thickened beautifully.
Now what I'm going to do, is I'm just going to pass this through a sieve because any of
the little lumps of flour that didn't get mixed in well, well, we're going to eliminate
them, they're not going into the finished product because we are going to pass this
through a sieve.
And that's really easy, I mean, I just take my wooden spoon and swoosh it around, I mean
it smells fantastic, I mean, you do not need to use instant anything when you can make
your own crema de casa that quickly and that easily. And you see in there, you've got little
lumps there of flour, that's why I strain it, because I don't want to be able to get
- I don't want that that in my finished product. I want a smooth, smooth custard.
Okay.
Now what I'm going to do is I am going to cover this with plastic wrap, but it's really
important that the plastic is actually touching the surface of the cream, because that way
it helps prevent the cream from, you know, creating that crust on top of the cream. It's
almost like the skin really.
I'm just going to do that, pop this into the fridge until it is completely cooled, and
that will take a couple of hours, the muffins - the muffins - the cupcakes are baking, and
they will take a couple of hours to cool completely, and we are well on our way to making amazing,
amazing, Boston Cream Cupcakes.
My cupcakes were in the oven for 18 minutes, they've cooled completely. My cream is in
the fridge, it's ready to go, so it's time to make the ganache topping. I've got some
semi-sweet chocolate chips here, and some hot cream. This is heavy cream I just kind
of warmed up in the microwave, just to make life easier on myself, and I'm going to let
that sit there just like that.
And then just for a couple of minutes, because what is going to happen is the hot cream is
going to perfectly melt the chocolate when we go in and stir it all in, it's going to
be perfect. So, I'm going to let that sit there, I'm going to let it cool for just a
couple of minutes, I'm going to get my little cake stand, and we will get ready to put these
things together.
After a couple of minutes you are ready to stir this like crazy. You can see it start
to change color, starts to go a weird brown color and then, the more you stir, the more
the chocolate melts, and the more glorious it looks. Look at that. I mean that took what,
I don't know, a couple of seconds? Now I'm just going to set that aside, because I want
to kind of want to let that sit and set for a few minutes.
In the meantime I've got my cold cream, and I've got my cake stand, and I'm going to show
you how this goes. I'm going to take each cupcake. I'm going to cut it in half, like
so.
Now you don't want to add too much cream, because it then ends up being just a giant
mess, and what you are essentially making is a little cupcake sandwich.
I'm going to put that right over there, and I'm going to continue to do that until they
are all done.
This one is going to be my personal little cupcake, so I'm just going to - make sure
that you don't put too much cream. Also, if you don't want to cut them in half like I
did here, what you can do, is you can hollow out the center and just squeeze the cream
in with a pastry bag. I'm not going to do that, I like the look of how they look when
they are cut, because it reminds me more of a Boston, you know a Boston Cream cake, that
is why I do it this way.
Then you take the ganache, which has been sitting for a couple of minutes. Now I just
take some, and all, I literally just spoon it on top, and I just swirl it, and I let
it go where it wants.
The point of this is, exactly that, it does what it wants, it looks pretty, it's, I don't
know, I just like the way things look, and the way they want to look. I just don't do
things too perfect, I don't try to make things look perfect, I just like for things to look
homemade, and not like you tried too hard, do you know what I mean?
That's why I just, I just like to do that.
Kind of force it a little bit, to cover on all four sides, but, the end of the day, let's
be honest here, it's going right in your mouth, right in your belly, because that's what matters.
That's what people are going to do with it. They really don't care if you brush this on,
piped it on, whatever.
Just doing my last little one here.
Ohhh.
I'm just going to cut this in half so you can king of - Can you hear the baking angels
singing?
I didn't put too much cream in there, otherwise it will kind of make a mess, but look at that.
Phenomenal.
That truly is a perfect ending to any occasion, they are sweet, but not too sweet.
The homemade vanilla cream definitely shines through. The cupcake itself is just perfectly
sweet, nice and moist. The chocolate is just the thing that just rounds everything together.
The recipe will be on LauraintheKitchen.com. If you make this recipe, please make sure
you tweet me a picture. You guys know I pretty much retweet any picture that comes in, I
always love seeing things you recreate. Please send me a picture on Instagram, Facebook,
Twitter, whatever, I always love being able to interact with you as much as I can.
I hope you've enjoyed spending time with me and I will see you all next time. Bye bye!