My favorite cookie used to be peanut butter cookies until I had a white chocolate macadamia cookie. In general, I don't like chocolate by itself and I hate white chocolate. In fact, macadamia cookies are the only things I eat with white chocolate in them. It's such a damn shame that macadamia nuts are so fucking expensive. A ½ cup worth was $3.50 and I ended up buying two bags because I plan on making these cupcakes again because.. well, they're white chocolate macadamia cupcakes!
This test batch was the first time I ever made mini cupcakes. I decided to start making my test batches as minis so I could share more and get more opinions. It turned out that mini cupcakes seem to work differently than standard-sized cupcakes. I had to experiment to see how much batter should go into the liners without them having muffin tops. There's nothing wrong with muffin tops, but the cakes look prettier to me when they're even with the liner and there's only a massive swirl of frosting visible. So, I found out that 2 teaspoons worked out for my preference.
The bag of macadamias that I bought where already chopped and since I was making minis, I thought it'd be a decent idea to crush the bastards into smaller pieces. In retrospect, I wish I had actually just left the nuts out of the batter completely and just pushed one chopped nut into a filled cup of batter. I believe I will try that next time.
I tasted a freshly baked mini cupcake without the frosting and noticed that the liner stuck to the cake so bad that it ripped it apart. So, I thought I would spray a small amount of PAM inside the cups before spooning in the batter into the second batch of minis. This fixed the problem fine, so I gotta make a mental note that sticks to start doing that. Even though the standard-sized cakes don't need it, I bet it wouldn't hurt to spray them with PAM either, just to make it and keep it a habit.
I had trouble trying to figure out how long they should bake for. My oven seems to be hotter than most because for recipes that asks to bake standard cakes for 20-something minutes only takes 13 minutes in mine. So, I figured about 8 minutes for the minis. It turned out that 6-7 minutes was close to perfect for my minis.
I also burnt the chocolate while I was trying to melt them in the microwave. I was expecting a smooth and creamy consistency, something that looked like melted marshmallows, but when my microwave burnt out and I started to stir the chocolate - I noticed that the chocolate was chalky in consistency & turned a toasty color underneath the creamy white chocolate. Apparently, white chocolate overheats much more quickly and easily than milk or dark chocolate. From now on, I'm going to have to melt white chocolate slowly with a pot of boiling water instead of a microwave so I'm forced to stand over it and babysit. I tasted the chocolate and thought it tasted fine and poured it into the frosting anyway, so I didn't get my snow-white frosting that I love so much, but oh well. That's what test batches are for, right?
R grading (B): I think my cupcakes are getting to boo because he ate many of them back-to-back, but maybe it had something to do with them being minis?..
B grading (A): She also loved them. The only comment she really made about them was that she thought the frosting was a bit too sweet. I wonder if me burning the chocolate for the frosting had anything to do with it's sweetness?? I doubt it, but it's a thought.
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