Coffee Pecan Cupcakes with Mascarpone Cheese Filling and Coffee Butter Icing

Is the name of this cake too long? hmmm...

Got this English recipe for some time from MasterChef but didn't think of baking it because it requires quite a lot of ingredients which are not common in my "baking storage". Now that I've got half a tub of Mascarporne cheese expiring end of this month, and I happen to have some pecan nuts from the other day, I finally decided to try out this recipe.

It was originally a cake recipe and I've modified it into cupcakes. This is a very nutty cake with fluffy texture. Very suitable to be made into cupcakes. My only regret was the waste of cake which was necessary to accommodate the filling. I've learnt this filling method from Chockylit's blog (the step by step pictures are clearer in her blog if you want to know the details).





I was supposed to cut of a cone shape out of the cupcakes, flip it off and cut off the excess. But since this was a nutty cupcakes, I don't want to waste the cake and pecans, so my first batch was with the untrimmed top. Which was not advisable if you want an impressive cross section of the cake with more "defined" layer of filling. (it was also a bit difficult to "close" them up again because the fillings were threatening to overflow)







So when assemble my second batch last night, I'd cut off the access from the top and tried my best to fill up the centre with a generous helping of Mascarporne cheese filling. (I've actually added more after taking the picture below, so it was VERY generously filled). The cheese filling was delicious even when eaten alone, it's flavoured with coffee as well, giving a very latte taste. However, the filling gets "watery" quite quickly because I've reduced the amount of icing sugar. I believe a higher amount of icing sugar will be able to hold the form of the filling better, but hey, too sweet, what about eating "healthy" right? hehe...






After the filling, the cupcakes were covered with their respective "tops" again. (must make sure you put the respective tops side by side with their "body" otherwise you will have a hard time finding a fitting top, well, that's unless you are a terror jigsaw puzzle guru, you might find it enjoyable matching the tops and bodies.)





Finally the icing. I wanted to try out a new look for the finishing of my cupcakes. So used the sort of old fashion way of just spreading the coffee icing. But, I think it looked a bit erm, "plain". The icing was my usual butter icing flavoured with espresso.



So my second batch of cupcakes were back with my usual weaving, perhaps I should make this my "signature" cupcake look. Lastly, decorated with roasted walnut.

A box of these will go to my ex-boss. Samples for SSB, Little Bro (if he replies my sms) and Hobbes. I wish I can take a new cross section of the second batch cake to see if the fillings look more impressive, but I don't' have spare cupcakes for photo shooting, it's a very small batch of cakes.