OMG White Chocolate Rasberry Cupcakes

I learned my lesson about not saving my recipes/taking notes/taking pictures. I THINK this is the last installment of picture-less cupcakes. It's probably for the best in this case: I made these to take to some of my best friends for a get together at someone's house and ended up rushing at the last minute to finish them. So they weren't my most shining work in the decorating department. I was also a bit apprehensive because one of my friends has baked the hell out of some desserts in the past, including some ridiculously good cupcakes and even a lemon cake with rasberry curd. Delightful. I was worried that these weren't going to be up to par, but I think they were worthy :) Here's the lemon cupcakes again to look at:

My OMG White Chocolate Rasberry cupcakes looked somewhat similar to these, except the frosting on top wasn't quite as... tall I guess... and had some rasberry preserves piped into the center of the frosting. Next time, I'll experiment a bit with a two-tone double flavor frosting. Probably half white chocolate and half rasberry cream cheese. Once again, I am obsessed with cream cheese frostings in any form. If someone starts a cream cheese frosting anonymous group, I won't attend. Because I'm definitely not breaking the habit until I go down in a blaze of cream cheese overdose glory.
SO. Here's the recipe I used for the cakes, courtesy of Baking Bites:

White Chocolate Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
4-oz white chocolate, chopped
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plus 1 tbsp milk (low fat is fine)

Preheat oven to 325F.* Line muffin pans with 18 cupcake liners.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a small, microwave-safe bowl, melt the chopped white chocolate by heating it in 30 second intervals in the microwave. Stir well with a fork between each interval and cook only until the chocolate is smooth when stirred.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in eggs one at a time, followed by melted white chocolate and vanilla extract. Working in two or three additions, alternate adding in some of the milk and some of the flour mixture, ending with a final addition of flour. Mix until just incorporated and no streaks of flour remain.
Divide batter evenly into prepared muffin cups.
Bake at 325F for 20-23 minutes until a tester comes out clean and the tops spring back when lightly pressed with a fingertip.
Cool on a wire rack.

*I read through the entire posting about these cakes on the Baking Bites website and learned a valuable tip that I am going to use in the future. White chocolate, according to Baking Bites, contains more sugar so it browns quicker. Thus, these cakes are baked at a lower temperature for a little bit longer. I'm going to use this next time I make the Amy Sedaris Vanilla cupcakes since they browned both times I've baked them.
 Anyways, my little blanco chocolate cakes shrunk like crazy after they cooled. I had one other flavor do this to me (my infamous Drunken Cupcakes) and I wasn't really sure why. Being the smarty-pants that I am, I figured it had something to do with the high sugar content since that was the only link between these and the cosmo cupcakes. And alas! I was right :) Higher sugar content in cupcakes will cause them to shrink upon cooling. As for a remedy- idk.

After baking, I filled them with seedless rasberry preserves- straight from the jar. It made a terrible mess, but it was so worth it. I wanted to try to use my Wilton filling tip that I have, but it didn't work out so well so I used the tried-and-true method of cutting out a cone of cake with a paring knife, filling with preserves, and replacing the removed cone of cake. Now, the cake on this one was very sticky which added to the mess. But the texture was great to eat. Just not fun to get all over your hands in combination with preserves.

I topped them with some white chocolate cream cheese frosting from the same site and the same post:

White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
4-oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1-oz white chocolate, melted and slightly cooled
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tsp milk or cream
2-3 cups confectioners’ sugar

In a large mixing bowl, cream together cream cheese, butter and melted white chocolate. Beat in vanilla and milk, then add in the confectioners’ sugar gradually until the frosting reaches your desired consistency (make it a bit stiffer if you wish to pipe it onto the cupcakes instead of spreading it with a knife).
Spread frosting onto cupcakes with a knife, or transfer to a pastry bag fitted with a wide tip and pipe onto cooled cupcakes.

I'm pretty sure this is the recipe I used but I'm not positive. If this is the one I used, I doubled it and it was still barely enough frosting so I couldn't pipe it all pretty even if I had enough time. It took a bit for the chocolate to combine well with everything else because of the consistency (I used Ghirardelli baking chocolate) and I was sweating it out for a moment, thinking I completely screwed up the frosting and had no time left to come up with an alternative. But it worked out, whew. I think the cream cheese in this case served to balance out some of the sweetness of the white chocolate. After spooning it on the cakes, I basically injected the center with some of the preserves for an added burst of flavor. These were delicious and one of my favorite flavor combos ever.

My parents have requested some cupcakes for Christmas Eve (my first Christmas since the year hubby and I met that we get to spend Christmas Eve AND Christmas day together!!!! Hooray!!) so I figured I would make some peppermint mocha ones. I'll have to make two separate batches for once because my dad doesn't like coffee and my mom isn't much of a fan. So I'll make one chocolate batch of cakes and one mocha batch (half each). I think I'll tweak the recipe I used for my pomegranate matcha cupcakes (blog entry to follow) because there was a higher liquid content (which I will take into account for the added coffee) and the texture was quite nice. Maybe too airy for these: I feel like they need to be dense and rich. I'm going to top these suckers with some delicious white chocolate peppermint frosting and garnish with some candy canes, crushed starlights, or whatever else I figure out. These will be easy to decorate :) I also saw an idea to stick a York peppermint patty in each cupcake before baking. It sounds like a hell of a mess to eat, though. But I'll be sure to record my recipe AND take photos. Promise!! My mouth is watering now...