Third time is the charm for Tiramisu cupcakes!

We had planned an Italian-themed dinner for Saturday night. The main entrees came out amazingly delicious, we made linguine alla carbanaro and chicken marsala. I'd like to take a moment to pat ourselves on the back for a successful dinner! Future blog entry about the entree will be coming later.

But the main point of this post is the interesting day I had on Saturday trying to make the dessert -- tiramisu cupcakes. I never thought I'd spend an entire day baking, and baking the same exact recipe! I had made the cupcakes a week before and wanted to tweak the recipe this time around. Here are my results:

Round number one - instead of brushing the cupcake, I decided to soak the cupcake in the coffee mix. This was a disaster. The cupcake became uber soggy and not edible.

Round number two - I decided to brush the cupcake with twice as much of the coffee mix. Again, over saturated the cupcake and had to toss out that batch.

Round number three - finally, success! Here's the final recipe.

Cupcake ingredients:

1 1/4 cup of cake flour (non self rising flour), sifted

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

1/4 cup of milk

1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise, seeds scraped and reserved

1/2 stick unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into pieces 

3 large whole eggs plus 3 egg yolks, room temperature 

1 cup cane sugar

Unsweetened cocoa powder for dusting

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. 

Line standard muffin tins with paper liners -- ingredients above make 12 cupcakes. In a bowl, sift together cake flour, baking powder, and salt. Heat milk and vanilla-bean pod and seeds in a small saucepan over medium heat just until bubbles appear around the edge. Remove from heat. Whisk in butter until melted, and let stand 15 minutes. Strain milk mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl, and discard vanilla-bean pod.

With a mixer on medium speed, whisk together whole eggs, yolks, and sugar to mix. Set mixing bowl over a pan of simmering water, and whisk by hand until sugar is dissolved and mixture is warm, about 6 minutes. Remove bowl from heat. With a mixer on high speed, whisk until mixture is fluffy, pale yellow, and thick enough to hold a ribbon on the surface for several seconds when whisk is lifted. Gently but thoroughly fold flour mixture into the egg mixture in three batches. Then fold milk mixture into the batter until just combined. 

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until centers are completely set and edges are light golden brown, about 25-30 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes. 

Coffee Marsala Syrup

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon of freshly brewed strong coffee

1 ounce sweet Marsala wine

1/4 sugar

Stir together coffee, Marsala and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Let cool. Then brush generously over the cooled cupcakes using up all the syrup. Let the cupcakes absorb for about 30 minutes.

Mascarpone frosting

1 cup heavy cream

8 ounces mascarpone cheese at room temperature

1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

With the mixer on medium speed, whisk heavy cream until stiff peaks form. In another bowl, whisk together mascarpone and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Gently fold whipped cream into mascarpone mixture until completely incorporated. Use immediately.

Dust the cupcakes with cocoa powder before serving. They also refrigerate really well overnight in an airtight container.