Boston Cream Cupcakes #TheCakeSliceBakers

You've probably heard the name Boston Cream Pie at some point in your life. The immediate visual that comes to mind if you have never had this dessert is a creamy pie in a nice crust with maybe some maple syrup for flavoring or something. In fact, a Boston Cream Pie is a cake. Vanilla cake is sandwiched with a vanilla pastry cream and then topped with a rich chocolate ganache. It's a great combination of flavors and textures and a classic for a reason.

This month the Cake Slice Bakers are baking again from The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen, #atkcake, and our choices included Boston Cream Cupcakes. Being an iconoclast and not a lover of working with lots of pieces, I changed it to a small Boston Cream Pie cake, made using a 6-inch in diameter springform pan with tall sides, plus three smaller cakes made using mega-muffin pans- pretty close to Boston Cream Cupcakes. Two of those small ones were tall enough to split and fill, but the smallest on worked well for the original instructions for cupcakes, so I cut out a divot in the top, sliced off a bit of the point to make room for the pastry cream, then filled the depression with a tablespoon or so of the cream, topped it with the cake hat, then poured the chocolate glaze over it all. Here is what that one looked like:

I made this treat for Valentine's Day. Two of the little cakes went to a neighbor couple and the other went to another neighbor. Sweetie and I enjoyed ample portions of the large cake. It was delicious. This cake is not as fine crumbed as a pound cake, but still has a fairly tight crumb. It rose well and had a nice, mild vanilla flavor. The pastry cream, which I made with soy non-dairy creamer and non-dairy margarine, was wonderful...very smooth and creamy and strongly vanilla. I chilled it so that it would make a sturdy filling, which is especially important when you are cutting the cake. A too soft filling just squishes out as you cut.

The genius part of the ganache topping is the plain corn syrup. It really makes it easy to work with. Since I did use bittersweet chocolate as called for, the topping was a nice deep chocolate contrast to the vanilla in the cake and pastry cream.

I decorated the iced cakes with tiny sprinkles in heart shapes. It made a really pretty Valentine's Day gift for Sweetie, who loves Boston Cream Pie!

Because the book that this recipe comes from isn't in print yet, I'm not including the recipe. It should be published next month. You are probably going to want to buy this if you make a lot of cakes, or just want recipes for cake that are tested and perfect! Sometimes the instructions seem different, like cutting the fat into the flour for a cake like this. It's a technique often used for pie and biscuits, but not that often for cake. I'm sure it helped this cake rise so nicely and probably contributed to the tenderness, too.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The choices this month were Chocolate-Espresso Dacquoise, Blitz Torte, Bananas Foster Cake, and Boston Cream Cupcakes.

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