Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

As I've mentioned before, I'm a chocoholic. The boyo doesn't understand it - to him chocolate is too heavy, too rich, too ... oh darn, I'm drooling. Needless to say, when I ran that poll, he agreed with the majority of you and voted (audibly) for fruit cupcakes.

But after all was baked and done, I couldn't get the mint chocolate cupcakes out of my mind. I love the mint-chocolate combo, but it is strong, and it's definitely not an overwhelming preference of the masses. So I pace myself - about one mint recipe every few months. It was due time though, and this recipe demanded to be made. The cupcake base is dense and fudgy, with a mint chocolate ganache filling you can smell a mile away. The peppermint buttercream isn't as light as the lemon, but it's much sweeter to counter the dark chocolate that permeates the treat. The garnish is an Andes mint sliced in half diagonally (using the dip-knife-in-hot-water-and-wipe-dry trick).

One thing I noticed when packing these up: compared to the angel food, these weigh a ton. They are indeed a very filling dessert - after taking the cross-section picture, I had to eat the subject (of course, mustn't waste!) and half that would have been plenty. It was absolutely delicious though and I still have the mint lingerings on my tongue.

Recipes are from Chockylit's Cupcake Bakeshop - I used this recipe for base then got the frosting and ganache recipes from here.