World of Warcraft: Tasty Cupcakes

These past few months several of my friends have been playing World of Warcraft again. A few nights out of the week I’ll see a handful of them sitting in a mumble (voice talk program) channel raiding. I’ll admit that my husband and I have been slightly tempted to join them but we keep reminding ourselves of our current game backlog. I’ll just entertain myself by watching the gorgeous cutscenes Blizzard produces for their games.

Since the game came back in my radar I started looking at the list of food players can make in the game. Immediately my eyes were drawn to the Tasty Cupcake. For a while now I’ve wanted to make a raspberry chocolate cupcake and this item fit perfectly. This recipe is time consuming because of the seed removal needed for the raspberries. If you want to save some time pick up seedless raspberry jam in replacement for the filling. I will warn you that seedless raspberry jam is rather difficult to find, so good luck and let me know where you found some if you do! I noticed while researching that the in-game art and the icon for these cupcakes are different. I decided to replicate the in-game cupcake because it’s my birthday today and I wanted frosting on my cupcake! But if you would like to replicate the icon instead of making frosting I would recommend doubling the filling recipe and use that for the top instead of making the frosting. Enough talking about these cupcakes, let’s get to the recipe.

Required Equipment: bowls, stand mixer (or hand), mesh strainer, spoons, saucepan, spatula, food processor
Serving: 24 cupcakes
Ingredients:
Cake
– 2 ½ cups flour
– ¾ cups cocoa powder
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 1 ½ tsp baking soda
– 1 tsp salt
– 2 cups sugar
– 1 ¼ cup butter, at room temperature
– 3 eggs, at room temperature
– 3 tsp vanilla extract
– ¾ cup hot coffee
– 1 cup sour cream

Filling
– 16 oz frozen raspberry, slightly thawed
– ¼ cup sugar
– 3 tbsp corn starch
– water

Frosting
– 8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
– 6 tbsp butter, at room temperature
– 1 tbsp vanilla
– 3 ½ cup powdered sugar
– 6 oz fresh raspberry

Preheat your oven to 350°F. In a small bowl combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set that aside for now. In the bowl of a stand mixer cream the butter and sugar together.

Once the butter and sugar are well combined, add the vanilla extract and eggs one at a time. Add half of the flour mixture to the stand mixer.

Pour in the hot cup of coffee and mix. If you do not want to use coffee feel free to add hot water instead. Add the remainder of the flour mixture and mix until everything is well incorporated. Finally add the sour cream and your cupcake batter is ready.

Separate the batter out into cupcake tins and fill about ¾th of the way up. Place in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cupcakes pass the toothpick test. Once baked, allow the cupcakes to fully cool.

While the cupcakes are baking and cooling, start working on the filling. Place the frozen raspberries in a mesh strainer over a bowl to collect the liquid as it thaws. After the raspberries have thawed out, pour the liquid into a measuring cup. Add enough water to reach 1 cup in total. Pour the liquid into a saucepan and add the sugar and cornstarch.

Place the saucepan over medium-high heat and mix the liquid until it thickens. This process will take several minutes. Take the whole raspberries and grind them up in food processor. Pour some of the liquid through a mesh strainer and press the liquid out. This will take some time and might have to be done in batches depending on the size of your strainer.

Make sure no seeds make it in the raspberry juice. Once you’ve strained out all the raspberries, combine the juice with the thickened sauce to complete the filling.

Take each cupcake and cut a small cone out of the top center. Cut the bottom of the little cone to make room for the filling. Add a good amount of the filling and then top with the cone. The frosting will cover up the cut you made.

In a food processor, take your fresh raspberries and grind them to a juice once again. Repeat the deseeding process like before.

In a bowl of a stand mixer, cream the cream cheese and butter. Add the vanilla and slowly add the powdered sugar in half cup portions.

Finally, add the raspberry juice and mix well. This frosting will be a little softer than normal. I did this purposeful because I wanted a thin layer of frosting on the top to imitate the look in the game. If you would like it to be thicker, do not add all the raspberry juice. Frost the cupcake and refrigerate the cupcakes until you are ready to serve them. Enjoy!