Devils food cake with milk chocolate ganache

Yesterday I made a recipe from my "More from Magnolia Bakery" book. It's a Devil's Food Cupcake recipe. It's a wonderful and easy recipe. Very moist, kind of fluffy, nice deep chocolate flavor and quick to put together. This recipe uses cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate. I guess I can consider myself lazy but I'm always pleased when a chocolate cake recipe calls for the powder instead of melted chocolate. So much easier! The recipe actually calls for "Dutch process" cocoa but I did not have any on hand so I used a blend of King Arthur Flour black cocoa powder and regular old Hershey's cocoa. I also sprinkled some semi sweet chocolate chips on top before baking them. Instead of baking them in my regular muffin pans I used these little waxed paper cups that I purchase at the Japanese dollar store in downtown Seattle. I love these cups! They are pretty heavy duty so they can just stand alone on a cookie sheet. They also come in many cute designs. They would be perfect for crumbcakes. I use them for my cake recipes and muffin recipes. They are also wonderful for gift giving. But anyway, after I baked these cakes, I iced them with a THICK layer of milk chocolate ganache. My kids are more likely to eat the milk chocolate ganache rather than semi sweet. (Well, me too! I love milk chocolate!). This recipe would also be wonderful with a cream cheese icing, or a buttercream icing or a nice chocolate frosting. It's up to you! (Or you could be like my husband who prefers NO icing! Crazy!). These cupcakes can easily be overbaked. I removed them from the oven slightly before I thought they were finished baking. They were even sunk in a bit in the center after cooling but they are not underdone. They are wonderfully moist. In fact, I would prefer that they be a bit fudgier in the middle. I have made SO many chocolate cake recipes over the years - this one is definitely wonderful but it's not better than many many of them that I have tried. I probably have 6 or 7 chocolate cake recipes that I love and it just depends on what ingredients I have on hand that will be the deciding factor.

These are my Japanese dollar store waxed cups. These are excellent to have on hand.

Ready to go in the oven! I actually overfilled some of them and they overflowed. Luckily they were on a cookie sheet.

Milk chocolate ganache. Lots of butter, chocolate & heavy cream!

To get the layer of ganache so thick - I put on 1 layer and let it harden slightly then I put on another layer. It wasn't exactly flawless looking like a lot of ganache covered cakes. The ganache had gotten kind of fudgy in texture

Well, since this one was cut in half, it needed to be eaten. It was my lunch today!

Devil's Food Cake
from "More from Magnolia" cookbook

2 cups cake flour
1 cup unsweetened dutch process cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened (1 1/2 sticks)
1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Line muffin tins with liners.

In small bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda & salt.
In large bowl, cream butter until smooth. Add sugars, beat till fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the buttermilk. With each addition, beat until ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat. Add vanilla. Scrape down bowl to make sure ingredients are well blended. Spoon into liners - about 3/4 full. Bake for about 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. (I remove from oven when crumbs are very moist on toothpick).