The cupcakes of disappointment

These look awesome, don't they? These are not the cakes I made.

Chocolate ganache filled cupcakes, with vanilla bean buttercream. Sounds good, doesn't it? What a delicious way to use up the leftover vanilla bean buttercream, right? WRONG.

Maybe it was my far-to literal following of directions (ganache made in the microwave: disapprove. Set ganache in fridge for no more than 30 minutes? Wrong again - it was still too runny). Or maybe I'm just not good at the fancy stuff. These were some of the most disappointing chocolate cakes I've ever eaten. They promised so much but didn't deliver at all.

Let's start with the way they look. This was my batter (with the dollops of ganache in the middle):

How was this batter ever going to turn into that black cake from the picture at the top? Even the ganache looks pale compared to the example shown (not shown here, if you want to see it, follow the link at the bottom). The ganache was supposed to work it's way to the middle of the cake during the baking process, then be a tasty surprise when you bit into the cake.

My ganache either boiled and came out the top, or it worked it's way to the bottom of the cake, where it then blended with the cake mix and turned the bottom of the cupcake into a damp pudding. Less than tasty.

This ganache is supposed to be in the middle of the cake, not smeared around the paper cup.

Dense and soggy.

These cakes are so unappealing that, four days later, we still have a whole bunch left. M won't even take them to school, because he doesn't want to give his new colleagues a bad impression of my baking skills. He is a trooper, though, eating them bit by bit so that they don't go to waste (and so that they'll finally be gone so we can make something actually tasty).

The verdict? I wouldn't bother with this recipe again. If I wanted to make a ganache filled cupcake, I'd use a tried-and-tested chocolate cake recipe, make the ganache the way I know works, scoop the ganache and freeze it into balls so it doesn't boil, and probably use a far more plain icing so that the cake is the winner.

Credit (?) where credit's due: recipe for the cake (and the pic at the top) are from Wonderful Joy Ahead.