White Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Mousseline

Have you ever been tempted by a cupcake at a bakery only to bring it home and find that it's dry and flavorless and the nicely-piped mountain of icing tastes of nothing but sweetness?  Well, these cupcakes are not like those cupcakes.

First, they're made with melted white chocolate, which gives them an indefinable but definite flavor and also (I think) gives the cake some texture so that you can't just squish it in your hand and have it turn to mush.  (Well, I didn't try that maneuver, but I'm still standing behind my statement).

Other than making sure you have real white chocolate with butterfat content, there's nothing tricky about making the batter.  And even without weighing the individual cupcakes, I found that the batter was just enough for 16 cupcakes.  You probably could have put a little more batter in each cup and make 14 cupcakes, but there's too much for just a dozen.  Having more than a dozen of these cupcakes is not the worst thing in the world.

Now the frosting.  When I first read the name of the recipe, I said to myself, "Mousseline.  Hmm.  Isn't that the frosting with the sugar syrup that can fly all over the kitchen and the one that turns into a horrible curdled mess but eventually turns out OK?  If you're lucky."  Yes, indeed it is.

I hate straining and pounding and mashing raspberries.  Last time I had to do it, I told myself to immediately order a food mill.  But I forgot.  I forgot until I was pounding and mashing the raspberries this time.  I even know which one I'm going to get, but there are no more raspberry puree recipes in The Baking Bible, so should I get it now or wait until the next time I need it, which may be never.  The jury is out.

Once you have the raspberry juice and the puree (I have to say it was really hard to tell the juice from the puree).

Creaming the butter for a good long time is the easy part.

And this time, adding the sugar syrup to the egged whites was easy too.

Dealing with the curdled mess was not so easy.  Actually, curdled messes, as in two of them.  First, the butter and sweetened meringue mixture curdles.  Then, when you add the raspberries, it breaks apart and curdles again.  I took the curdled mess's temperature several times; it was 68 or 69.  Not too hot and not too cold.  But definitely not just right.  However, by magic as far as I can tell, eventually the curdled mess turns into mousseline.  Should it be called messeline?

I'll grant you that this doesn't look much like a rose.  But hey, I piped it, didn't I?  I should get credit for that, especially since I hadn't a clue which tip I was supposed to use.  Also I got tired of piping from the middle outward, so I went from thse outside in.  There is actually one cupcake that you might look at and say to yourself, yeah, I guess you might call that a rose.  Unfortunately, Jim didn't take a picture of that one.

Mess or not, I love the taste of this mousseline.  Usually I try to eat one piece of whatever I've made and get it out the door ASAP.  I put these in the freezer, however, to reward myself for doing something reward-worthy.  JJ gets a treat for being a good listener.  Maybe I should
try that.

What did you say?