Orange!

I am looking forward to these cupcakes. I have been wanting to make orange chocolate cupcakes for ages. And I finally have an event to make them for. I know, I know, I shouldn't need an event for cupcakes, but I wanted to "showcase" them to friends. So tomorrow night I am going to a friend's house for a craft night and am taking these treats with me.

I had mentioned to my friend, J, that I wanted to do orange chocolate for awhile, and today she surprised me with a sampling of soem dried orange peel from Penzey's Spices (http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/p-penzeysorangepeel.html). So I followed the directions of rehydrating in 3 parts water to 1 part peel. I let it sit in the fridge for an hour and sure enough it "swelled". So I added a tbsp of the rehydrated peel to a 71% dark chocolate ganache. Yum! The house smells super yummy! I plan to use the ganache to fill some chocolate cupcakes and top them with a chocolate buttercream (or cream cheese) frosting.

Here is what the dried peel looked like:

And here's the ganache (chocolate, heavy cream, the orange peel, and some orange oil):

More pictures and recipe to follow as the cupcakes develop! One step at a time. I have little ones you know!

Love Big, Bake Often.