Cream Filled Cupcakes

My daughter recently had her 3rd birthday, I can't believe I have a 3 year old. Well I had decided a long time ago that I was going to make her cute little ladybug cupcakes.  Of course, a day before her party she tells me she wants pink cupcakes.....so I made both.  Chocolate was an easy choice, her favorite is chocolate.  I wanted to make these extra special so I searched the Internet and found these.  Cream filled cupcakes.  I mean honestly, Martha Stewart is a genius!  These taste just like Devil Dogs - this might be a Northern treat but if you've never had one they are yummy.  Sort of like a Little Debbie snacks.

This recipe is pretty standard for the cake part.  It called for Jumbo muffin cups but since I only had regular I just used those and they turned out just fine.

Now, the filling is easy to make also.  Just two ingredients; butter and marshmallow cream. Put it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes and then put into a zip-lock bag, and cut the corner off.

Use a melon baller to scoop out the "plug" from the bottom.  Save this little plug.  Once the first scoop is out, scoop out a bit more so the filling has some space to go.

This one's a little full, but you get the idea. 

Now put the plug back in.  This takes a couple of tries to get the technique down and then it goes pretty quickly.

I tried several different methods of decorating these. First I tried just frosting the red on with a knife, and that worked just fine.  Then I started to fancy it up a bit by piping it on using a fancy tip.  I used a buttercream frosting that I found here. I used an entire tube of red food coloring here.  I took some of the frosting out of the bowl to make the pink frosting, and then left the rest for the red frosting.

You can buy these little eye's at Michael's craft store. I also bought the black frosting and I bought the tips that just screw onto the tube.  I did do some cupcakes that had the chocolate chips for spots, some that I used the black frosting to dot them on, some I used a cookie for the face (Keebler mint chocolate cookies were perfect) but I didn't have anything to make a mouth or antenna's with - and with the round head sort of sticking out from the cupcake I felt like it needed those things.  Eyes just weren't enough - so most of the cupcakes I did using this method shown above.

The pink one's were also all decorated differently.  I used a different method of decorating each of them, I think I made about 10 of them.  Some I put red sprinkles on like the one above, some I put chocolate chips on, some I left plain. 

But they were all filled with delicious cream.  Really, that was the best part.

You can find the cupcake and filling recipe here. I will make cream filled cupcakes a lot more in the future I enjoyed them so much.  A quick note, I made these on sort of a hot day here, keeping them refrigerated will make the filling MUCH better.  Otherwise it just sort of loses it's creaminess. The picture taken above was after they were refrigerated.

The chocolate cupcake recipe is delish, great chocolaty flavor without overpowering the filling. 

I also liked my choice of frosting here, it didn't overpower the cupcake or filling.