Raffaello Bon-Bon Cupcake

 

White Vanilla Cupcake with Coconut Cream and Chopped Almond Filling frosted with Vanilla and Whipped White Chocolate Ganache Buttercream and topped with Toasted Coconut and a Raffaello Bon-Bon

Whew!  I really need to work on my cupcake descriptions.

A friend suggested the Ferrero Rocher Raffaello  bon-bon as a point of inspiration and I couldn't have been more excited.  This sweet little white chocolate-covered bite is packed with flavor; it's a great a place to begin a new cupcake.

First we had to take it apart.  As best as we can discern, there is a gooey center of vanilla and coconut with a whole almond.  Around that is a very thin little vanilla wafer with a generous amount of white chocolate covering the bit of crunch.  It's coated with bits of white coconut. 

Flavor Review:  coconut, vanilla, almond, white chocolate

If you plan to tackle this cupcake, there are about a dozen moving parts!  Maybe that's only a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

Here's what I decided I needed.

Coconut Cream Filling. 

I assume I won't be able to find ready-made cupcake ingredients where I live.  So I started looking for coconut pudding recipes.  I didn't find exactly what I was looking for, so switched gears slightly.  Searching for a coconut pie cream filling was perfect.  I found a simple [not really] recipe for coconut cream filling that was perfect.  And coconut milk was readily available at the nearby Edeka.  Find the recipe here.

I didn't want to add a whole almond.  It was too easy to add coarsely chopped almonds to the filling. Tip: I didn't add the nuts to the whole batch of coconut cream filling... I put some filling in a small bowl and mixed as I needed.  In the end, I still have about half the filling left over. 

Cupcake

I baked the White Cake and only added clear vanilla to the recipe instead of almond extract plus vanilla extract.  I learned last week it's really important to not overmix this batter since too much air leads to sunken centers.

I was playing with cooking time; I wanted the cake to be white white and thoroughly baked. 
Cakes on the left baked for 23 minutes, the middle was 22 mins, and on the right was 21 mins.

Frosting

I made the White Chocolate Ganache using a bit of a different ratio than Dark Chocolate Ganache.  Typically, I add 25% less heavy whipping cream than chocolate.  For example, when I use 12oz of dark chocolate, I bring just to a boil 8oz of cream.  Maybe I have the math description part wrong, but that's the ratio.

Since white chocolate has so much more cream, I add even less.  Today I used 300 gr white chocolate to 125 gr heavy whipping cream.  It was perfect.

I mixed a standard batch of Vanilla Buttercream (less the milk) since the white chocolate ganache would take care of that component.  After the buttercream was finished, I folded in the whipped white chocolate.  End result:  it tasted like white chocolate and handled/moved/piped like buttercream.  Such a relief!  Now I can give myself permission to use vanilla & white chocolate ganache whipped buttercream...more often.  I'm thinking... chocolate or red velvet cupcakes.

Topping

The bon-bon is covered with shredded coconut.  Ok...I'm not a fan of a few sprinkles of plain coconut on a cupcake.  I love massive amounts of coconut covering a cake, but on smaller delights I prefer lightly toasted coconut.  So that's what I did.

After it was toasted and cooled, it became a bit crunchy - which was perfect since it allowed me to break it into smaller pieces.  It was ideal for sprinkling on the frosting.

Adding a bon-bon seemed like a natural thing to do; it's such a no brainer.

Final construction required the cupcakes to be completely cooled, cored, and filled with the coconut/almond yumminess.  Then the white chocolate ganache buttercream was piped on using the Wilton 1M, coconut sprinkled, and finally individually unwrapping each bon-bon; one per cupcake.

I didn't know if I should stage these with a pop of color with flowers or Fiesta Ware or some other type of decoration.  Keeping things simple for this first attempt in the test kitchen seemed like the best idea.

This is a vintage Fiesta Ware Sweets; it is also known as a Compote or Comport.

These turned out better than expected.  Much like my journey... with my life partner and sobriety and our kids - my life is exponentially more amazing than I could have imagined.  Every key component requires work and attention, but it's worth it to me.

"If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through." (AA, pg. 83)