Crazy for Cupcakes

story by Karuna Meda

I could barely contain my excitement as we entered The Restaurant School for a cupcake class, one of the School’s many classes open to the community. A pastry instructor at the School, Marie Stecher, welcomed us with a beaming smile and unmistakable warmth. She introduced us to the students who would be helping us including Gina Valentino, who encouraged us along on our cupcake endeavors.

Chef Stecher explained the choice of recipes we had for the cupcakes and icings. For cake: cream cheese pound cake, chocolate cake, or red velvet torte. My mouth was already watering. For icing: Swiss buttercream or chocolate ganache. We decided on cream cheese pound cake with chocolate ganache, and with a gleam of approval in her eye, Gina brought over the ingredients.

“I’m just going to start you guys off here,” Gina said, and dumped what looked like half a pound each of butter and cream cheese into our mixing bowl. My heart almost squirmed at the sight of all that saturated fat. Gina laughed at my dropped jaw and googly eyes. “You get used to it,” she said.

While the butter and cream cheese churned away, we sifted the flour and sugar, then beat it to a soft peak. I scooped the batter into molds and sent them to the ovens. We couldn’t resist licking the batter from the bowl with our spoons.

We started on the chocolate ganache, which only requires two steps: bringing heavy cream and sugar to a boil over dark chocolate pastilles, then two minutes of mixing. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the pool of glossy molten chocolate.

Finally, the best part of the evening: decorat­ing our cupcakes! Chef Stecher demonstrated how to decorate with an array of toppings: crushed pecans, chocolate, and coconut. We could also accent the ganache with white chocolate icing or various colors of buttercream. For the fillings, there was lemon cream, cherries, salted caramel, peanut butter, or pecans. For the larger, filled cup­cakes we simply poured the chocolate over the cupcake, hoping some of it would land on top and salvaging the rest with the bowl underneath. By the end my hands were dripping with chocolate.

All in all, the cupcake class at The Restaurant School was everything I imagined: thrilling and wonderfully sumptuous.