Surprise!

My most recent experiment was originally going to be a vanilla cupcake with a chocolate chip cookie base, which, to my demise, wasn't possible since I had run out of brown sugar (and the store had already closed!) "Oh well," I thought, "what else can I stuff into a cupcake?"

Brownies.

What a wonderful little surprise concealed by a tasty layer of vanilla cake, hidden underneath a billow of icing (pink icing at that!)

These were fun, and surprisingly easy to make!

First I made the cake batter and brownie batter.
I then filled each cup half full with cake batter.












After baking them at 325°F for about 5 minutes I put a dollop of brownie batter in the centre of each cup. Pre-baking allows the outside of the cake to firm up just enough to keep the brownie batter from sinking to the bottom. Back in the oven they went!








Fast forward about 15 minutes.
The brownie puffed up a bit more than I was expecting, so now I know for next time to use less baking powder, or save a little cake batter and top off the centres after the brownie dollop.










Topped with a pretty little swirl of pink buttercream, the finished product looks like just a plain vanilla cupcake, right? But then...











...Surprise!
What could be better than finding a second delicious treat inside an already delicious one?!