Chocolate Covered Gingerbread Madeleines

I do this thing every year where I decide to vacation during the month of November.  It's awesome because I get to to escape the city and the mundanes of daily life and sneak away for one last sun kissed tan in before the sun goes away for four months.  It's awful because I come home, catch a cold, have to wear pants because it's dropped 20* and oh look it's December!  I have no idea where November went this year... one minute I was on a boat in the Bahamas, the next I was back in the states, downing Gingerbread lattes, shopping for Christmas mugs at Target and planning fancy holiday outfits.

When it came time to decide what to bring to my friend Rachelle's cookie exchange -- while wearing my favorite hot pink fleece gingerbread pajamas and sipping gingerbread tea out of my gingerbread man mug mind you  --it was no surprise that I went with something gingerbread.  My first thought was my gingerbread chocolate chip cookies.  They're easy to make.  I've made them before.  But that seemed too boring for a cookie exchange.  Then I thought about how easy madeleines are to make and contemplated making some of those instead -they just look fancy.  While debating the hard question of which cookie to bake, I came to the realization that instead of choosing between the two, I could combine the two.  Hashtag Cookie Genius.

Taking a page from the chocolate dipped orange madeleines I made last year, I finished these gingerbread madeleines with a dark chocolate drizzle.    Gingerbread plus dark chocolate is one of my favorite holiday flavor combinations afterall.  Remember the Gingerbread S'mores Cupcakes?  

Gingerbread Madeleines
Adaptation Source.
Makes 34. Bake at 375* for 7-8 minutes.

4 room temp eggs
2/3 c. sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp molasses
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 cup unsalted butter melted and cooled
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
(Optional:  1 cup mini chocolate chips)

Directions:
1. Whisk together flour, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger and set aside.
2. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat eggs on high for about three minutes.
3. Add salt to the eggs, and then the sugar.  Sugar should be added slowly over the course of five minutes by the spoonful.  Eggs will become white and frothy.
4. Add in vanilla and molasses and beat on high speed until fully incorporated.
5. Stop the stand mixer and fold in flour and butter in additions, starting and ending with the flour.  Mix until smooth.
6. Scoop batter into butter and floured madeleine pan and bake for about 7 minutes.
7.  Melt chocolate in microwave for 30 second intervals, stirring in between.  Scoop melted chocolate into a piping bag and decorate cookies once they are cooled.

Tip:  Madeleines taste best 1-3 days after baking.  This allows the butter flavor to really set in.

Do you know what taste's good with these?  Gingerbread tea.  In a gingerbread mug... lol.  I'm totally that girl.

I apologize for my Gingebread Cheer.  No not really.

Do you know what else you can do to these bad boys?  Add in mini chocolate chips to the batter (about 1 cup) for EXTRA chocolately goodness.  See?

How was the cookie exchange you may ask?  Awesome.  Who doesn't love a giant plate of cookies?

Or 10 plates of them.  Don't worry we did more than just eat our weight in butter and sugar.  We mixed up some royal icing and decorated some sugar cookies too. That counts as activity, right?

I have to bake again this weekend ('tis the season to get fat afterall).  I'll try not to wear my penguin pajamas as I think of a cookie/cupcake because I don't want to find out what penguins taste like.  =/

xoxo,
Anna

Gingerbread Man S'mores

I am having a bit of an issue.  I am obsessed with gingerbread men. I am not sure why but I just spent the last 30 minutes Googling "pink gingerbread pajamas" but I did.  No luck so far.  I will have to make do with these little guys instead.  He is a Gingerbread Man S'mores Cupcake.  You can make these Gingerbread S'mores without the cute little face, arms and buttons... you know in case you want to be an adult about it.  But make at least one.  Just so you can eat him. *Chomp.

I made these cupcakes for a friend's Thanksgiving dinner.  Pumpkin might have been more in line with the event but it was December 1st, I just made pumpkin cupcakes and I wanted gingerbread! And chocolate.  Together.  And why not add a really key ingredient....

Yup. Marshmallow fluff.  Do you know what that makes when it's on top of a cinnamon graham cracker crust??  GINGERBREAD S'MORES.


Cinnamon Graham Cracker Crust 
12 cinnamon graham crackers
1/4 c butter

Directions:
1. Crush up graham crackers.
2. Melt butter and add to graham cracker crumbs, add just enough to make workable.
3. Add one tablespoon of crumbs to the bottom of a lined cupcake tin and press down.
4. Bake in oven at 350* for 3.5 minutes and set aside to let cool.


Gingerbread Cupcakes
Bake at 350* for 20 minutes. Makes 24.

2 1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 brown sugar
1/4 c sugar
1/2 c oil
2/3 unsulphured molasses
2 eggs
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup boiling water

Directions:
1. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg togther.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat sugars, oil and molasses together, and add in eggs one by one.
3. In a cup or third bowl, add baking soda to boiling water.
4. Add in the flour mixture and the water in alternating additions to the sugar mixture.  Beat until fully incorporated.
5. Scoop batter into lined cupcakes, over baked graham crust.
6. Bake and core center of cupcakes.  Keep cupcake middle if you'd like to use crumbs to garnish cupcakes.


Chocolate Ganache

4 oz. heavy cream
4 oz. good dark chocolate

Directions:
1. Warm cream in a saucepan until hot, but do not let boil.
2. Pour cream over chopped chocolate and stir with whisk until smooth.
3. Once cool enough to handle, fill cored cupcakes with chocolate.


Chocolate Marshmallow Frosting
Makes enough to generously frost 24 cupcakes.
(If frosting cupcakes like gingerbread men, make half this recipe.)

1 jar marshmallow fluff
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
2 oz cream cheese
4 tsp cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Directions:
1. Cream butter and cream cheese.
2. Add in marshmallow fluff and cream on medium until fluffy.
3. Add in powdered sugar by the cupful.
4. Add in cocoa powder -- add enough to color the frosting brown.
5. Frost cupcakes.  If you want to make them into gingerbread, frost with a spatula and garnish with decorations below.  If you want more adult cupcakes, frost with a tip and sprinkle gingerbread crumbs on top.



Decoration

Royal Chocolate flavored mini marshmallows
Red M&Ms
Chocolate Chips
Toothpicks

Assembly:
1. Attach four marshmallow arms and legs to cupcake with toothpicks.
2. Put two red M&Ms in center of cupcake.
3. Melt chocolate chips or melts and put in a ziplock bag, cut end off and pipe smiles and eyes onto parchment paper and let harden in freezer for 5 minutes.
4. On a separate cupcake places two chocolate eyes and one smile on top of the cupcake.  Place upside down to avoid any ridges.
5. Either join the two cupcakes with a toothpick, or just side by side.  You don't have to eat both.

I bought two kinds of marshmallows for this project.  Okay, I lie.  I bought three -- two different packages of marshmallows in two shades of brown and one package of ice cream marshmallows because they are in the shape of ice cream cones and I like buying cute things I don't need, especially when I get to eat them in hot chocolate. I found the Royal Chocolate ones at Target.  Matched almost perfect to the frosting!

Let's be honest.  These little guys are freaking adorable.  Just look at his little marshmallow arms and legs! Don't you want to rip them off one by one and eat them?

No?  Just me?  How about picking off his eyes and smile and eating those?

Funny how I have no problem committing Gingerbread Man genocide, but I couldn't with last year's penguins?

Just in case for some reason you DO have a problem with that, then don't make them into adorable gingery men.  Make them look fancy with a pile of frosting and crumbs.  They'll still taste awesome.

Some small sides notes here before I end this post though.  Do you see it's yummy insides?  Imagine all of that in someones mouth. At one time.  Because that's what my friends Leo  did and he almost choked on it trying to swallow the graham crackers.   There was true pain in his face.  But poor Val might have been worse off.  So word to the wise, don't use these for Cupcake Eating Contests.

Use them for normal consumption, or better yet you can do what pandippo did the next morning; she popped him in the microwave and melted his face off. It looks disgusting, yes, but at least it's all melted together like a true s'mores!!! Melted Gingerbread Man S'mores Cupcakes.  It's how she keeps her girlish figure.

xoxo,
Anna