Back in the kitchen with Toblerone Cupcakes

Before I talk about the baking I started yesterday and finished tonight, I wanted to go off course and mention the lovely walk I had on Saturday. I wish I had brought my camera with me because what was supposed to be a quick trip outside to do a few errands ended up being an almost four hour walk around my surrounding neighbourhoods, in particular Gastown. I won't go on too much as I plan on retracing my steps with camera in hand to really document the diverse and interesting parts of downtown Vancouver, but I just wanted to say how refreshing and exciting it was to just wander and see things for the first time in an area I have been living in for almost two years now. I challenge anyone to stop and think about the last time they really appreciated what is on their doorstep and if memory fails then go out and rediscover it as soon as possible.
Now onto my baking, of which I must say it was nice to get back into the kitchen and whip up something new. I did have a reason for the baking project, but maybe that is what I needed to reignite the passion I have had to put on hold of late. One of my co-workers is getting married next week so we are having a little surprise celebration for her; I guess you could call it a mini bridal shower or kitchen tea. I chose to make cupcakes because I had bought some snowflake cupcake cases from Michaels prior to Christmas, which I hadn't had the chance to use yet, and I knew snowflakes were a key part of her wedding theme. 

I was going to make vanilla cupcakes, but after a bit of a Google search nothing was really inspiring me so I tried to think of what random ingredients I had on hand. I still had some toblerone bars left from a Christmas present and so I looked for a toblerone cupcake recipe. 

The recipe that won me over can be found here. I was slightly dubious about the use of sour cream, but wanted to give it a go. I am really glad I did because the cupcakes turned out really well minus a bit of a hiccup, which I will tell you about shortly. 

The only changes I made to the recipe were to exclude the salt as the butter I bought was salted. Also I wasn't sure what size toblerone bar was required and as I had 50-gram bars on hand I used one and a half of them. I only baked the cupcakes for twenty minutes, which seemed long enough. However, as they began to cool the cupcakes started to come away from the cases, which was quite depressing. 

I tried to troubleshoot via Google and it seems there are a few reasons why this happens - the cupcakes are too moist, they haven't quite been baked long enough or the cases weren't as full as they should have been. Let's just say I wasn't too thrilled about this so I had no choice tonight when I went to frost them, but to remove all the cases. I think the saving grace was the delicious frosting. Again I did not use any salt as I was using salted butter and I must confess that my measuring wasn't exact, but the frosting tasted delicious all the same. I used a Wilton 1M decorating tip and topped each one off with a malteser cut in half and positioned in a somewhat butterflied manner.

I cannot wait to make these again so I can not only improve on my frosting technique, but also make sure the cupcakes don't come away from their cases. I hope everyone likes them tomorrow!