Yellow Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

I decided that instead of making bread bowls or cornbread for our chili get-together last night, I would leave the bread-making to Safeway and make cupcakes instead. We haven't had enough cupcakes recently. I ended up making the Yellow Cupcakes with Simple Chocolate Frosting from Baking Illustrated. The frosting was a whipped ganache (fancy word!)--equal parts of chocolate and hot heavy cream mixed until smooth, chilled for 45 minutes, and then whipped for 2 minutes in my new mixer! The cake batter was pretty standard, but it included sour cream, which is always exciting. Yet another mixing opportunity!

I love our stand mixer so far! I need to find more stuff to mix. And the cupcakes went over really well. The frosting was especially good (it's hard to go wrong with chocolate + cream). My only complaint was that the cupcakes didn't look very pretty, but I don't know if that's due to a problem with the frosting consistency or if I just need a better frosting tool than the back of a spoon. But appearance is really secondary to taste, and these were good! I'll definitely make them again.