Deep Chocolate Rosebuds

You could bake these little chocolate morsels in small muffin pans, and they would still be good, but they wouldn't be nearly as cute. I'm going to recommend that you do what I did, and buy this NordicWare rose muffin pan



They're pretty expensive for muffin pans--$30 at Amazon.com, but very well made from heavy cast aluminum and the rosebud design is sharp and clear. I had no problem extracting the cupcakes from the molds. You could use any cupcake or muffin recipe in this pan, but, unless you get two pans, you'd probably have to make some of them in regular pans. These make very petite cakes.
These aren't on the quick-and-easy list, but they're quite easy and pretty quick, so I don't know why they aren't. They're now on my personal quick-and-easy list as well as on my list of adorable desserts that will make people coo in pleasure.
There are two steps, but neither is complicated. The first is to make dark chocolate ganache puddles. Here's how easy that is:
1. Melt chocolate.

2. Heat cream.
3. Mix melted chocolate and heated cream. Et voila.
A bonus to this super-easy ganache is that if you have a little left, you can refrigerate it and roll it into a few chocolate truffles. But before you get to that stage, you cover the ganache and let it cool.
The batter is just cocoa, melted in boiling water,

egg yolks, vanilla, cake flour, superfine sugar, baking powder, salt, and butter.
It makes a nice, creamy, chocolatey batter.

Each little rosebud is filled about half full with cake batter.

I had no problem with the cakes sticking to this intricate pan, but I both sprayed it with baking spray and brushed the spray in the crevices for good measure. This care in preparation might seem to be another reason for not shelling out $30 for a new muffin pan that you don't really need, but, really, don't you just want to be able to bake rosebud cupcakes?

After all the batter is in the pan, you put about a teaspoon of ganache in the middle.
Jim got bored taking pictures and he wandered off somewhere as I was cleaning off the pan, so the only picture is of the dribbled-on pan. You can still see the ganache in the cakes after they're baked.

I was overjoyed when I turned the pan upside down and saw that everything had turned out just as it was supposed to!

I served these little baby cakes with whipped cream, blueberries, and strawberries. They probably didn't really need anything, but they looked a little naked on the plate by themselves, especially if the serving was one little piece. (The men all chose two-cake servings, but the women all had just one little cake.)

I was pleased with the way these turned out--not just their appearance, which was fetching, but their taste as well: a robust chocolate flavor in such a little cake, and a delicate texture. If I make these 30 times, my $30 pan will work out to just $1 per batch, or only about 8 cents per cakelet. A real bargain if I just keep baking!

TASTING PANEL:

Jim: "You know me. I like chocolate."

Sarah: "It's got a good, rich chocolate taste. Some chocolate cakes taste like Hershey bars, but this tastes like expensive chocolate."

James: "I really like them. Except for the fruit. I don't like fruit."

Joe: "Ummm. Scrumpdillyicious."

Liz: "I think they're a little dry, but I don't like cake that much. They're really cute though!"