Pimp That Snack

Hostess Cupcake

by Joanna Sciegienka and Kristin Harbuck 8 photos Rated 84% 245 votes when voting closed

Pimping isn’t easy, but it’s necessary because we are bored graduate students and we need excitement in our lives. Thus the decision to pimp was made. But what to pimp? What American treat could we pimp that would sufficiently impress and awe our neighbors across the pond? Then, it came to us: a Hostess cupcake.

Ingredients on a kitchen counter: sugar, cornflour, milk, boxed cake mixes, chocolate chips and eggs

An assemblage of the ingredients used for pimpery. Approximate cost was $15.00.

The first thing to do was to make the cream filling. We got a recipe online and hoped for the best. We mixed milk, cornstarch, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla and cooked it on the stovetop until it got thick. Then we put it into the fridge to cool. Unfortunately, it came out less like fluffy white filling and more like the Bavarian crème they use to fill doughnuts with. However, we were not deterred! We forged ahead to the making of the cake, in hopes of better pimping success.

Chocolate batter poured from a large glass mixing bowl into a greased round cake tin

With the aid of Betty Crocker (only the best for us pimps), we mixed up two boxes of batter. Then we poured the batter into two layer pans and one angel food cake pan. Mmm….gloppy goodness. Pimpylicious.

Three tins of chocolate sponge baking in the oven, including a tall ring-mould pan

Into the oven they go.

Vanilla cream spooned from a glass bowl into a hollow cut in the baked chocolate cake

We let the cakes cool and then began assemblage. One layer cake went on the bottom, followed by the angel food cake shape. We cut a bigger hole in the middle to accommodate more delicious pimpy filling. Note the crack in the middle layer. That was on purpose, to give our cake more street cred.

Stacked chocolate layers with fudge filling and glossy ganache, white squiggle only part piped

Next, the top layer cake went on. We mixed up ganache by heating semi-sweet baking chocolate with some whipping cream. That went on top of the whole monster. Finally, we added the white “curlies” that make a Hostess cupcake what it is. Trim up the edges a bit, and you have one huge pimped out cupcake.

How big is this cupcake you ask?

Finished cake with the classic looping white squiggle, a real Hostess cupcake inset for comparison

A comparison of our pimped out treat next to the original.

A wedge cut from the finished cake, exposing the thick vanilla cream centre

We cut wedges out of each to display the delicious filling.

Single slice on a side plate, dark sponge split around a fat white cream layer

Finally, we cut the monstrosity into pieces. Note the wedge of original Hostess cupcake. That would be the garnish.

It took about 15 people to polish this thing off. All our coworkers gave praise for such a pimped-out feat of engineering. Oh, the chocolaty goodness.

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