Hostess Cupcake
About this build
Chocolate cake layers surround a homemade vanilla cream filling, then receive ganache and the white icing loops of a giant Hostess cupcake.
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- Two bored graduate students chose a Hostess cupcake as the American treat to impress across the pond, for about $15.00 of ingredients. The cream filling came from an online recipe, milk, cornstarch, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla cooked on the stovetop until thick and cooled in the fridge, where it turned out more like the Bavarian cream in doughnuts than fluffy white filling. Two boxes of Betty Crocker batter were mixed and poured into two layer pans and one angel food cake pan and baked; once cool, one layer cake went on the bottom, the angel food cake on top with its hole cut bigger for more filling, a crack in the middle layer kept for street cred, and the top layer on that. A ganache of semi-sweet baking chocolate heated with whipping cream went over the whole, white curlies were piped on, the edges trimmed, and it was photographed beside the original, cut in wedges to show the filling and polished off by about 15 people. Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5 · Source 6 · Source 7 · Source 8 · Source 9 · Source 10 · Source 11
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An assemblage of the ingredients used for pimpery. Approximate cost was $15.00.
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The original account
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.
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.
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.
Into the oven they go.
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.
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?
A comparison of our pimped out treat next to the original.
We cut wedges out of each to display the delicious filling.
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.
