Cioccolata

Cioccolata is a chocolate cake with nutella mousse filling and chocolate buttercream. I wanted this to be a rich decadent chocolate dessert so it needed to scream chocolate! I started with a devil's food cupcake recipe but I changed the milk to heavy cream, as I always do, and subbed 1/2 the sugar for brown sugar. The cake turned out light and airy - I really wanted to achieve a dense moist cake for this cupcake so I will have to tweak this recipe a bit more, perhaps add an extra yolk or mix in some melted chocolate or some nutella. 
The next step was to make the nutella mousse. I used a classic mousse recipe using egg yolks and gelatin and added about 1/2 cup of nutella once the yolks/sugar were heated and whipped to thick ribbons.  This was not enough nutella - too light!  Next time I will double the nutella or better yet, reduce the rest of the recipe - had too much left over after I filled the cupcakes.  I need to make sure I adjust recipes to yield enough product to make my order with minimal waste. I'm finding that alot of fillings and buttercreams are ending up in the trash because I made too much and don't have an immediate use for them... plus I want all my recipes to be made 100% fresh, nothing frozen or saved as left overs from a previous order/practice test. It is wasteful but I just don't want to use even day old product! 
Last up, I tried an italian meringue buttercream again!  This time it came together nicely once I whipped the butter in - I found that the butter should not be room temperature but more on the chilled side. And the meringue has to be beated atleast 25-30 minutes at high speed to cool enough so that it doesn't become a soupy mess.  You tube videos and online recipes usually quote about 10 minutes but that is not nearly enough.  So, the meringue buttercream comes together and I'm jumping for joy in my kitchen until I added the melted/cooled chocolate... I only added about 6 oz but it turned the buttercream into buttersoup - so I stuck it in the fridge for about 1/2 hour and then rewhipped  and had to add a few cups of powdered sugar to help it come together - still tasted great, but too light, and certainly not the end result I anticipated. Earlier in the day I had made vanilla italian meringue buttercream also with good success and really thought I had overcome this obstacle... I guess I can just leave it as vanilla.
So overall, this cupcake was yummy but not what I wanted to achieve. I will retry this recipe and make it denser, richer, and more decadent.