The reason I made these is that my friend turned 22 last monday. She chose „tiramisu“ over „snickers“, otherwise I would have tried out Bakerella’s chocolate-peanut-butter duo frosting (which I will do anyway, as soon as possible). The cake base is my go-to muffin recipe, soaked with coffee and cocoa, which I topped with – surprise – a tiramisu frosting. A very delicious tiramisu frosting.

For the frosting, combine mascarpone (no, this isn’t ice cream in my bowl), curd cheese, vanilla sugar and Amaretto (which I didn’t have at hand, I used almond oil instead).

Add the whipped cream and fold it in carefully, from bottom to top. Pop the frosting into the fridge until needed.

Now to the muffins. I usually make these with chocolate chips and raspberries, but this time I only added a little bit of grated dark chocolate (just because I felt like doing it).

Combine softened butter, brown and vanilla sugar and egg and beat until light and fluffy.

Add sour cream or cream cheese (I used mascarpone because I got some left from the frosting) and milk, stir. The sour cream gives these muffins an unbelievable moistness! Add flour, salt and baking powder (put in some grated dark chocolate, if you like) and just mix until everything is incorporated, otherwise your muffins won’t be as light and fluffy.

Fill your muffin liners and bake for 15 minutes at 200°C. I always use my medium ice cream scoop, this way all of the muffins will be the same size, and it’s also much easier and cleaner than using two spoons (or whatever people do to get their muffin liners filled).

I use a muffin pan with only six moulds because of my teeny-tiny microwave oven. You can see my scoop waiting with half of the batter while the first batch is baking.
I didn’t think I could ever survive with an oven as small as that, but the „kitchen“ (which is basically just a small fridge and a small cooktop two meters away from my bed) of my apartment wouldn’t allow a bigger one. I bought a small muffin pan, small cake pans and a small baking sheet and had to convert every recipe into single-servings, which left me with half or three quarter eggs. At first it felt like baking in a dollhouse. But now I think it’s cute :) Besides, it’s enough that I have to eat all of the small servings alone. I don’t think my body (and boyfriend) would appreciate if I ate twice the amount of everything.

After having read this tragic story, take your muffins out of the oven, let them cool a bit and cut the tops of.

Prepare your coffee mixture: Heat milk, sugar and cocoa powder and then add cold coffee and Amaretto.

Soak the remaining muffin-parts with the mixture. Pipe the chilled frosting on using a pastry or plastic bag. Then dust the now-cupcakes with cocoa powder. Sprinkle with some crumbs from the cut off tops, if you haven’t alredy eaten all of them. As I type this, I am surprised I still had some left over.

Now enjoy these beauties! Or eat only one because you’re supposed to give them to your friend, but be sure to make a big deal out of it and shoot one photo for every bite you take.

Note: This is one of the silver forks I got from my grandma. It is nearly 60 years old. It’s so small and delicate that it makes the cupcake look really clumsy.