Cupcakes Go Neopolitan

With regard to my Banana Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache Filling and Peanut Butter Frosting, my friend asked, "could you make those without the banana or the peanut butter?" (Her hubby dislikes both.) I asked her what kind of cake he'd eat instead and she said chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry maybe. All very good suggestions but who can choose between them? I just made a cupcake with all three. I feel like cupcake is the wrong word here. These would get too messy to eat without a fork, maybe just mini-cake? Any way, here's the recipe.

The Cake:
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
2 tbs cornstarch
1/4 cup butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla.
1/2 cup soy milk + 3 Tbs

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly oil and flour a cupcake pan (I like the spray on stuff that has oil and flour in it together).

Combine flour, baking powder, salt and cornstarch in a bowl. Using and eletric mixer on low beat in the butter. Beat in the sugar next. Add in the vanilla and soy milk with the mixer on medium high and beat until smooth.

Fill each cupcake holder 1/2 way and bake 12-15 minutes (or until inserting a toothpick int he center of a cake comes out clean)

The Chocolate:
3 Tbs cup soy milk,
1 Tbs soy margarine
1/2 cup very high quality vegan chocolate chips or chopped vegan chocolate.

Combine the soy milk and margarine in the top of a double broiler, heating until the margarine melts. Add the chocolate and stir until until the chocolate melts.

The Berries:
1/4 cup water
1 tbs sugar
2 tsp vanilla
10 medium strawberries, cut into small thin slices

Combine all of the above ingredients in a small bowl, stirring often to coat the berries with the mixture.

The Cream Topping:
I used Soya Too Canned Whipped Cream. You can get it online and maybe at your local hippiemart, er natural foods store if you're lucky. If you're not vegan, regular whipped cream is fine too.

The Procedure:
After the vanilla cakes have cooled remove them from their baking pan and cut out a well in the middle of each cake with a sharp paring knife. Reserve the cake cut outs.



Fill this well with some chocolate.



Top the chocolate with some of your marinated strawberries.



Make crumbs of the cake you cut out and set aside and arrange on some foil and toast until you have some cake breadcrumbs. Garnish each cake with the cake breadcrumbs.



Right before you serve your cakes top them with some whipped cream. If you want to be very fancy fill a squirt bottle with left over chocolate sauce and make a ring around your plate and then use a fork to drag some chocolate out from the circle making a cute spiky pattern like you see in the picture below.