Baking – How to bake crushed peppermint into cake

If you use a sandwich bag with a corner cut out of it, you now have a make-shift piping bag :). Just fill the bag, twist it, and then cut a corner out.

The problem I see with trying to bake a cupcake with a custard center, is this:

Even if you have the custard pre-made (and probably chilled) It won't be hard enough to "wrap" in the cupcake batter. Typically cupcake batter is not very firm, and you'd end up with a mess. This may work with a heavier dough, perhaps a pastry dough or something. The custard will definitely hold up just fine, it's just the act of somehow suspending it in the cupcake batter long enough for the batter to set into cake, that is slightly impractical.

The only other thing I could think of is perhaps making a gelatin custard and hope that it will hold up long enough for the batter to cook. The downside to this, obviously, is that you'll end up jello custard if the cupcakes aren't eaten warm, and on top of that, trying to hit the perfect gelatin amount would be VERY hard.

Freezing the custard will likely not work.

In the past I have had a similar issue with making a butterscotch drink recipe. What I have found is that adding a bit of water to the melted butter (1-2 tsp/1/2 c, 5-10mL/120mL) helps dissolve the brown sugar and prevents graininess and seizing. Sugar is not readily soluble in fat, so it needs water in order to dissolve.

I suspect one of three things happened:

1. Different batches of butter may have different water contents.
2. The brown sugar may have lost some of its moisture as it sat around in the pantry.
3. Some of the water may have evaporated off while melting the butter.

If you heat brown sugar in butter without enough water some will dissolve in the water present from the butter and the brown sugar, but it will become grainy and seize as the water is evaporated and the undissolved sugar granules act as nucleation sites. Meanwhile the undissolved sugars are being lightly fried in the fat from the butter.