Big Top Cupcake -- Love It or Loathe It?

I'm currently in possession of a Big Top Cupcake pan.

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

A giant cupacake. The ad claims it's 25x larger than a standard cupcake, but I'm not sure what they're using to measure that --

Math Time!

I put about 1/4 cup of batter in a single little cupcake. For this cupcake, I used 4 cups of batter.

By my calculation, that's a 16x larger cake than a standard cupcake. However, as you'll see as I go through the pictures, I probably could have gotten away with up to 6 cups of batter, thus making a 24x larger cupcake. Then you have to trim a bunch off...so I personally think 25x is a stretch.

Our neighbor behind us, who I affectionately call "Dave the Neighbor", posted some Facebook pictures this past Saturday of his son's Big Top Cupcake creation from this past weekend. I commented about how cool that cake was, and we conversed some about the pan. I asked if I could borrow it sometime, and about 15 minutes later his son ran over with the pan. Quick service!

I rifled through my pantry, looking for what ingredients I had on hand to use for a recipe with the cake pan. I found enough stuff to make a modified version of the Boston Cream Cake recipe in the book that comes with the pan:

- 1 box of yellow cake mix, plus the oil, 2 eggs and a carton of egg whites (for the equivalent of the third egg)
- Two packets of vanilla Jell-O singles
- Half a bag of Hershey's MILK chocolate chips
- 1 can of condensed milk.

Hmmmm....most of the recipes call for about 1 1/2 boxes of cake mix, but I figured we can make do. As for the chocolate chips and condensed milk, I can combine those for a yummy chocolate pourable frosting.

So here we go...

Here are the pans. The apparatus at the bottom goes over the "bottom" pan to put a pocket on the top of the cake with which you can fill with icing, pudding, etc.

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

And here's the cake mix -- nothing spectacular. Jacob will like yellow cake:

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

Mix the ingredients together:

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

This is what I use to grease my cake pans. It's so easy to use, much easier than shortening and flour!

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

So I messed up in forgetting to take pictures of me filling the pans, but the pan on the left is the bottom of the cupcake, while the pan on the right is the top. I wish I had put more batter in the top...and you'll see why in a moment:

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

I'm not completely sure that 350 degrees is appropriate to bake these -- the edges got VERY brown, and the center was barely set. If I try this again, I should try it at 325 degrees.

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

And then these huge cracks appeared:

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

I have to admit, when I turned out the cakes, they didn't look bad.

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

But when I put the top onto the bottom, it seemed that the top of the cake could have been more substantial. That's okay, it'll still taste good.

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

I used this Jell-O Singles shaker thing to mix up the two packets of vanilla pudding.

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

Then I filled the pocket:

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

Whaddya think?

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

How about some chocolate icing? Using my poor girl's double boiler, I mixed together 1/2 a can of condensed milk with what was left of my milk chocolate chips.

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

This tastes JUST LIKE chocolate doughnut icing -- YUM! I poured it on top of the cake:

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

Uhhhhh....

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

I had my boys laughing their heads off at this mess...

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

Oh wait! Let me put a fork next to it so you can see how big it is!

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

It cut pretty cleanly, and we all enjoyed a yummy dessert:

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

There's one happy Timmy!

From 2010 03 08 Big Top Cupcake

So do I love it or loathe it? I don't know...neither. I'm glad I had a chance to try it out, and as it stands right now MAYBE I'll buy one. Maybe I'll get one as a gift? I currently have quite a repertoire of cake pans and there are several I haven't used in years. Thank you Dave-the-Neighbor for letting us make a yummy dessert with your pan!