White Chocolate Cupcakes with Saffron White Chocolate Sauce

I love white chocolate and it's been so long since I gave it the attention it really deserves. I wanted to do something surprising and even a little bit exotic with it, and after seeing it used in petit fours and in Vosges new truffles how could I not pair it with a bit of saffron? (Plus, a friend gave me some for free.) Saffron's bitter honey-like taste is the perfect underscore to the sweet white chocolate. Neither one clamors for attention and the result is a perfect marriage of two seemingly uncompromising flavors.

The cake is delicious and light in its white chocolate taste. Really, the cake is perfect and I plan to use it for many layer cakes in the future. The sauce was meant to be a ganache, but white chocolate is a bitch. So it's a sauce, but a delicious one with the curious taste of saffron peaking through. I still want to put some more work into this one in the future and work out the kinks, as while the flavors are dead on, I'm not quite yet satisfied with the end result of the sauce that would be a ganache.

Still it's delicious, enticing, and mellow. A wonderful cupcake to try.

White Chocolate Cupcakes
Adapted from Food & Wine
Makes 20 cupcakes / 350 F oven

What You'll Need...
1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups of sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups of flour
2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
pinch of salt
1 1/4 cup of milk
8 ounces of white chocolate, melted

What You'll Do...
1) Beat the butter until soft. Add the sugar and beat until soft and fluffy.

2) Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until incorporated. Add the vanilla extract and mix.

3) Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Add some of the flour, then add some of the milk. Continue to mix in a dry-wet-dry method, ending with the dry.

4) Scoop into cupcake papers 3/4 full. Bake at 350F for 20-24 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the cupcakes cool for one minute, then let them continue to cool on a wire rack.

5) Dip into wet ganache, shake off the excess, and decorate with some colored sugar, turbinado sugar, or some saffron if you're crazy fucking rich.
Saffron & White Chocolate Sauce
What You'll Need...
6 ounces of white chocolate
1/3 cup of heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon of saffron strands

What You'll Do...
1) Place the saffron in the cream and let sit for about 10 minutes.

2) Chop chocolate and place in heat proof bowl.

3) Heat cream and saffron on stove over medium heat until bubbles form around the edge.

4) Pour cream over chocolate, let sit for 1 minute then stir.

5) Let sit for 15 minutes, then dip and swirl cupcakes in the ganache. Decorate with colored sugar or something else pretty like that.