Boston Cream Cupcakes

I was inspired to make these cupcakes after seeing a variation of them in Martha Stewart's cupcakes book I am always writing about.

I had my sister-in-law over for lunch as I wanted to indulge her request for cupcakes with dulce de leche, which I've used as a filling before. I wanted to try something different, however, than the same old same old and I remembered seeing these in the book I mentioned (they also appeared in the February 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Living).
So, rather than following the recipe in the book and making vanilla cream, which you can also find here, I decided to use dulce de leche instead. I'll admit it was delicious, if a bit unorthodox, but perhaps too sweet for my taste.

The dulce de leche competed with the chocolate-ganache glaze, which you can find the recipe for here.
The cupcakes themselves were a plain old vanilla recipe, just subtle enough to play off the other flavours.

Directions:

To assemble these cupcakes, let them cool fully on a wire rack after taking them out of the oven.

Then, using a serrated knife cut each one in half. Place a dollop, about a tablespoon, of dulce de leche on top of the bottom half, taking care not to let it ooze out. Place the upper half on top of the lower one.

Then spoon the glaze over each and serve immediately.

Substitutions: None. But consider using the vanilla cream or letting the dulce de leche really simmer for a long time to make it as thick as possible so that it doesn't ooze out like mine did (recipe here, or you can just buy it at the grocery store).

Would I make these again? Maybe. I was rather disappointed by how they looked. The glaze wasn't smooth, the dulce de leche was oozing out every which way, and frankly I don't have the time to glaze these at the last second before serving them. Yes, they were cute, but I wouldn't try making these again if I wanted to impress my guests. I thought they'd be easy enough to be ironic, iconic, show-stoppers, but they looked sloppy. And that makes me kind of sad.

Grade: Two-and-a-half stars out of five. Bonus points for creativity, points docked for delivery.