Mmm...coffee....

Good morning! I've been graciously asked by Lyns to do a product review of Nielsen-Massey's coffee extract. Well, here goes...
When it arrived, I opened the bottle and took a deep, deep breath of all the wonderful coffee goodness inside and I could not wait to get started. I just wanted to bathe in it, it smelled THAT amazing. I had so many ideas swirling around in my head but I finally settled on a basic chocolate cupcake that would be filled with coffee flavored ganache then topped with amaretto buttercream frosting. I had a weekend trip to Michigan with my lady friends planned so I figured I would use them as guinea pigs. (Cue evil laughter while I twirl my mustache. Just kidding! I don't have an evil laugh.)
I got to taste the ganache before and after the coffee extract so I at least had something to base my review off. The ladies were just going in blind, so to speak. I felt the extract most definitely did give the chocolate a deeper, more nuanced flavor. However, the general consensus was that while the ganache was rich and flavorful (pats self on back) you could not really taste the coffee in it.
To be fair, there could have been a few things going on here: Perhaps I didn't add enough of the extract. Maybe the amaretto buttercream was overpowering the ganache. Possibly aliens could have come down from Mars and....nevermind. My suggestion for next time would be to step up that coffee flavor with a little Starbuck's coffee liquer, one of my most favoritest things in the whole wide world to bake with.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Xsa, Nicole, and Amber for testing out my baked goods so that I may write about them here. And of course thanks a bunch to Lyndsay for asking me to write it in the first place!