Chocolate Cupcakes

A friend made chocolate cupcakes this week and put photos on facebook and I was inspired! Chocolate cupcakes were needed. I went to trusty old taste.com.au and picked my favourite recipe, I bought what was needed and the next day I went to work.

You can find the recipe here: http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/22173/chocolate+cupcakes


Cake Ingredients -

• 100g dark chocolate
• 1 cup (250ml) water
• 125g butter, softened
• 1 1/4 cups (255g) brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups (225g) self-raising flour
• 1/2 cup (75) plain flour
• 1/4 cup (30g) cocoa powder

Method -

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Line 18 x 1/3-cup (80ml) capacity muffin pans with paper cases.
2. Combine the chocolate and water in a small saucepan over low heat. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until chocolate melts and mixture is smooth. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
3. Use an electric mixer to beat the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition, until just combined. Add the flours and cocoa powder and stir until just combined. Add the melted chocolate mixture and stir to combine. Spoon evenly among the lined muffin pans. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

My batter ready to go!

Sadly the all cracked slightly but still kept a rather uniform top.

Ganache Ingredients - 

• 300g dark chocolate
• 300g sour cream

Method - 

To make the chocolate sour cream ganache, place the chocolate and sour cream in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until chocolate melts and mixture is smooth and glossy. Spread over each cake and set aside to set.

NT - I found the dark chocolate and sour cream to have a rather sour/bitter taste so added a dash of thickened cream to slightly sweeten the mixture.

So yummy and glossy :-)

Rather than setting up a double boiler I just used a heavy based pan over a very low heat to get the desired result :-) Beware of this as it's very easy to burn the chocolate this way so it needs your full attention. This is when I discovered the icing was WAY too runny!! I attempted to ice a few cakes but it just ran straight off the sides! This was however a ganache so I didn't need to add anything just give it some time to thicken, it took about an hour and a bit of time in the fridge to thicken. Still slightly runny I added the ganache a tiny bit at a time and used my trusty offset pallet knife to spread it and layered it on bit by bit.

My trusty offset pallet knife.

The finished product!!

You can see in the middle one of the ones that wore the ganache down the sides :-P

Very yummy!! I've already eaten too many. The recipe says it makes 18 but I ended up with around 22. Also being that they're made with dark chocolate the cakes and ganache are a little bitter so young kids may not be fans of the taste but grown ups will love these and adding a little coffee liqueur to the ganache would be yummy!! Or if you wanted you could exchange the dark for milk chocolate and get a more traditional flavour.

Let me know if you give this recipe a try, I would love to see some pictures. xxoo

Roxanne