I have been baking chocolate cupcakes a lot lately and have noticed they are a little drier than usual. I think it might be due to the weather, so I am going to start adding a little bit more butter each time to see if I can get an even balance for the seasons. We have extremes of 41 degrees for four days in Summer (one year we had 14 days of over 35) to 1 degree nights and 10 degree days in Winter.
All this considered, I decided to make a batch of double chocolate this morning. It was going to be triple chocolate but I ran out of chocolate!
Ingredients:
- 120g butter (Normally it’s 100-110, but I am trying more as the weather is affecting them)
- 2/3 cup caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 cup self raising flour
- 1/3 cup cocoa
- ½ cup milk
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180ºC or 160ºC fan forced. This is where the oven thermometer comes in handy!
- Cream butter, sugar and vanilla until all combined. Add eggs one by one and mix until just mixed through.
- In a seperate bowl, sift the Self Raising flour and cocoa. Add to the mixture with milk. Stir until just combined.
- Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Genache Frosting
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup Thickened Cream
- 200g Dark Chocolate (You can use milk chocolate if you like, I used a combination of both as I was running low)
Method:
- Break the cooking chocolate into pieces and put aside in a bowl that will be large enough to hold the chocolate and cream.
- Put the cream into a small saucepan and stir over medium heat. Bring to the boil.
- Pour the cream over the chocolate in the bowl and stir until chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. This may take up to five minutes before everything melts through.
- Leave the bowl to cool down and then place in the fridge until cold, but not solid. If you’re in doubt about whether it is ready to use, take the bowl out and mix thoroughly with a large spoon. If it holds when you tip the bowl onto its side (and doesn’t move) it’s ready.
If you’re piping it with a plastic piping bag, be careful – if the grenache is too thick you will split the piping bag for sure. You can always leave the bowl on your kitchen bench for five minutes and try to pipe it again.
These tasted magnificent! Happy baking xx
Marinka
/ February 16, 2010Hi Monnie,
I love baking especially cupcakes and my girls (2 and 1) love eating cupcakes! I’d been baking vanilla cupcakes from a buttercake recipe and was tired of baking the same thing so got on the web and found your site and was very excited. I baked these chocolate cupcakes but I did increase the butter to 125g (as this is the magic number in all my cake recipes) and they worked extremely well – they were moist, light and fluffy – and there were no complaints from my girls only a “I love cupcakes” from my 2 year old! I use a vienna cream icing which is superb and probably very similar to your buttercream one and would be happy to share it with you. Thakyou for sharing your recipes, I can’t wait for you to post more so I can delight my girls with different cupcakes! Thanks again
Bianca
/ July 2, 2010This recipe is divine… and so are the cupcakes!! The only problem I have though is that the liners are basically falling off the cupcakes when they come out of the tins! I make sure I do not leave them in the oven too long, they are moist and definetly not overcooked. I am desperate for help as I need to make tonnes of these for a friends wedding in a couple of weeks. PLEASE HELP!!