In one of my earlier posts I had mentioned how living in India we have access to limited stuff, and whilst blog hopping I have to literally skip dozens of recipes because the ingredients are just not grown/available here.Last week I got my first bar of dark compounded chocolate for cooking purposes, I know it IS available in India though only in speciality shops and I got hold of it for the first time, I had many recipes lined up and thought I would use it very judiciously, so I surfed the net for 2 hours ,until my head was spinning and STILL did not come up with a recipe I wanted, actually the confusion was whether I should put it in the batter or frost with it, in the end I did both!
From the same shop I bought another thing I have been wanting for a long time, a muffin tray, you could bake 12 muffins in one go!.Other purchases were very cute flower patterened cupcake liners, and a bottle each of lemon and orange essence, so very happy with my purchases I headed home, much to my dismay the muffin tray would not fit into the oven...
But like they say neccessity is the mother of invention, I with my own bare hands cleanly sawed the tray into half, just imagine!, and I am a very happy girl!
Coming back to the chocolate bar, it is a 500gms big slab ,I weighed it and felt it and then opened the package tasted it and loved the whole experience, now I was ready to take on any cupcake challenge!hah!
Finally I settled upon this lovely recipe from Baking Obsession, a super blog, though I tweaked it a bit, most of it is the same.
- makes 18 regular cupcakes
- 2 cups sifted (before measuring) cake flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1/4 cup sifted natural cocoa powder
- ½ cup lukewarm milk
- ½ cup buttermilk, at room temperature
- ½ cup milk
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 8 tbsp (100 gms)unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 50gms dark sweetened chocolate
- FOR FROSTING
- 100gms butter
- 100 gms dark sweetened chocolate
- 1 tbsp Milk
METHOD-Preheat oven , line muffin trays Cream butter and sugar very well till about 6-7 minutes, you can use an electric beater but I did it by hand, add eggs beating well after each addition.Combine lukewarm milk, cocoa powder and choclate and leave to dissolve.Combine milk, buttermilk and vanilla essence and keep aside.In the creamed butter and sugar mixture combine the cocoa chocolate liquid and add flour,baking soda and salt in three parts mixing well, add buttermilk mixture, pour tablespoons onto lined moulds till 2/3 full, beware they rise very high!.Bake for 20 minutes or till a toothpick inserted omes out clean.
for frosting-Melt chocolate in milk , cool,whip in softened butter. It will be little thin, leave in fridge for a few minutes till thick, spread over the cooled cupcakes, for half of them I sprinkled some more chcolate shavings on top and other half I swirled some of the buttercream using a plastic bag in which a hole was cut.
I absolutely adored these, they were soft from inside and creamy ouside, I have had altogether 6 f them by now, so you can judge how great they are!
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