Chocolate Cupcakes

Hi everyone.Two things primarily keep me going .One is my passion for cooking and the second is my passionate hatred for Udhampur which inspires me to look at things that I perceive as beautiful.

The recipe that I am sharing today is chocolate cupcakes.My daughters love cupcakes and other sinful stuff and I love this recipe because it imparts the rich chocolate flavour and is pretty moist by itself.I mean even without the icing part.Thats because this recipe calls for a special technique which is pretty simple btw consisting of mixing cocoa powder with hot water before adding it to the batter.This extracts the rich flavour of cocoa and also makes the cupcakes moist unlike the other drier versions.

The recipe is as follows:

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup    cocoa powder                                       1 cup             boiling  hot water

1 1/3 cups  flour                                                     2 tsps           baking powder

1/2 tsp salt                                                              1/2 cup    unsalted butter at room temperature 

1 cup granulated sugar(fine granules)                 2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla essence                                               

FOR CHOCOLATE FUDGE FROSTING

120 gms chocolate coarsely chopped                   2/3 cup unsalted butter at room temp

1 1/3 cups icing sugar sifted                                  1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method     

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.
• Lightly grease and line cup cake/ muffin moulds with paper liners.
• In a small bowl stir together the boiling hot water and cocoa powder until smooth. Let it cool to room temp.

Sieve together the flour,baking powder and salt in another bowl.

• Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

• Add beaten eggs to the butter and sugar mixture and beat until smooth.
• Add vanilla essence.
• Fold in the flour mixture.

• Add the cooled cocoa mixture and stir until smooth.
• Fill each paper cup two - thirds full with batter and bake for 15-20 minutes or until done.
• Check with a toothpick.

• Cool the cupcakes on a cooling rack.

• Frost the cupcakes with icing when completely cooled.

Chocolate Frosting:

• Melt the chocolate in a double boiler.Let it cool to room temperature.

• Beat the butter until smooth and creamy. It takes a minute to achieve the smooth consistency.
• Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy.
• Beat in vanilla essence.
• Add the chocolate and beat on low speed until incorporated completely.

Hope you will try this out and let me know how it turned out.