A chocolicious recipe for the holidays….
This past Friday, a friend of mine was asked to make cupcakes for her school’s holiday party and she in turn asked me to share a recipe and give her some tips on how to make them extra pretty – these are fashion design students, after all, so the cupcakes had to impress. Loaded with mixer, foil liners, good old American baking powder and cookie cutters, I headed over to Laura’s place to help whip up a batch of chocolate cupcakes with strawberries inside.
In an effort to simplify the shopping list, we made a vanilla cream cheese frosting, so this batch wasn’t completely vegan, but the same frosting can be made with vegan cream cheese if you’re in the states. Colored marzipan (pâte d’amande) makes for perfect, cookie-cutter-cuttable decorations.
This chocolate cake recipe is perfect, and SO easy! It’s a great base recipe and can easily be adapted with a spoonful of rum or some fun fillings.
Perfect Dark Chocolate Cupcakes:
Ingredients:
- 2 cups flour
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 3/4 cups pure (unsweetened) cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking powder (attention Parisians: use real baking powder, not levure chimique! You can buy it at Thanksgiving or The Real McCoy)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 & 1/4 cup vanilla soy milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup veg oil (or substitute one apple, pureed, and 1/4 cup veg oil if you want to be “healthy”)
- 1 cup boiling water
What you need to do:
Fill your cupcake tins with liners and preheat the oven to 175C/350F.
Mix all the dry ingredients together until the entire mix is milk chocolate colored. Add soy milk, veg oil and vanilla extract and mix well. Add the boiling water and stir until mixture is smooth. Fill the cupcake liners about 3/4 of the way full. Then put them in the oven!
Laura Silva, baking her first batch!
Bake for 9-12 minutes for mini cupcakes and 12-15 minutes for full sized cupcakes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
To fill your cupcakes:
Let the cupcakes cool for a few minutes, then using a piping bag or decorating syringe full of your jam/Nutella/cream, insert the tip into the middle of the cupcake and squeeze in as much filling as you want. You could also slip in bit of strawberry, as we did for these. Allow the cupcakes to cool COMPLETELY before you try to frost them.
Frosting:
1 (8oz) package St. More or Philadelphia
3 -4 cups powdered sugar (sucré glace)
1 tsp vanilla (optional)
Mix together all ingredients until the frosting stands in a peak. The frosting needs to be quite thick (and very sugary sweet) in order to make sculpted decorations. You’re ready to frost! If you don’t have piping bag or syringe, you can fill a ziplock bag with frosting and cut a small tip off of one end.
Tags: baking, chocolate, christmas, cooking, Cupcakes, dessert, food, gifts ideas, recipe
This lovely golden treat should go well with some Blondie.
