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.

Of the many cupcakes on offer at Cupcake Camp, my absolute favorite was Petite Charlotte’s lemon meringue – and it was so very pretty too.

This lovely golden treat should go well with some Blondie.

The stars were cut out from marzipan and then painted with food coloring and edible gold dust (hard to find in France, but easy to ship in from America or England!). I think I’ve found my cupcake soulmate.

For those of you who want still more cupcakes, Cupcake Camp Paris is coming up on Sunday, October 2 at Le Comptoir Général – one of my favorite spots for brunch as well.

Le Comptoir Général: 80 Quai de Jemmapes

For more info about Cupcake Camp, visit http://cupcakecampparis.blogspot.com/

Never frost a hot cupcake. Be patient.

Use things to already have in the kitchen: cake can be molded into new shapes and dipped in chocolate. Actually, cupcakes themselves can be dipped in chocolate.

Mrs. Clause Rocks

M&Ms (or smarties) make for great designs.

Don’t underestimate the power of flowers.

Ginger Von Rabbit

Wanda and the Grandmas

Frosting can be flavored and colored fantastically with . . . kool-aid!

Stars of Consume's music video for "Paris dans ma poche"

Tempered chocolate makes for great accessories on top of any cake or cupcake. More on tempering chocolate later, now I’m off to lick my fingers then head to bed.

Goes best with: “My name is trouble”, by Keren Ann

Pack your picnic baskets… March 20 is the first day of spring and it looks like those green spaces on the Champs des Mars will finally be open after the long winter au repos.

The newest Pop Cupcake is Banana Almond, topped with pansies in honor of all the color popping up around Paris. But I’m at a loss for what to call them… any ideas?

Pop Cupcakes (aka Celeste), visited the Qooq studios a while back to film a few recipes for their amateur chefs. Today, four of my Pop Cupcakes recipes were added to the Qooq website along with the recipes from several Michelin starred chefs!

Pop Cupcakes are billed as the “real American cupcakes,” “style rock star” and that sounds about right.

One of the recipes I presented on the show was for Almond and the Dream – a simple almond cupcake similar to the French financier aux amandes. It’s a simple recipe, and super adaptable (add jam filling or stick some fruit in the center for something more exotic).

Almond and the Dream ( a bilingual recipe!):

Almond and the Dream
2 1/2 cups flour / 312.5 g farine
3/4 cup veg oil / 177 ml huile vegetale omega 3
1 almond milk / 237 ml boisson amande (lait d’amande)
1/2 cup coconut milk / 118 ml lait de noix de coco
1 cup brown sugar / 220 g sucre marron
2 1/2 tsp baking powder (accept no substitutes! – en France ça se trouve dans les epiceries Americaines)
2 tsp almond extract / 10 ml extrait d’amande
Frosting:
3 cups confectioners sugar / 500 g sucre glace
1 tb vanilla extract / 15 ml extrait de vanille
des amandes écrasées

Just how easy is this recipe? You can’t fail; just mix the dry ingredients and the wet separately, then mix together. Bake at 175°C/350°F (for 12 – 15 minutes for standard size cupcakes, 7-8 minutes for minis).

The frosting is always trickier, and I can’t give away all of my secrets, but the powdered sugar should be added until you reach the desired thickness. It needs to be really sweet in order to get a perfect twirl on the top of those cakes. And don’t be impatient – the cupcakes need to be fully cooled before they can be frosted!

To go with that dreamy almond, how about some California Dreamin’ from The Beach Boys:

Séverin will head out on tour throughout France in March, including a stop at the Divan du Monde in Paris, so make sure to catch a show.