Chocolate Spice Cupcakes

In the fall and winter, I have a tendency to want to add spice to everything. So instead of a regular chocolate cake recipe, I opted for this chocolate spice cake recipe. I coupled it with a chocolate cinnamon buttercream frosting, and I was totally in love.

This recipe makes a weird batter, but the texture of this cake is unbelievable. The molasses flavor really jumped out--I ended up using organic molasses for these, and it seems to have a stronger flavor than the kind I normally buy; I'd be interested to try this again with the "normal" kind too, just for the sake of comparing. Either way, I don't think these will disappoint.

Chocolate Spice Cupcakes
-5 T. softened butter
-1/4 c. Dutch process cocoa powder
-1 t. baking soda
-2/3 c. boiling water
-1 1/4 c. flour
-1/4 t. salt
-1 t. ginger
-1 t. cinnamon
-1/4 t. nutmeg
-1/2 c. packed dark brown sugar
-1 egg, room temperature
-2/3 c. molasses

1. Add baking soda to the boiling water. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and spices.
2. Beat together butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Add in the egg. Add molasses and hot water.
3. Gradually add in the flour mixture until well combined.
4. Divide batter among 12 lined baking cups. Bake at 350* for 20 minutes, rotating tin halfway through.

Chocolate-Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting
-1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
-1/4 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
-3/4 c. cinnamon
-1/8 c. milk
-1/4 c. butter, softened

1. Combine sugar, cocoa powder, and cinnamon. Add in butter and milk. (Adjust the consistency with more sugar or more milk, as needed.)

Mocha Cake with Espresso Buttercream Frosting

When Blake was visiting I had a double-birthday occasion to make cake--after a little collaboration we decided on this combination. I split the full recipe into a dozen cupcakes and a 9 inch single-layer cake.

For the cake I used the same recipe I posted here, and the buttercream recipe is the same as well, except for the addition of a heaping tablespoon of espresso powder with the vanilla.


(I managed to convince some other grad students to help me finish these...)

What made this cake extra special? I got to make it with my truly amazing (not to mention gorgeous!) birthday present:


I am either horribly spoiled, or incredibly lucky, or both. I'm also very thankful, and really impressed with how fantastic the cake came out because of this!

Welcoming Spring! (...with Devil's Food Cupcakes)

I'm back again, after another long hiatus--same excuses as last time! This semester has been something else. Until June, the once-monthly post explosions are probably going to be the norm.

Last month, some friends hosted a cook-off. That night I became wildly impressed by the culinary abilities of the people in my department! Anyway, my contribution was a dessert (what else?)--it was early March then, so I may have been jumping the gun a bit, but I was eager to welcome spring. That inspired the butterfly cupcake project! I knew I wanted to try the Swiss Meringue Buttercream again, but I was feeling pretty indecisive about the cake, so I ended up with some Devil's food, some yellow, and a handful of marble cupcakes.

This was an interesting experiment for me--the Devil's food and yellow cake recipes were from two different sources, but were almost identical in terms of ingredients and process, so I assumed they'd be fairly similar with respect to texture. Wrong. They were about as different as possible. Both tasted good, but the Devil's food had a beautiful crumb, and the yellow... less so. I'll probably try it again (perhaps when I'm not making two batters in tandem?), but for now we'll stick with the chocolate.

Devil's Food Cupcakes
-1 1/2 c. cake flour
-1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
-1 t. baking soda
-1 t. baking powder
-1 t. salt
-3/4 c. Dutch-process cocoa powder
-3/4 c. hot water
-1 1/2 c. unsalted butter
-2 1/4 c. sugar
-4 eggs
-1 T. vanilla extract
-1 c. sour cream

1. Whisk together flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Combine hot water and cocoa powder and whisk until smooth.
2. Melt butter and sugar in a saucepan, stirring. Remove from heat, pour into a mixing bowl, and beat for 4-5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and cocoa mixture.
3. Alternate additions of flour mixture and sour cream; beat just until combined.
4. Divide into lined cups. Bake for 20 minutes at 350* F, rotating tins halfway through.

Hard to tell in this photo, but the Devil's food baked really beautifully--see how nicely they domed? And the yellow cakes were kind of flat.

Buttercream. A weakness of mine.

Some chocolate and candy butterflies (which took shockingly long to make--I wanted to document the process, but that would have required about 18 more hands). Also, I was going for more of a yellow frosting color; something weird happened there, but I think it still worked.

Happy spring!

Mocha Cupcakes

And I'm back!

Apologies for the six week hiatus--it corresponds directly to the beginning of a very hectic semester! School has decided to be extra challenging these days, and I'm okay with that, but it has severely minimized the time I can consider "free". Also, my computer has chosen to play mind games with me lately, so both of those things have factored into my lack of posting. There has certainly been no shortage of baking activity, however, so I plan to make up for that now! I've got a month's worth of posts, and I'm determined to do nothing else this evening... That brings us to the first: Mocha Cupcakes!

Priya and I decided to host a get-together about a month ago, so I figured that would be a good occasion to make cupcakes. Really, I can't think of many occasions that wouldn't be improved by cupcakes, but ordinarily I don't have a house full of other people to help eat them. So this was ideal. I thought these came out very well--the texture was excellent. Both the coffee and chocolate flavors were detectable, and it didn't seem to me that either was overwhelming. And the frosting was pretty astonishing. I'm still fairly new to the frosting-making, so I was very pleased with the finished product. It was very much the buttercream flavor, but the consistency was far silkier than any I've ever tried before. And it was wonderful to work with--I tried a bit of piping, but look forward to experimenting with it further. I didn't take any photos during the baking phase (party-prep...), but I did manage to get a couple shots of them all dressed up. Black-tie?

Mocha Cupcakes
-2 1/4 c. cake flour
-2 T. unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder
-1/2 c. unsalted butter
-1 1/2 c. light brown sugar
-2 eggs
-1 t. vanilla
-1 1/2 t. baking soda
-1/4 t. salt
-1/2 c. sour cream
-3/4 c. boiling water
-1 1/2 T. espresso powder

1. Whisk together flour and cocoa. Mix boiling water and espresso powder. Allow it to cool.
2. Cream together butter and brown sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Beat in vanilla, baking soda, and salt.
3. Add flour mixture to butter mixture in three portions, alternating with two additions of the sour cream. Add espresso mix and beat until smooth.
4. Pour batter into 24 lined cups. Bake at 325* for 22 minutes, rotating tins halfway through.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting
(**The original recipe I had was for 5 cups; this makes about 3 cups, which was more than enough to frost 24 cupcakes, but the fractions are a little unconventional...**)
-3 egg whites
-2/3 c. granulated sugar

-pinch of salt

-1 c. + 3.2 T. unsalted butter
-1 t. vanilla

1. Heat egg whites, sugar, and salt over a pan of simmering water, whisking continually until the mixture is warm and the sugar has dissolved.
2. Remove the bowl from the heat, and with the whisk attachment of an electric mixer, whisk the mixture until stiff (not dry) peaks form. Continue mixing until the mixture is fluffy and cool.
3. Add the butter a few tablespoons at a time, whisking continually. Add vanilla.
4. Switch to the beating attachment, and beat until all the air has been removed and the mixture is completely smooth (the recipe said 2 minutes, but that wasn't enough for mine--I just kept beating until it looked like frosting, and that approach seemed to work too). At this point, you can add food coloring and continue blending to tint the icing; I left mine white.
5. Spread or pipe onto cupcakes.

(Here they're modeling my new Wilton cupcake/cake carrier--it's awesome!)

It's good to be back!