chocolate cupcakes

Latest bake recipes and feedback

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Although I provided links to the original source and inspiration for the recipes with which I experimented in my latest bake, I decided I ought to post the recipes including modifications as well as the feedback I received.

Pumpkin cupcakes with gingersnap crust, Rolo/Center candy center and spiced apple cider icing

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup milk
1 cup pumpkin

Package of gingersnaps or pepparkakor cookies

24 Rolo, Smil or Center chocolate caramel candies

Directions/cupcakes:

Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Line 24 muffin cups.
Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside.
Beat 1/2 cup of butter and sugars. Add the eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to be fully incorporated before adding the next. Stir in the milk and pumpkin. Stir in the dry mixture, mixing until just incorporated.

Place a thin gingersnap or gingerbread (pepparkakor) in the bottom of a cupcake paper. Put cupcake batter over the top of the gingersnaps and fill to about two-thirds full. Press a Rolo into the center of the batter.

Bake until golden, about 25 minutes. Cool in the pans for 5 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

Spiced apple cider frosting
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
Two or three packets spiced apple cider

Mix the egg white and the sugar over a double boiler. The sugar should be completely dissolved when you remove it from heat. Pour the mixture into a large bowl (preferably the mixing bowl of a stand mixer — Swiss meringue is mixing intensive, so a stand mixer works best). Whisk on high speed until stiff but still wet peaks form. Continue to beat for about five or six minutes after these peaks form.

Switch to the paddle attachment and turn the speed to medium low. Add the butter in one or two tablespoons/pieces at a time. The mixture might start to look lumpy and curdled. Don’t worry. Keep mixing. When things start to come together, beat in the flavoring (in this case, the apple cider powder) and keep beating for another two minutes. It might take some time to get to the right texture. You will know when it comes together in a solid, fluffy, frosting-like consistency.

Among the feedback on these – which were giant (I double the recipe and baked them in double-sized cupcake papers) – were statements like, “I have a new favorite. The pumpkin cupcakes are like a meal! And then a caramel surprise in the middle. I loved it!” And, “That pumpkin cake was amazing! The balance with the icing was perfect… and then a toffee middle! Was it ginger and cinnamon in the sponge or just cinnamon? Was it lemon in the icing? I loved it … definitely made my morning.”

(And to answer those questions… yes, ginger and cinnamon in the sponge along with cloves, nutmeg and allspice! That’s a LOAD of spices! And no, no lemon in the icing!)

About the “fauxstess” Hostess cupcakes

Chocolate cupcake
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk, you can quickly make some by adding 1 tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice for each cup of milk you’d like to “sour” – or use “súrmjólk” or “filmjölk”)
2 teaspoons vanilla

Beat sugar and vegetable oil until fluffy. Add eggs, beat well. Add vanilla. Mix. Sift all dry ingredients together and add in thirds alternately with the buttermilk.

Preheat oven to 175C.

Put batter into prepared cupcake papers, fill to about two-thirds full. Bake 20-24 minutes. Let cool in pan for five minutes and then remove to cooling racks. Let completely cool before filling.

Fauxstess vanilla filling
The original, suggested filing recipe was too heavy and thick for me to use but you can find it on the lovely Lemon Sugar blog site.

My filling recipe is the same as I use for Swiss meringue buttercream frosting
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 teaspoons vanilla bean powder, a teaspoon or so of liquid vanilla (to taste)

Mix the egg white and the sugar over a double boiler. The sugar should be completely dissolved when you remove it from heat. Pour the mixture into a large bowl (preferably the mixing bowl of a stand mixer — Swiss meringue is mixing intensive, so a stand mixer works best). Whisk on high speed until stiff but still wet peaks form. Continue to beat for about five or six minutes after these peaks form.

Switch to the paddle attachment and turn the speed to medium low. Add the butter in one or two tablespoons/pieces at a time. The mixture might start to look lumpy and curdled. Don’t worry. Keep mixing. When things start to come together, beat in the flavoring (in this case, the vanilla) and keep beating for another two minutes. It might take some time to get to the right texture. You will know when it comes together in a solid, fluffy, frosting-like consistency.

Add to a piping bag and use a piping/frosting tip that can be poked into the tops of the cupcakes to fill them. Gently squeeze piping bag to fill the cupcakes with filling, being careful not to let the cupcake explode. If using the original filling recipe, you are supposed to set aside a cup of the filling to make the white icing curlicue on top of the cupcakes, but because I did not do that I used some store-bought white-writing icing.

Chocolate ganache topping
5 ounces chocolate
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons heavy cream

Over a double boiler filled with boiling water, heat cream in the top until steaming. Remove from heat and add chocolate, stir until smooth. Cool completely. When cool, dip the filled cupcakes into the ganache (or spread them with the ganache). Set in fridge at least 30 minutes to let harden/solidify.

Use the icing “pen” to make squiggles on top. Refrigerate the cupcakes so everything sets nicely.

People were truly bowled over by these, no matter how ugly they turned out. I mean, heck yeah, it’s chocolate. But they didn’t turn out looking like their namesake and processed “inspiration”, the Hostess cupcake. I guess they don’t have to look exactly the same to taste even better.

The most effusive feedback came from the only other American person (someone who actually knows the real Hostess cupcakes) to try these out. The exuberance and all-caps are hers (she emailed her feedback): “WHATEVER ON EARTH WAS IN YOUR CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES?!!?!?! IT WAS SO GODDAMN SPANKING GOOD! IT REMINDED ME OF THE JOY OF A DING DONG AS A CHILD – BUT THIS WAS BETTER! IT WAS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LIGHT… I’m like….. in heaven… It was AMAZING! PERFECT! You have to make those again!!” When I responded with a thanks, she answered, “IT WAS TOTALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLY A HOSTESS!!! TOTALLY! TOTALLY! TOTALLY!! !%&”!%”#@!”

the fauxstess with the mostess?

fauxstess cupcakes with bad squiggles
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After moving beyond the mundane world of plain cupcakes, I was happy to come across inspiration for something different. I stumbled on the Lemon Sugar blog and its take on the Hostess cupcake. No doubt – a homemade version of the original processed feast of Frankenstein ingredients (what IS the peel-off ‘choco-not’ frosting topped with glue-like squiggles?) is superior. You would barely have to try hard to get a better-tasting finished product.

I mostly followed the Lemon Sugar recipe as posted, but when I made the creme filling, it turned out too thick (I could spackle with this stuff!), so I turned to Swiss meringue buttercream* as my filling.

I made a few mistakes. For one, I did not let all the cupcakes bake quite long enough, so they were a bit too soft and collapsed in the middle. For another, I followed the “creme” filling recipe provided in the Lemon Sugar blog BUT did not have quite enough marshmallow filling, and that probably made the difference. Third, because the filling did not work out as planned, I could not use it to make the topping-squiggles, so I turned to a tube of white “writing” glaze/icing, which worked fine except that I just don’t have the patience or dexterity for doing artistic or decorative stuff … so witness my mess.

filled fauxstess cupcakes

filled fauxstess cupcakes

IMG_1744 IMG_1745 IMG_1746

*Swiss meringue buttercream how-to
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
Vanilla powder and liquid vanilla (to taste)

Mix the egg white and the sugar over a double boiler. The sugar should be completely dissolved when you remove it from heat. Pour the mixture into a large bowl (preferably the mixing bowl of a stand mixer — Swiss meringue is mixing intensive, so a stand mixer works best). Whisk on high speed until stiff but still wet peaks form. Continue to beat for about five or six minutes after these peaks form.

Switch to the paddle attachment and turn the speed to medium low. Add the butter in one or two tablespoons/pieces at a time. The mixture might start to look lumpy and curdled. Don’t worry. Keep mixing. When things start to come together, beat in the flavoring (in this case, the vanilla) and keep beating for another two minutes. It might take some time to get to the right texture. You will know when it comes together in a solid, fluffy, frosting-like consistency.

Halloween cupcakes, British accents & presentation nerves

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The day before Halloween, I brought a whole lot of Halloween-themed baked goods to my office. It also turned out that I had to be in an all-day training-and-information session with an external supplier. We enjoyed things like chocolate cupcakes all dressed up for Halloween fun. It’s always fun when external people come to the office when we have baked stuff just because the breadth and scale always seem a bit overwhelming to “outsiders” (seems overwhelming to “insiders”, too, who are not used to it).

choc sugar skulls

Chocolate cupcakes with sugar skulls for Halloween

spiderweb

Chocolate cupcakes with spiderweb pattern and chocolate-licorice “spider” in the middle

The following week there was yet another training session with a different person from the same company. All very nice, well-informed people, but the most recent presenter was English. I am not sure I have written much about my increasing aural displeasure at hearing English accents (mostly due to my string of bad experiences with English people). Nothing bad about this presentation (other than listening to the accent – haha). With time, the effect softened, and it did not bother me much, although the word choice and little language fumbles (seemingly due to nerves in the beginning of the presentation) had me chuckling a bit, from the statement, “Now we can get sort of really dirty with it” (meaning we were going to get our hands dirty digging deeper into the data in the system we were learning), to his added syllables to words with which his tongue apparently struggled, making “fruition” come out as “fruitition” and three attempts at “validity”, which eventually came out as “valididity”. More vexing was the misuse of comparatives (the repeated “more deeper”, “more easier”, “more stricter”). Infuriating that a native English speaker and professional (who makes a living at this public presentation thing) would so casually and easily make these kinds of mistakes. For what reason do comparatives like “deeper”, “better”, simpler” exist than to forgo the “more” in front? On the other hand, he used the word “livery”, which is not something you hear every day.

Not long thereafter, we had a divisional webinar in which loads of people, mostly non-native English speakers, had to deliver presentations to a room full of people and to cameras set up for the webinar, broadcast to a bunch of our global offices (internal information sharing, essentially). What I noticed is that people who are quite confident giving presentations even in a large room full of people suddenly seemed quite nervous when they were placed in front of a camera. Not sure why – I suspect I am the opposite because a room full of people can ask immediate questions and put you on the spot while a camera is totally anonymous – I don’t know or care who is on the other side (well, I do know and do care, but in the immediate moment, I can’t interact with or see them, so it’s somewhat “out of sight, out of mind”).

Not really important but observations nonetheless.

Perhaps even more important is the recipe for the cupcakes.

Basic chocolate cupcake recipe

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

2 eggs

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/2 cup boiling water

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line cupcake pans with cupcake papers.

Cream sugar, shortening and eggs until fluffy. In a separate bowl, mix the boiling water with cocoa, set aside and let cool. In another bowl, sift the flour and baking soda. Once the cocoa mixture is cool, add the milk to it. Add flour mixture alternately with the cocoa-milk mixture into the creamed sugar-butter. Add vanilla. Distribute the batter evenly among the cupcake pans (to about half-full). Should make 24 cupcakes. Bake for about 20 or 25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Your favorite chocolate frosting should top these cakes when they are cool… eat them plain or decorate as desired. In this case, as evidenced above, I topped some with some small sugar decorations. I topped the others with a spiderweb design using some orange gel frosting pens and a small chocolate-covered licorice bit (as a “spider”).

Kahlua coffee cupcakes

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Kahlua coffee cupcakes
6 tablespoons cocoa powder
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoon flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoon butter (1/2 stick), melted and cooled
1/2 cup milk, room temperature
1 large egg, room temperature and lightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup boiling water

Preheat to 350˚F.

Combine cocoa powder, sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to combine. Add butter, milk, egg and vanilla. Mix at medium speed for 2 minutes. Add boiling water and beat to combine. (The batter will be quite thin.)

Divide the batter into each cupcake liners and bake for 18-20 minutes. Let cool completely.

For the Kahlua glaze:
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tablespoon Kahlua

Mix all ingredients except Kahlua on stovetop in a small saucepan. Heat on low until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and then stir in Kahlua and set glaze aside.

When cupcakes are cool, poke holes in each and pour a teaspoon of the glaze on top of each cupcake. Then frost as desired.

Baked Goods: Basic chocolate cupcakes for Halloween

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I have a standard go-to chocolate cake recipe; this time I have different ingredients on hand and wanted something very simple to make Halloween cupcakes. The decoration was a spiderweb design (basic chocolate frosting and gel icing for the web). I am not a big fan of chocolate but think that these cupcakes were fine. People ate them, after all.

Basic Chocolate Cake Recipe

Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
2 eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 cup hot water
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F/175C.

Cream sugar, shortening and eggs until fluffy. In a separate bowl, mix the cocoa with hot water, set aside to let it cool slightly. Sift flour, baking soda and salt together. Once cooled, add milk to the cocoa mixture. Add flour mixture alternately with milk mixture to creamed sugar-shortening mixture. Add vanilla. Pour into well-greased cake pans dusted with flour or sugar. Bake in a preheated 350F/175C oven for 35-40 minutes. (Or put into well-greased cupcakes molds or cupcake papers and bake for about 20-25 minutes until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.)

Frost and decorate as desired.