I love, love, LOVE chocolate - but then again, who does not? I have been looking for the perfect moist chocolaty cupcake recipe for some time now, and this recipe is my final result. This cupcake is super yummy, but it can be evil unforgiving bastard if you make mistakes like filling your cupcake tray too much, or opening your oven too soon while the cupcake is not completely baked yet. It takes some time to be mastered, but the result is well worth the effort, trust me!
Ingredients for approx 12 cupcakes:
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar (preferably brown)
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup of boiling water
pinch of salt
Start by whisking your dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder and cocoa powder) in a mixing bowl. Once all the ingredients are mixed evenly, start adding your wet ingredients (milk, oil, egg and vanilla extract - do not add water at this point). Start mixing the dough on a low speed and once all the ingredients are combined evenly, add 1/2 cup of boiling water. I recommend doing this slowly and not adding all the water at once, unless you want your kitchen walls to have brand new brown polka dots design. Once you have incorporated all the water into the mixture, give it a good mix on high speed.
Preheat your oven to 175°C and butter or line your cupcake tray. Once you have done this, pour the dough to the tray - each cupcake mold only halfway through as the dough will rise pretty well and you don't want to spill out of the tray (also, the dough is very light and the air circulation in the oven might blow your cupcake tops to the side, which you probably don't want). Bake for 20 to 25 minutes and then perform the toothpick test to see, if cupcakes are ready to go out of the oven.
Note: If you plan on making these cupcakes without frosting, I suggest using 1 cup of sugar - the recipe is made less sweet, as I find this amount of sugar to be sufficient when cupcake is topped with very sweet frosting.
Lemon buttercream frosting
Ingredients for the frosting:
1/2 cup unsalted butter (softened)
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
2-3 tbsp milk
lemon zest (optional)
The process of making a good frosting is easy and I have already explained it in my previous cupcake post, but to sum it up - first, make sure your ingredients are all in room temperature. Start beating the butter in your mixing bowl and when it becomes creamy, start adding portions of your sugar, lemon and milk, only a bit of one of them at a the time - give the frosting a good mix before you add another part of your ingredients. Once you have added all your ingredients, beat your frosting on high speed for the extra fluffiness.
Last but not least, I decided to share my alternative for frosting cupcakes. Not everyone has nice frosting bag with multiple tips, here is something you can use instead. Take your plastic bag, stick a piece of ducktape around one bottom corner, fill the bag with frosting and then cut off the tip of the corner. You can get multiple "tips" by different cuts. Suggestions on how to cut the corner to get most common tips alternatives will be done in separate post dedicated to cupcake decorating that I am preparing. :) Although, it is a harder to frost your cupcakes like this and mastering the technique takes a bit of practise, as you don't have that much control.
