Okay... I have a confession to make... I cheated slightly.. a few times. The idea of this blog is for me to go through my existing 'pins' and try them out. However, when my friend Pam asked me to bake some cupcakes to raise money for 'Care for the Family' I panicked. I've never made cupcakes before! I'm more a brownie/muffin kinda girl.. I didn't know where to start! Then it occurred to me to find a recipe on pinterest.. and so I did! As I am not experienced in the cupcake field and the prospect of piping icing made me tremble with fear, I found an alternative recipe that was easy peasy and required no icing-piping skills.
The original recipe is from a blog called 'Lickthebowlgood'.
Glancing at the ingredients, I saw that the recipe asked for: 'Hershey's chocolate syrup'. Waaa? I live in the UK and have absolutely no idea what this is, or whether there is an alternative here. Bums. This is where I cheated (again). I decided to use the Hummingbird Bakery recipe book I was given for Christmas for the sponge part of the cupcake. I used the 'Chocolate Cupcakes' recipe on page 126. I also cheated (yet again) as I decided Ferrero Rocher were too expensive. I decided to use chocolate buttons and chopped hazelnuts instead (which I already had in my cupboard).
I was impressed at how easy this recipe was. The Hummingbird Bakery is well known for having amazing cakes and I really thought it would be a lot harder than it was.
Chocolate Cupcakes
Ingredients:
80g unsalted butter
280g caster sugar
200g plain flour
40g cocoa powder
1tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
240ml whole milk
2 large eggs
For the topping I used:
Almost a whole jar of Nutella
Giant chocolate buttons
Sprinkle of chopped hazelnuts
1. 'Preheat the oven to 190C (375F), Gas mark 5, and line muffin tin with cases.'
2. 'Put the butter, sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a bowl.'
3. 'Beat together on a low speed until the ingredients are well incorporated and resemble fine breadcrumbs.'
Well.. this part didn't go so well.. The mixture was so fine it went everywhere! Then it was really hard to beat together the butter with the other ingredients. I cut the butter up in cubes and it had been out of the fridge for about an hour but no matter what I did, it did not mix with the other ingredients and it certainly did not resemble fine breadcrumbs!
4. 'Pour the milk into a jug, add the eggs and whisk together.' (there were then instructions to add 3/4 of the wet mixture to the dry ingredients before then adding the remaining mixture but I didn't read this part until I'd bunged it all in.. woops!).
5. 'Keep mixing until all the ingredients have come together and the batter is smooth once again'
6. 'Spoon the batter into the paper cases, so that each is two-thirds full. If any batter remains use it to fill 1-4 more cases in a separate tin.'
Okay, bear in mind this recipe is supposed to make 12-16 cupcakes... when we did it, it made 26. Yup. 26 cupcakes! we filled this tray twice and another two cupcakes in a different tray. I can only think that they were using larger cases...
7. 'Put in the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes or until risen and springy to the touch. Leave to cool slightly before taking out of the tin and placing on a wire rack.'
Then the fun part! When the cupcakes had cooled I made a well in the top of the cupcake with a knife, and sort of smooshed it down with my fingers like this:
I then spooned a big splodge of Nutella into the cupcake:
For finishing touches I added a chocolate button and a sprinkle of hazelnuts for each cupcake..and.. Ta-Da!
26 Chocolate-button-nutella-hazelnut Cupcakes!
All, in all, a success I think! They tasted yum and seemed to go down well at my friends cupcake sale too.
Hungry Husband Rating: 4/5. 'I think these were good but the chocolate button got a bit lost in the cupcake, it could be better with a Lindt chocolate sweet instead '. Good idea! These husbands do come in handy sometimes!
Click on the image below to see Pin. 002: 'Paint-Stirrer Signs!'
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