As absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous as these may look ( and I can sense your sugar levels spiking just my ooogling at the photo) these cupcakes were the least planned of the whole @ZakLudick birthday cake extravaganza I've been posting about for the last few weeks.
Basically, I needed a chocolate cake layer for my ridiculous chocolate caramel cheesecake. I couldn't exactly make half a recipe, so I made a full batch of batter, and I used the left over batter to make cupcakes..... because you know.... who could ever complain about having spare cupcakes 🤣😜
It also meant, that like I do with the kiddos, @ZakLudick could take some with him to work to share with his colleagues on his actual birthday and since the carrot cake and the Cheesecake were for the parties,that were not on his actual birthday, the cupcakes also served as an official birthday cake.
Something tells me we had a fear of running out of cake FOROOC? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈
And actually, we almost did! If I didn't hide my slice of cheesecake slice away (or my slice of carrot cake or my cupcake), I wouldn't have had a smidgen! everything was demolished - with absolutely nothing to share with extended family and other friends who couldn't make the parties. Basically, if they missed it, they missed out!
So, I did use my gorgeous chocolate cake recipe for the sponge, but I changed up the icing.
Instead of the darker cream cheese icing that I prefer for my own cakes, I have realised that the kids (and Zak are more fond of buttercream icing. So I substituted the cream cheese with butter and threw in extra icing sugar and used a little less cocoa, added extra vanilla essence and, since I had the bottle out anyway, quite a heavy hand of milk tart liqueur.
I piped the icing around the outside of the cupcakes, but it was so thick that I had to abandon the nozzle. Yes, I know what you're thinking💩, but they did end up looking and tasting flipping fantastic!
I also used caramel treat, or tinned caramel, which acted as the "filling" and then topped each cupcake with gold edible shimmer powder and a Cadbury's chocolate whisper!
For those of you drooling and wanting to replicate them, this is how I did it!
Chocolate cupcakes - Method and recipe:
The Cupcakes:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Tools:
You'll need sealable plastic transport containers, which you can buy from most baking supply shops. Make sure your kids (or husbands) bring them home though! It's a waste of money to buy new ones for every birthday.
- Cupcake holders - suitable for baking
- 2 x non-stick cupcake/ muffin tins (12's which makes 24 cupcakes in total, per batch) - note that this time, I used half the batter to make a cake sponge but still had enough batter over to make 18 cupcakes, which was surprisingly awesome. If you're going to do this, it means one of your cupcake tins will not be full. If you find yourself in a similar position, confine your cupcakes to the centre of the tray instead of the outskirts as this will prevent them from baking too fast and drying out.
- Spray and Cook
- A Cake Mixer (doesn't have to be fancy. Even a simple hand
held one is fine - Several wooden spoons (especially if you have children that
keep stealing them to lick). - 3 large mixing bowls: two for the cake another one for the icing
- Cooling racks x 2
Ingredients:
hints:
Prep your cupcake tins by generously spraying them with the spray and cook AND lining them with baking paper cups.
Use two separate bowls, one for dry and one for wet. This way you'll prevent yourself from forgetting to cream the butter and sugar and eggs before adding the dry stuff, which leads to this:
SAD CAKE
Wet ingredients:
125g Soft Butter
1/2 Cup Castor Sugar
1/3 Cup Icing Sugar
2 Eggs, lightly beaten
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Essence
1/4 Cup Sunflower Oil
80g Jam (I like to use strawberry, but any jam is fine. For
American readers, this is preserve or jelly)
250ml milk
Dry Ingredients
1 and a 1/4 cup Self Raising Flour
1/2 cup of cocoa
1 Teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda
1 Teaspoon baking powder
Method:
Cream Butter and sugar until light and fluffy
Mix egg, oil and vanilla and add in small amounts to the bowl
Add jam
In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients
Mix wet and dry ingredients together now and lastly add in milk.
Once evenly mixed (not lumpy but be careful not to overmix otherwise your cake won't rise) pour the mixture into your prepared cupcake tins and place as centred as possible in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes. You can take them out at the 30-minute mark and switch them around and bake for another 10 minutes if necessary to ensure they bake evenly. It depends on your oven. I don't usually recommend removing any cake from the oven while baking, as it can cause your cake to flop, but this recipe is practically flop-proof and as long as you work quickly, the time it takes to switch the trays around is worth it. When the time is up, you can use a skewer or toothpick to make sure they're cooked through by inserting it into the centre of a few cupcakes. It should come out clean, with no batter sticking to it.
Remove your cupcake tins from the oven (please use oven mittens lest your hands become like mine). Let them cool in the tin for a bit (like an hour) before turning out onto the cooling racks. You cannot ice warm cake.
The Icing:
*When you are ready to ice, get your plastic cupcake trays ready and assemble the cupcakes so they're ready to be iced, decorated and transported. *
Ingredients:
100g soft Butter
1 tub Cream Cheese - I substituted this with 250g of extra butter, so 350g of butter all together
2 cups of Icing Sugar - I used an extra half a cup so 2.5 cups all together
150g Cocoa Powder - I used 50g less. So only 100g of cocoa
Dash of Milk - substituted for milk tart liqueur
Icing Method:
There isn't really one. Just stick it all in a bowl and mix till it's all smooth and moussey looking. Spoon or pipe a good layer of icing on top of each cupcake. You can really go wild and top with whatever tickles your fancy! Don't eat all the cupcakes in the fridge light at midnight. Despite what I may tell you, those calories do count 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
