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I have been craving chocolate all week, so I decided to indulge myself and make very chocolaty cupcakes! Brownie cake with chocolate chips and chocolate ganache as icing. It did the trick and I recommend it to everyone who is suffering from a strong chocolate craving. Here is the recipe for 12 cupcakes:

cake:

- 3/4 stick of butter ( 1/4 cup + 2 tbs of butter)

- 1 cup of sugar

- 2 eggs

- 80g of dark chocolate

- 1 tbs of olive oil

- 1 1/3 cup of flour

- 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder

- 1 cup of chocolate chips

method:

- preheat oven to 350 (325 for convection ovens)

- beat butter until light and fluffy

- add sugar and beat until mixed

- add eggs one at a time and mix in between each addition

- melt the chocolate in a bain-marie with the olive oil

- in a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder

- add the flour and mix

- add the chocolate chips

- put cupcake cups in muffin pan and scoop the cupcake batter in the cups

- bake for 20 minutes

- let cool completely before icing

I took the chocolate ganache recipe from Baking from Above – Baking. I really recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the basics of baking.

- 50 grams of dark chocolate

- 15 grams of cream

- 50 grams of milk

method:

- put the milk and the cream in a small pot and bring to a boil

- take the pot of the stove and add the chocolate, stir until all the chocolate is melted

- put back on the stove on medium and once it boil for 2 minutes

- let cool a little bit before pouring onto the cupcakes

Enjoy!

While grocery shopping this week, I saw big bags of beautiful cherries and I couldn’t resist making black forest cupcakes! I varied the recipe for the cake a bit and it has more of a brownie texture. I had a hard time resisting eating one when they came out of the oven! Here is the recipe for 12 cupcakes.

filling:

- 2 cups of cherries pited

- 1 1/2 tbs of sugar

method:

- put the cherries in a bowl with 1 1/2 tbs of sugar

- a couple of hours later, put the cherries and the juice in a pot and cook for 10 minutes stirring once in a while

- put a third of the cherries in a blender and add the resulting puree in with the rest of the juice and cherries

- let cool

- once the cupcakes are cool, cut a cone shape out of the top of the cupcakes and put a spoonfull of the cherry filling

- put the cone back on top, you can always cut the tip of the cone to make it fit better

cake:

- 3/4 stick of butter ( 1/4 cup + 2 tbs of butter)

- 1 cup of sugar

- 2 eggs

- 80g of dark chocolate

- 1 tbs of olive oil

- 1 1/3 cup of flour

- 1 tsp of baking powder

method:

- preheat oven to 350 (325 for convection ovens)

- beat butter until light and fluffy

- add sugar and beat until mixed

- add eggs one at a time and mix in between each addition

- melt the chocolate in a bain-marie with the olive oil

- in a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder

- add the flour and mix

- put cupcake cups in muffin pan and scoop the cupcake batter in the cups

- bake for 22 minutes

- let cool completely before icing

italian buttercream:

- 1 egg white

- 4 tsp of water

- 6 tbs of sugar

- 10 tbs of butter

- 2 tsp of vanilla paste or extract

method:

- beat egg white up in snow adding 1 tbs of sugar midway

- put the rest of the sugar and the water together in a pot on bring to 116 degrees celsius (soft ball state)

- add the sugar syrup to the egg whites while still beating at slowest speed

- beat until cooled, touched the bottom of the bowl to make sure its at least body temperature

- add the butter a little bit at a time and beat a little bit in between each addition

- beat until you get a nice fluffy texture

- add the vanilla

I added chocolate shavings and Maraschino cherries on top as decoration.

Enjoy