A Spot of Baking - Chocolate Cupcakes

I went for a picnic yesterday with my girlfriends and decided to bake some cupcakes for the occasion. I love these chocolate cupcakes - so rich and indulgent. I added some honeycomb into the mixture but it all melted so i'm not sure that's really worth doing, although my friend did say she could taste it. If you want to leave out the ground almonds just replace it with the same amount of flour - equally, you can add more ground almonds and just put in less flour. I'd always go with a blend of flour and almonds for cupcakes though. Decorate it them how you like - the butter icing was melting in the heat so I poured the sprinkles on liberally to hide all manner of sins. 

Makes 10 large cupcakes 

Ingredients

175ml milk
100g dark chocolate (the more cocoa the better!)
125g caster sugar
60g unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
125g self-raising flour
25g ground almonds
milk/dark chocolate chips (optional)
Honeycomb pieces (optional)

Icing:

300g icing sugar
100g unsalted butter
milk
40g cocoa powder

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Pour the milk, chocolate and third of the sugar into a bowl. Put the bowl on top of a saucepan with a small amount of boiling water in it. Put it over the lowest heat and allow to melt. Stir regularly. It may be necessary to take the bowl off the saucepan every now and then so as not to overheat. Once melted, set aside.

2. Put the butter in a bowl and beat until creamy with an electric whisk. Add the remaining sugar and vanilla and whisk until mixture is light and fluffy. Slowly add the egg, beating after each addition. You can add in a small amount of the flour at this point to avoid the mixture curdling. 

3. Using a metal spoon, add the flour and fold in three batches alternately with the chocolate liquid.  Add a handful of chocolate chips and a handful of honeycomb. 

4. Spoon the mixture into the cases and bake for 15 minutes or until the cakes spring back to the touch. 

5. Leave to cool before icing.

6. Add the butter and icing sugar and mix together. Add small amounts of milk at a time and whisk together until you get the desired consistency. Nothing worse than runny butter icing!! Once you reach the right consistency keep whisking until the icing is light.

7. Put into a piping bag and pipe in a circular, spiral motion.

8. Decorate!

If you've tried any of the recipes on this site I'd love to hear your feedback. I'm experimenting as much as you are!

A Spot of Baking - Blueberry and Pecan Muffin Cake

Trust Delia to invent a giant muffin that's big enough for you to share with other people. Ideal. Lovely for a teatime cake or a dessert and with all the fruit and nuts it's bound to be a little bit healthy! You can use any fruit or nuts you want.

Ingredients

275g plain flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
170ml milk
75g (golden) caster sugar
2 eggs
110g unsalted butter
350g blueberries
1 tablespoon demerara sugar
75g pecan nuts (chopped roughly)

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees and cover the base of a 20cm cake tin in greaseproof paper.

2. Melt the butter over a low heat. 

3. Sift the flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside.

4. Whisk the milk, caster sugar, eggs and butter together. Sift the dry ingredients from the other bowl into this bowl (if you can be bothered with double sifting it's good for the muffin texture).

5. Using a large metal spoon, fold the ingredients together quickly. Do not stir! It won't look too pleasant but that's fine. Quickly fold in 275g (approx) of the blueberries and spoon mixture into the tin.

6.  Sprinkle the remaining blueberries over the top followed by the demerara sugar and then the chopped pecans.

7. Bake cake in the centre of the oven for an hour and take it out when it feels springy in the middle.