Simple Chocolate Mud Cupcake

Another chocolate cake post. 

It's a bit ironic when I think of how often I bake chocolate cake or cupcake and meanwhile I, myself, not a fans of chocolate at all. But somehow I like the smell of melted butter combining together with dark chocolate and forming a smooth mixture. I found this simple chocolate mud cake recipe on youtube and right away went to my kitchen to give it a try. 

There's no upcoming birthdays, no events or anything that requires me to bake any cake, but I will just bake some anyway and use it to practice on some new decoration ideas. 

The video comes from the  Simple Cooking Channel on Youtube. Just click on the name and it will direct you right away to the video. 

I didn't bake it in a baking pan, instead I used this batter to make cupcakes.

So, here we go

You might need :

2 cups of self raising flour

1 1/2 cups of castor sugar

200 gram of butter, melted

200 gram of dark chocolate, melted

3 eggs, beaten

2 tsp of vanilla extract

1/2 cup of instant coffee, cooled

Now, let's get your whisk and start beating.....

As always, pre-heat your oven and line-up your muffin tin with cupcake liners before you start mixing all the ingredients together.

Once your chocolate batter is set, pour it evenly to your cupcake tins. Bake it for 20-25 minutes with 180C oven. Or.. until your toothpick test comes out clean.

As you see on the picture above, the top of the cake is cracking. It's ok. In fact those cracks give a better crisp taste to your cake. Crispy above, moist inside. What can you ask more?

Heavenly Chocolate Cake as Base for Black Forest Cake.

It's been a while back since I wrote my last post. I have actually collected some pictures for my next writing, but I just haven't got the time to sit down and compose everything into the blog. Now, since we are finally back from our summer vacation and I have my extremely too much free time again, I will start posting some recipes and tutorials for you all to try.

For now it's the very moist chocolate cake that later will be turned into a black forest birthday cake for my lovely husband.

His birthday was exactly one day before we left for the vacation. And the whole week I've been spending more time browsing for ideas, tutorial and tips instead of getting ready for the vacation and starting to pack. This time my choice will be a chocolate cake, since chocolate is everyone's (my husband, sister and in laws) favorite thing except mine. 

I need to start going with a perfect birthday cake for his special day. After browsing through a lot of chocolate cake recipes, I finally found the one that looks very close to perfection. A perfect man deserves a perfect cake. 

So, let's get started.

What you need : unsalted butter    95gr
                dark chocolate     95gr
                granulated sugar   110gr
                egg yolk           90gr
                egg white          140gr
                sugar for egg white  50gr
                cocoa powder       15gr
                cake flour         80gr
                     

Let's mix them all together!!

1. Prepare your round baking pan and wrap the inside part with baking paper.

2. Whisk the flour and cocoa powder together. Sieve. Twice.

3. Heat butter until melted. Be careful not to let it melt too much that it gets brown. If you have any candy thermometer keep it around 80C when poured into the chocolate.

4. Pour the melted butter into the chocolate and stir until the chocolate is fully melted.

 5. Add the sugar and mix it with the chocolate batter.

6. Add the egg yolk and mix again. Set the batter aside for a while.

7. Prepare egg white in a separate bowl. 

8. Using an electric hand mixer beat it until the volume is up and pour in half of the sugar. Keep whisking it for a few minute then add again the remaining sugar. Continue beating until you get a stiff white cream. It is good enough when you see the curling peak when you pull out the batter.

9. Pour in half of the egg white batter to the chocolate butter mix. If the chocolate mix is harden a little bit, just give it a little whisk.

10. Add the sifted flour and cocoa powder and stir it gently. 

11. At last, pour in the remaining egg white batter and mix it until you get a smooth texture. 

 12. Pour the batter into a round baking pan and bake it in a preheated oven under 175C around 35 - 40 minutes.

 13. Do the toothpick test to your cake. If it comes out clean that means you can take out the cake and let it cool on the cooling rack. 

14. After it's been cooled then you can start decorating it.

I used this chocolate cake for a black forest cake. I cut the cake into 3 layers then spread each layer with raspberry jam first, top it with cheese cream butter cream and fresh raspberry fruit. Put the second layer and do the same filling as the first before covering it with the last piece of cake. I crumb coated it with simple icing and let it cool in the fridge for a few hours before I cover it with fondant and decorate.

He is very into coffee right now. Everything about brewing coffee and creating latte art. So, I decided to make a coffee-themed decoration for the whole cake. It was quite a  lot of work because I cover the whole side with little pieces of coffee beans made of fondant. But the result is very satisfying. 

Yup, I guess now it's really the time to  buy a nice cake stand. :-)

Check out more of my creations at www.MiNiBakes.nl