For my church's fund-raising bake sale, I decided to offer up Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake, modified into cupcakes. On paper, the recipe looked really good, and I had been dying to try it out for the longest time.
As this was my first time baking chocolate cupcakes, I had no idea how chocolate cupcakes should look when ready. The cupcakes had to spend 30 mins in the oven, which is much longer than the 15 - 20 mins for regular cupcakes, and I was concerned about over-cooking them. Because of the chocolate content, the cupcakes came out of the oven looking rather scarily black. It was hard to tell if they were over-cooked. Or under-cooked!
But I needn't have worried. Miss Nigella is right. The cupcakes turned out beautifully. They were wonderfully moist and chocolatey, and had the most amazing aroma. The critical ingredient for this recipe, I believe, must be the dark muscovado sugar, which I had much difficulty sourcing, so much so that when I stumbled upon it, I bought a stash for my cupboard. (If any of you need any in Singapore, they can be found at Tanglin Marketplace.) The sugar imparts a beautiful depth to the flavour of the cupcake. And unlike Nigella's other recipes, I was able to use the recommended amount of sugar, without having the end-product tasting too cloyingly sweet (a consistent weakness I find in Nigella's recipes). I will try the cupcakes with other types of brown sugar next time to see how it affects the flavour. I would definitely not use white sugar.
But this is not all. I decided that since these cupcakes are for sale, they deserved some prettifying. So, icing was needed. And Nigella provided a wonderful chocolate ganache icing accompaniment. I am pleased to report that this time round, I melted my chocolate perfectly. (Read
my previous post describing my disastrous chocolate melting experience.) I took up Katong Gal's suggestion, and melted the chocolate and cream in a bowl above simmering water. Once about a third of the chocolate started to melt, I turned off the heat, not allowing the chocolate to overheat at all.
I had a treat icing the cupcakes, and topped them off with sugar rosebud I bought from a specialty baking shop (
Bake it Yourself). Apart from tasting damn good, the cupcakes looked real good too. My husband, who doesn't usually bother with cupcakes, enjoyed them thoroughly.
The decorating must have been a good idea, as the cupcakes sold out at the bake sale. :-)
We planned a picnic to the Botanic Gardens with some friends. Since I had leftover ganache from the chocolate cupcakes (see previous post), I decided to bake some butterfly cakes and fill them with the chocolate ganache rather than the buttercream icing in the recipe.
This, so that you can cut out a disc-shaped piece from the top of the cupcake, fill the cut-out section of the cupcake with icing, and fashion the cut-out piece of cupcake into butterfly wings and stick it onto the icing. Sounds complicated, but is really easy (for someone who always messed up in art class, take it from me).
The cupcakes were sweet. The ganache was bitter (I used unsweetened chocolate). The combination worked great together. Not as swoonable over as the damp chocolate cupcakes, but very easy to put together, and provides an nice variation to the regular cupcake. A very enjoyable treat. For a children's party, you could use a milk chocolate ganache, or a plain buttercream icing. 