Chocolate Cupcakes

This blog post is inspired by the dentist. I found it ironic that I could watch a woman bake cupcakes on TV while having cavities drilled, and I left the dentist office not wanting to brush or floss more but wanting to bake cupcakes! So I went home and scoured my collection of cookbooks for the perfect new recipe to try.

My friend Miranda, knowing and sharing my love of cooking, gave me "The Complete Book of Chocolate And 200 Chocolate Recipes" a while back. From that gift, I have baked real chocolate banana pudding, peanut butter marble cake, and now the most important creation for any serious baker...cupcakes!

Of course I can't make any recipe the way I'm supposed to, so I used unsweetened cocoa powder instead of chocolate for the cupcakes because, at the time, I didn't have any chocolate bars. I happen to have six in the fridge right now, but that wasn't helping me very much when I baked these over a month ago!

Chocolate Fairy Cakes
(AKA chocolate cupcakes)
Ingredients
4 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tbsp + 2 tsp canola or vegetable oil
4 tbsp + 2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp water
2.5 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1.5 cups caster sugar (Sugar ground in a food processor for a couple of minutes)
3/4 cup butter or margarine, at room temperature
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease 24 cupcake tins and line with paper liners.

2. Cook the cocoa powder, oil, 4 tbsp + 2 tsp sugar, and water in a small saucepan, stirring frequently until heated through. Remove from the heat. With a sifter or whisk, sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and caster sugar into a large bowl. Add the chocolate mixture, butter or margarine, milk, and vanilla.

3. With a hand-held electric mixer on medium speed, beat the mixture until smooth. Increase the speed to high and beat for 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat for 1 minute after each addition.

4. Divide the mixture evenly among the prepared tins.

I only had enough liners for half my cakes, but I think they turned out fine!

5. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center of a cake comes out clean. Cool in the tins for 10 minutes, then turn out to cool completely on a wire rack.

I used my go-to cream cheese icing recipe from The Joy of Cooking. You can find it on my carrot cake post and make it while you wait for your cupcakes to cool! I left out the cinnamon this time though; as much as I love cinnamon, it's more appropriate for carrot cake, I think.