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  1. Wednesday, April 28, 2010

    Chocolate Cupcakes and AMAZING Strawberry Icing

    When I was getting ready for the Cambria Cove post, I wanted to make something “cute” for the purpose of showing off my cake stands. I had these cute white paper cup thingys, so I decided to go with cupcakes. I made the batter then realized the papers I had bought were not for baking. My muffin tins are packed away somewhere, so I was left with 1 mini muffin tin and no papers. Needless to say the cupcakes were a pain in the patootey to bake, and by the time I got around to icing and photographing, I was over it! So, my cupcakes aren’t that cute. But they ARE delicious. So I have to share them anyway! (PS…if you don’t have cupcake liners, don’t make cupcakes!)

    mini chocolate cupcakes 1 web

    Have you ever seen the Cupcake Bakeshop blog by Cheryl the software quality engineer, aka Chockylit? It was one of the very first blogs I ever laid eyes on and I’ve loved it from day 1. I used one of her recipes and I loved everything about it – the cake itself came out great, and this strawberry frosting? Be still my beating heart…it is perfect. PER. FECT.

    The original post for this recipe is great – Cheryl provides detailed explanations as to why you want to perform each step of the recipe. It’s a very handy post. Thanks, Cheryl! (P.S. You have to read her bio…I love her completely non-cupcake related background!)

    chocolate cupcakes 2 web

    Chocolate Cupcakes
     
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    Author:
    Ingredients
    • 2 sticks of butter (room temp)
    • 2½ cups sugar
    • 4 large eggs
    • 1¾ C flour
    • 1 tsp baking powder
    • ½ tsp. baking soda
    • ¼ tsp. salt
    • 1 C cocoa powder
    • 1 C milk
    • 2 tsp. vanilla
    Instructions
    1. Beat the butter until it's all nice and whipped. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy...as in for a long time, so the butter is completely incorporated into the sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
    2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder. (Cheryl mentions that whisking will suffice over sifting...but my cocoa was all lumpy, so I wish I had thrown at least the cocoa through the sifter quickly...just keep an eye out for that problem in your cocoa.)
    3. Mix the milk and vanilla.
    4. Add the flour mixture and the milk mixture to the butter mixture - alternating and beating between each addition, about 3 cycles.
    5. Scoop batter into cupcake tins (with liners!!) or those uber-cute cupcake papers that Cheryl uses that I can't wait to get my hands on. ONLY FILL THEM HALF WAY. Bake for 22-25 minutes at 350, or until tester comes out clean. (Obviously my mini cupcakes baked a little shorter than that.)

    I made two kinds of icing, halving each recipe. This is exactly what I made – feel free to double these measurements if you decide to just do one flavor.
    AMAZING Strawberry Icing
     
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    Author:
    Ingredients
    • 1 stick butter (room temp)
    • 1½ - 2 C powdered sugar
    • ⅛ C strawberry puree (I had some pretty big strawberries - ⅛ C was a little less than one giant strawberry all smooshed up)
    Instructions
    1. Beat butter until soft. Sift in the powder sugar and beat. Add strawberry and mix. Add more powdered sugar if you need it. Seriously...this frosting ROCKS.
    2. This is about enough frosting for one-half standard batch of cupcakes.

    White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
     
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    Author:
    Ingredients
    • 3 oz white chocolate
    • 4 oz cream cheese
    • ⅛ C butter (room temp)
    • 1 C powdered sugar
    Instructions
    1. Melt chocolate and set aside to cool. Beat cream cheese and butter together. Add chocolate and beat. Sift in powdered sugar and beat for a long while.
    2. This makes about enough frosting for one-half standard batch of cupcakes.

     

    Posted by Jane Maynard at 7:41 am   24 Comments
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