I took a risk and made a baked goods recipe from a random food blog, with my own modifications! This has burned me before, but this one was pretty successful. I don't bake much, but when I do I always try to follow a reliable recipe (as opposed to my freeform cooking style for other things). I was looking for an easyish chocolate cake recipe for husband's birthday with ingredients I had on hand (cocoa; no actual chocolate)...then looked for cupcakes because I wanted to share some with a neighbor friend...and also looked for a small batch recipe because we don't need a huge batch of cupcakes!
This recipe from The Spruce Eats seemed to fit the bill. I'm also not a huge cake person, but I always like cakes made with sour cream (super moist!) and I had some on hand. I also don't like super-sweet frosting, so I found a recipe somewhere else that also incorporated sour cream - it's kinda like cream cheese frosting. I scaled the frosting recipe down and it still made more than needed for a dozen cupcakes (of which I only got 11 out of this batch!). But there's nothing wrong with eating some extra frosting by the spoonful!
So here you go - a reasonable dozen-ish batch of moist chocolate cupcakes with not-too-sweet frosting, using only cocoa!
Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcakes
- 1/2 cup brewed coffee, or water
- 1/4 cup butter (I used salted butter which is what I have on hand. If you use unsalted butter, up the salt to 1/2 tsp)
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1 tsp vanilla
Preheat oven to 350 and line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.
In a small saucepan, melt butter with coffee or water until simmering. Add sugar & cocoa powder and mix/whisk well, until thoroughly combined. Remove from heat & cool slightly.
Sift flour, salt, baking powder & soda together in a mixing bowl. In a small bowl, beat egg with sour cream & vanilla.
Add butter/cocoa mixture to dry ingredients alternately with sour cream mixture. Mix until just combined.
Fill muffin cups 2/3 full (I only got 11 out of my batch). Bake for about 20 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Cool for a few minutes, then remove cupcakes from pan and cool completely before frosting.
Chocolate Bourbon Frosting
- 1/3 cup butter, softened (I used salted; if you use unsalted, add a pinch of salt)
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 3/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1/3 cup sour cream
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 Tbl (ish) bourbon. Or use brewed coffee, or milk.
Place softened butter in a mixing bowl and sift cocoa powder & sugar into it. Add sour cream and vanilla, then bourbon or other liquid. Beat well - you can add more bourbon if you want it boozier or gooier. If it seems to gooey, try refrigerating it and it may firm up - and/or add more powdered sugar.
Ze finished product:
Pre-frosting:
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