Chocolate Cupcakes
The bakery in the small Queens, New York community where I grew up was an important part of my family’s shopping and food life. The Cake Box was the source of rye bread, corn rye, our weekly Challah, black and white cookies, birthday cakes, Danish pastries, and cupcakes.
As with all bakery treats, my mother brought home cupcakes in a box of three, one for each of my two brothers and me. I had zero food willpower so I would eat mine right away. My middle brother could hold out a little longer, but our oldest brother would wait the longest, which I sometimes think was meant to tempt us with the last “you can’t have it†cupcake.
Those boxes would contain one of two types of cupcakes – a yellow cake with a fudge-type frosting and a yellow cake with shiny chocolate icing, which I now know to be chocolate flavored fondant. This chocolate cupcake recipe is an improved version of the second type.
The cake part is a moist, flavorful sour cream yellow cake, made by the modified creaming method where the egg yolks are added to the creamed butter and the egg whites are beaten and folded in at the end.
For the icing, I swap out the fondant for a simple chocolate icing in which the sweetness and consistency can be adjusted to your personal preference. For a more bittersweet flavor, a higher cocoa percentage chocolate may be used.
The recipe may be made in a regular 12-well muffin tin or a 6-well “jumbo†muffin tin. The regular size is perfect for one person to eat in his or her hand, while the jumbo needs a plate and fork, and is very shareable.
Cupcakes are happy food. Bake some for your family and put some in a box for friends. They will love you for it.
Chocolate Cupcakes
| Yield: 12 regular, 6 jumbo muffins | # of Servings: 6 to 12 | Method: Modified Creaming |
Ingredients:
Cupcakes:
1 ¾ cup (8 oz / 227 g) cake flour, sifted
1 ¾ tsp (.3 oz / 9 g) baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ cup (4 oz / 113 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup less 2 tbl (6.2 oz / 175 g) sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream
2 egg whites
1 pinch salt
2 tbl (.9 oz / 26 g) sugar
Chocolate Icing:
4 oz (113 g) chocolate 55% to 64% chocolate, wafers or chopped
1 tbl ( ½ oz / 14 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
6 tbl (3 fl oz) heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 pinch kosher or sea salt
1 ¼ cup (4.75 oz / 135 g) confectioners’ sugar, sifted, variable.
Tools and equipment needed:
- 1 regular 12-well, or 1 jumbo 6-well muffin tin
- Regular or jumbo muffin pan liners
- 1.5 fl oz (#20) ice cream scoop
Pre-recipe preparations:
- Place liners in the muffin tins.
- Preheat oven to 375 °F.
Directions:
Cupcakes:
- Thoroughly whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. Set aside.
- In countertop mixer with paddle, or handheld mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Beat in egg yolks, one at a time. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, beat until smooth.
- Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternately with the sour cream in two parts, beginning and ending with the dry. Use a plastic spatula to scrape up from the bottom to ensure a well-blended batter. The batter will be thick.
- In clean bowl, whip the egg whites with the salt until soft peaks. Slowly add the sugar and whip until just reaches firm meringue stage. Do not overwhip.
- Stir ¼ of the white into the batter to lighten1 before folding in the remaining egg whites.
- Scoop better to evenly fill the regular or jumbo muffin tin wells. Each should be approximately â…” of the way filled.
- Bake just until each muffin is just firm to the touch and a cake tester comes out with only a few moist crumbs, 15 to 17 minutes for regular, and 22 to 25 minutes for jumbo.
- Remove pan from the oven and place on cooling rack for 5 minutes.
- Gently remove the muffins from the tin and place on cooling rack.
Chocolate Icing:
- Place chocolate and butter in a medium mixing bowl and melt over a double boiler, or in a microwave (using a glass bowl).
- Remove from heat.
- Whisk in heavy cream, vanilla and salt.
- Add ½ of the confectioners’ sugar and whisk until smooth.
- Test for sweetness and consistency.
- In addition to sweetness, additional confectioners’ sugar thickens the icing.
- For a loose icing that you can dip the cupcake into like a dipped ice cream cone use a lesser amount of sugar. For a thicker, spread on top of the cupcake icing add additional sugar.
- In the photos, the icing on the jumbo cupcakes was a bit thicker and spread on. The regular cupcakes were dipped in the loose icing.
- Let the icing set for at least 1 hour.
- Store at room temperature.
