Chocolate cupcakes recipe

Nope, not a chocolate lover AT ALL. But my sister loves chocolate. Thought I might spoil her a bit huh?

About the recipe, I thought I would try Laura Vitale's
Check her out! http://www.laurainthekitchen.com/all/episode.php?episodenumber=222

For the cupcakes, we're going to use the 'creaming method'(or that's what I remember from my food and nutrition class)
Basically the creaming method consists of mixing the butter and sugar, and egg together, and lastly adding the  flour. Easy right?

Let's get started !

Preheat your oven and prepare your cupcake tins.

First you will need:

1/2 cup of unsalted butter at room temperature

¾ cup Granulated Sugar
¼ cup Brown Sugar

1 egg

Vanilla essence

And MIXXX !

Don't over mix though. Normally you should stop when the mixture becomes creamy and white-ish in colour.

Second you will need:

½ cup Cocoa Powder

1 cup self raising flour

¼ tsp Salt

*(I'm using self raising flour, because I don't like using baking powder/soda; I can never get the quantities right.

Else you can use

1 Cup of All purpose flour

1/2 tsp Baking Powder
½ tsp Baking Soda)

Add the flour and cocoa powder to the 'wet' ingredients

Mix!

Okay so, at first I was really skeptical about the consistency and texture of the mixture, because it looks really  'heavy'

But then I put 3/4 cup buttermilk in it

*To make butter milk, you will simply need one cup of whole milk and one teaspoon of lemon juice or white vinegar. And let it rest for 5 mins

 and mixed it quickly

Then I was more reassured after seeing the texture. Just DON'T over mix.

Fun part now! 

Filling the cupcakes tins. 

Don't be me and try having 'many' cupcakes, you'll end up having cupcakes which look bad.

Bake for 20 Mins or so at 180C.

And we're done!

I can NEVER get the quantities right. This time I put too small quantity in them and now they look like they didn't rise well. :c

Epic fail?

But hey hey! They were so good and so smooth and so yum! :D

For the decoration part now

In the recipe Laura uses buttercream(which I used too) but you could also use whipped cream. I find the consistency of the buttercream much better than that of whipping cream though!

Buttercream is really easy to make, the ingredients you need are:

4 Cups of icing sugar

1 1/3 cup of butter at room temp.

vanilla essence

some spoons of whole milk(depending on the consistency you want)

Then, mixing again. In my opinion, I should have mixed it a little bit more and put more milk.

Put the cream in a piping bag and let's start the FUN

OBVIOUSLY, I had to mess up

To be a lil' more fancy, you can grate chocolate or take cherries and decorate on top.

Voila!

Hope you enjoyed this post and that it prompts you to try this recipe.

Kim

Chocolate Muffins recipe

Okay so for my first 'food' post, I thought of posting an easy and quick recipe; Chocolate muffins! 

First I'll post the basic muffin recipe, which is from onepotchef from youtube. He's great! You guys should check him out sometimes. Personally, I think his recipes are so easy to follow and simple :)
His youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/OnePotChefShow?feature=g-hist

So, let's get started.
First things first; Don't forget to preheat your oven

Usually to make muffins I separate the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients.

Dry ingredients

Put 2 cups of flour and 1/2 cup of sugar in a bowl and mix.

I put a lil less than half because I am going to add chocolate later in this one.

Wet Ingredients:

100g  of melted butter

 

1 cup of milk

Vanilla extract

1 Egg

And Mix!

 So now you have the dry ingredients bowl and the wet ingredients bowls.

Next step is to put the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

And mix till it has a 'lumpy' texture. I don't mix it till the mixture gets too smooth, that's just because I think it has a better texture when it bakes. So yea, mix the ingredients till you don't see the dry ingredients anymore.

Now for the chocolate lovers!

I am using about 100g of Dark chocolate for this one.

Don't chop the chocolate, instead cut them in small squares, don't just cut them in tiny pieces.

Put the chocolate in the mixture. Don't put all of them though, keep some pieces for later(You'll see why)

NEXT STEP, the fun part, putting the mixture in the muffin tin.I have prepared my muffins tin. Just because I am so maniac and paranoiac, I have greased it and put baking paper. :x 

Make sure you put the same quantity in every one of them if you want your muffins to be equal. I can never get them right :cry:

When you're done filling all the muffin tins,  remember the pieces of chocolate you left behind? Well it's time to use them. 

You can put them wherever you want on top, and it will melt while baking in the oven. (Yummy yummy?)

Let them bake for about 20 mins at 180C

That's it!

Your muffins are ready.

Hope you enjoy this recipe!

Kim

Bonjour, hello, hola!

Hello, my name is Kim. I am 18, soon turning 19, and I am from Mauritius.

Food is my religion.

Does that tell you enough about what I like?

I am definitely not a food connoisseur, but I am more than keen to learn, discover new dishes and try new recipes. Life can never be boring when you are a food enthusiast, right?

What you can expect from this blog?

Will be mostly reviewing food products that is available here, or if I travel, I will be reviewing food that I get to taste. When my cooking instincts get back to me, you might expect some recipes as well.

Hope you have fun reading my blog!

Have a super nice day :)

Kim