This should have been awesome. A cupcake with a piece of chocolate crackle on it? How could it go wrong! In all honesty, it wasnt that bad, but I had hyped these up so much in my mind that I was just a bit too excited about them.
It all started when I heard about Sugardeaux’s version. I was so excited by the idea, but knowing that I could never eat them because of the dairy issue. (BOO!!!) So I wondered, how hard could it be to make a similar version?
The work “Christmas party” gave me the perfect excuse to try them out (I use the term Christmas party loosely because its a morning tea, please bring a plate kind of affair.) I decided (rather last minute) to be festive and threw a few drops of mint in the icing, and that didnt seem to really help the flavour at all! I would have started over, but I was in short supply of icing sugar. So choc mint cupcakes with a chocolate crackle piece it would have to be!
Knowing that a lot of people at work are not sweets people, I went for a lighter chocolate cupcake recipe than normal – and I am glad I did! These were fluffy, moist and not too overpowering.
Before I start: Heres what I was aiming for!
Quite the difference hey!
First up: make the chocolate crackles! I halved the below recipe and had plenty leftover!
Ingredients
- 4 cups Rice Bubbles (I used cocoa pops… why not go the whole hog!)
- 1 cup sifted icing sugar
- 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 1 cup dessicated coconut
- 250g copha
Preparation method
- Mix dry ingredients together. Melt copha over a low heat until melted – do not boil. Mix melted copha and dry ingredients well. Spoon into paper patty cases and set in refrigerator.
Next up, make the chocolate cake!
Chocolate Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cups (170g) plain flour
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ¾ cup unsweetened cocoa
- pinch salt
- 50g butter, softened
- 1½ cups white sugar
- 2 eggs
- ¾ teaspoon vanilla essence
- 1 cup (250ml) milk
Preparation method
- Preheat oven to 180 C. Line a muffin pan with patty cups.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition, then stir in the vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the milk. Fill the muffin cups 3/4 full.
- Bake in preheated oven for 15 to 17 minutes or until a fine skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Ice with your favourite icing when cool.
Then make your icing:
I did a simple icing of nutellex, icing sugar, a bit of water and some colouring.
Ice the cupcakes, then taking a piece of chocolate crackle, place firmly on top of the cupcake.
The end result was a moist, fluffy cupcake with a really fresh icing and a real crunch. For those of you who love textures in your desserts, this is a different option and I think with a bit more tweaking these could really work.
Ben quite liked these cupcakes, I think for me I just hyped them up too much. But lesson learnt!
I reckon that your cupcakes look pretty damn fine – I like the swirly icing.