Short-black cupcakes

photo of my cupcakes by my friend GB

As a general rule I have found the recipes of Donna Hay to be easy to use and to taste yummy! One that is no exception is her chocolate cupcake recipe in the Chocolate cookbook. These cupcakes appear as "Short-Black Cupcakes", and the cupcakes themselves are light and chocolate-y.

The first time that I made these I made the icing in the book; it is an unbaked meringue, beaten egg white and icing sugar and coffee. I did not have too much success with the icing, it was sticky and difficult to work with. It may have been easier to use a piping bag. I found that the icing did not hold its shape for too long either. The biggest drawback was that my pregnant friends were unable to eat it due to the raw egg! Last time I made the cupcakes I tried the chocolate fudge icing from the same cookbook. It tasted yummy however was far too runny to pipe so instead of being able to pipe chocolate poo onto my cupcakes I kind of splodged it on with a knife.

This time around I decided to make a coffee icing, and did a quick search online to find something that looked suitable. I found this recipe from taste.com.au. It seemed to be a little heavy on the wet ingredients (butter and milk) but I thought that I would give it a shot and could adjust it in future if I needed to.

The cupcakes were yummy, and looked cute too! I used a gold metallic cupcake wrapper to contrast with the browns of the chocolate and coffee.

125g butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups self-raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk
100g dark chocolate, melted

Preheat the oven to 160C.
Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy.
Gradually add the eggs and beat well.
Sift over the flour and cocoa, and beat until combined.
Fold through the milk, stir in the chocolate and spoon the mixture into 4 x 12 hole 25mL capacity mini-muffin tins lined with paper patty cases.
Bake for 10-12 minutes of until cooked when tested with a skewer.
Cool on wire racks.

250g butter
450g pure icing sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons instant coffee

Cream butter and sugar.
Dissolve coffee into milk.
Gradually add coffee mix into the butter and sugar, beat until well combined.

Notes
- I increased the cupcake recipe by one and a half and made 72 cupcakes.
- I have decided that I need another 24 hole mini muffin pan. The 12 hole pans are just too annoying to use.
- The icing was a bit runny. I would increase the amount of icing sugar next time to 500g or more!
- Also the coffee in the icing was very strong, so I would consider playing with the amount of instant coffee that I use.
- I want to get some electronic kitchen scales. The mechanical ones that I have are just a little too imprecise.