Posts tagged ‘chocolate’

Nov 5

Pumpkin Swirl Brownies

Before I begin this, you may notice that I baked pumpkin chocolate chip squares the day before yesterday. I placed the majority of them in the freezer and can note that they are freezing well. Now, I have leftover pumpkin and chocolate from that recipe and before the pumpkin went bad I just had to use it, of course. In yet another pumpkin and chocolate recipe. Don’t you just hate Martha Stewart and her yummy unhealthy recipes!

Anyway, I’ve seen these baked on a number of blogs lately – Martha Stewart’s pumpkin swirl brownies. Here are mine, on which I sprinkled leftover chocolate chips instead of nuts. I like nuts, but not on any foods!

The main things I did differently, besides replace the nuts with chocolate chips were using semisweet chocolate chips instead of bittersweet chocolate; baking these in an 8×11-inch pan, which required a slightly longer baking time, I noticed (by about 10-15 minutes); using only 3 eggs instead of 4 because 3 was all I had.

Now, I did use the cayenne pepper and I personally think that 1/4 teaspoon is barely noticeable, and I’m very sensitive to such spices. If you do really want to taste it, I’d suggest adding a pinch or two more.

Oh, and I’ve placed the majority of these in the freezer too. They’re too good and too unhealthy to eat all at once, so these should last us a while.

Nov 3

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Squares

I love the taste of chocolate and pumpkin together, so when I saw this Martha Stewart recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip squares, I had to bake it. I was reluctant to do so, with 2 sticks of butter and 1 1/4 cups of sugar! Wow! If you read through the comments on the recipe page there are a few substitutions to use to make it a tiny bit healthier, for example, the addition of applesauce to replace some of the butter.

Anyway, some things to note… I did not find pumpkin pie spice, so I used the recommended spice mix on the recipe page. However I reduced the allspice to 1/4 teaspoon, as I would have done also for the cloves if I had had any. In the comments section of the recipe page a few people also note that the addition of 12 ounces of chocolate chips was too much. I could see why, so I only added a little less than 3/4 of a 12 ounce bag to the batter.

To get some nice chocolate chips on top of the cake/brownie/blondie/whatever, sprinkle a few chocolate chips on top of the batter right after you have spread it out in the pan. Otherwise all the chips will be hidden in the batter after baking.

These babies are a gooey mess of pumpkin and chocolate! So tasty, so unhealthy, so gooey! They are definitely best cut into small squares because a big square is so rich it is likely to make your belly hurt! And of course these need to be chased down with a tall glass of cold fat free milk!

Oct 27

Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

I’ve really been in the mood for pumpkin ever since my pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting turned out so well. I bought a can of pumpkin at the store the last time I was there and I’ve been trying to think of what to do with it. I decided on chocolate pumpkin cupcakes with pumpkin buttercream frosting.

For the cupcakes, I used a recipe I found from Country Living magazine online and divided the recipe into fourths. The recipe said it would make 36 cupcakes, so I intended on getting 9 cupcakes; I actually ended up with 15! I added about 1/8 teaspoon of ginger to the recipe. The cupcakes rose to a very nice dome, I was very pleased. The cake itself is fluffy and moist.

For the frosting, I found a wonderful, no, awesome, pumpkin buttercream recipe from A Year In The Kitchen, originally created for pumpkin sandwich cookies. This frosting really added the flavor to the cupcakes; it’s a perfect pairing. I’m so glad I found this recipe!

I’ll also add that my daughter greatly approves of this recipe. She normally only eats the frosting off cupcakes, but with these cupcakes she ate the whole thing! She gives them two thumbs up!

Oct 15

1 Comment

Iron Cupcake Earth: Cheese

I almost opted out of this month’s Iron Cupcake Earth challenge because of the bizarre ingredient. True, I could have just used cream cheese, but that wouldn’t have been quite so challenging. I wanted a cheese in both the cupcake and frosting, but I knew I didn’t want the average cream cheese… and well, I knew I didn’t want to make a savory cupcake. Hence, this was born…

A chocolate cupcake with a cherry ricotta center and frosted with mascarpone frosting. A dusting of cocoa powder sits on top, accompanied by a cherry. I can’t believe that it actually tastes quite nice! It’s the first time I’ve ever eaten a sweet ricotta, as well as the first time I’ve ever tasted mascarpone.

I’m quite proud of this cupcake, much more so than my entry last month for the basil challenge.

This month, the prizes for winning Iron Cupcake Earth are from Etsy artist Art On The Menu, Etsy artist Lots of Sprinkles, Bakelove Bakewear, Fiesta Products, Hello, Cupcake, Jessie Steele Aprons, Cupcake Courier and Taste of Home. Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers.

Here are the recipes…

Martha Stewart’s One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes
-recipe cut into thirds

Cherry Ricotta Filling

Ingredients
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 heaping tablespoons cherry pie filling (without cherries)
2 heaping tablespoons cherry pie filling cherries, chopped

Preparation
Drain ricotta cheese if watery through a cheesecloth for 30-60 minutes. Mix ricotta, sugar, vanilla, cherry pie filling and cherries with a spoon until combined. Refrigerate about 30 minutes.
When cupcakes are completely cool, fill them with cherry ricotta filling using the cone method.

Mascarpone Frosting

Ingredients
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
4 ounces mascarpone cheese
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation
Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla until fluffy. Then mix in cold mascarpone cheese until smooth. Frost cooled cupcakes.

Oct 2

6 Comments

Chocolate Cupcakes With Cream Cheese Filling

How To Eat A Cupcake often inspires me. In her recent post about making Martha Stewart’s one-bowl chocolate cupcakes, she raved about how “INSANELY good” they are; with this sort of review, I just couldn’t resist trying these one-bowl chocolate cupcakes for myself.

Now, remember that I had leftover cream cheese filling from those banana whoopie pies (How To Eat A Cupcake coincidentally posted a whoopie pie post just shortly after mine!) and I mentioned that I’d like to use it as filling in chocolate cupcakes. I planned to do this, and decided to mix mini chocolate chips in with the cream cheese filling and use chocolate buttercream for the frosting.

They were indeed very good! Great chocolate cupcakes, and so easy to make! I love how dark they are too.

My 3-year-old daughter and her dinosaurs helped make the frosting with me…

Veloca Raptor climbs out of the bowl, having finished up the last of the frosting!

Recipes:

Martha Stewart’s One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes

Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Frosting

Cream Cheese Filling

Ingredients
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
mini chocolate chips

Method
In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add confectioners’ sugar and vanilla, mixing until smooth and creamy. Mix in enough mini chocolate chips to suit your taste. Fill cupcakes when they are completely cooled. This filling is best used with the cone method for filling the cupcakes.

Sep 25

Chocolate Mayonnaise Cupcakes

When I first heard of a chocolate cupcake made with mayonnaise, I was intrigued and had to try it out. Today was the perfect opportunity since I had no butter on hand, and there is no butter in these cupcakes. I got the recipe for the cupcakes from 52 Cupcakes.

I’m only posting a cross section of this cupcake because I was most interested in its texture, which was slightly dense, but very moist. The cupcake held its shape really well and was not crumbly.

It had okay chocolate taste, but in my opinion the taste was similar to a box mix.

The frosting is a Nutella and peanut butter buttercream swirl, which is basically this recipe (you’ll have to scroll down to find the pb frosting recipe), but the recipe was cut in half and Nutella was substituted for the peanut butter in one half.

While this won’t become my standard chocolate cupcake recipe, I can say that I may decide to make these again, especially if I have ran out of butter!

Sep 19

2 Comments

First Cupcakes Made With The Kitchenaid

Today I made my first cupcakes with the Kitchenaid mixer that I got earlier this week. I made a mistake with the first batch, the chocolate ones, by not mixing it enough. I realized this after they were done baking. I did better with the vanilla ones. I have to say that the Kitchenaid does a fantastic job with whipping cream and buttercream.

These are the chocolate ones. They’re not as pretty as I wanted them to be, but they are definitely tasty. They’re chocolate cupcakes, filled with whipped cream and frosted with a Lindt chocolate ganache.

See the inside of this cupcake here.

I really like how the vanilla cherry ones look. They’re vanilla cupcakes, filled with whipped cream, frosted with vanilla buttercream and topped with a maraschino cherry.

This is the first time I’ve ever baked with nut & party cups and I have to say that I liked it! I think that the cupcakes are generally bigger with the nut & party cups. I also cut a small slit at the top of the cup before I filled them up so that it could be easily unwrapped. See the inside of this cupcake here.

I used Wilton’s bismark tip for filling the cupcakes (which is a brand new toy), and found that this made it incredibly easy to fill them.

Now I know what you’re saying, I should be putting my efforts into this month’s Iron Cupcake Earth challenge, but I’m finding the challenge ingredient to be pretty difficult! I don’t have many days left now, so I’ve really got to get to work if I want to be a part of the competition this month.

Sep 14

1 Comment

Chocolate Cherry Diet Dr. Pepper Cupcakes

These cupcakes were a total spur of the moment decision. I had a bottle of Chocolate Cherry Diet Dr. Pepper and I remembered having seen this recipe recently. I’m not sure if Chocolate Cherry Diet Dr. Pepper or just plain Dr. Pepper is supposed to be used in this recipe, but I used the chocolate cherry one. I did know right away, however, that I would be using a different frosting (I originally wanted a white chocolate cherry ganache frosting, but couldn’t work out how to make that and couldn’t find a recipe for it!).

In reviewing this cupcake, I have to say right away that these are the moistest and softest cupcake I have ever eaten. The cake itself could have just melted in my mouth. It is absolutely delicious and does indeed taste like Chocolate Cherry Diet Dr. Pepper.

I had to make some changes to the recipe to suit my ingredients. First, I wanted to cut the recipe into fourths, since the original recipe is for 30 cupcakes and I am only one person! I wanted to make about 7 or 8 to share with the family though, so using this calculator I cut the recipe into fourths. Isn’t it strange though that I ended up with 15 cupcakes! The reason is, I believe, that I didn’t fill the cupcake liners up as much as I should have. I found out through trial and error that the liners should be over 3/4 full of batter in order for the cupcake to rise into a nice dome above the top rim of the liner.

My substitutions of ingredients were as follows, since I didn’t have all the ingredients called for in the recipe:

* I used all purpose flour instead of cake flour.

* I used a melted chocolate substitute for the unsweetened chocolate. 3 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder mixed with 1 tablespoon of oil equals 1 ounce of an unsweetened chocolate bar. I used this substitution, but I added it to the batter right after I let the Dr. Pepper and butter mix set for 10 minutes, then whisked in the chocolate substitution.

* I used plain yogurt instead of sour cream.

* Note that this batter is very runny; I used a measuring cup to pour it into the liners.

* As for the frosting, I decided to use a different recipe because I’ve recently had an experience using an egg white-based frosting and I didn’t have much luck, so I used a basic vanilla buttercream recipe (recipe here). Instead of using 1 tablespoon of milk in the buttercream, I used 1 tablespoon of maraschino cherry syrup and I also added one drop of pink food coloring to give the frosting a nicer pink coloring. There was only a very very slight taste of cherry in the frosting.

I decided to use the pink and purple sugar sprinkles like the photo in the original recipe because for some reason those two colors remind me of soda, so I think it adds a nice touch. The cherry on top is a must, too; wouldn’t be complete without it.

Final word – these are SO good, and like I said, extremely moist! Such a nice treat on a rainy Sunday afternoon, like today!

Updated later: On the second day, these cupcakes taste even better and are still more moist than any cupcake I’ve eaten. I do notice that on the second day the cherry taste of the cake is stronger than it was right after I made them. These little cakes are so flavorful that I dare say they don’t even need frosting; a scoop of ice cream and a cherry would suit these cupcakes just fine, I’m sure!

Aug 27

4 Comments

Chocolate Crinkles

I’ve been looking for a chocolate crinkle (also known as chocolate crackles or chocolate crackle-tops) recipe ever since I had a couple of these at a local bake sale. I loved them; they were so chocolatey and moist. But the baker has not gotten back to me about the recipe she used, so I am left searching.

My first choice of recipe is the Betty Crocker chocolate crinkle recipe. What I liked about this recipe was the fact that my cookies ended up looking just like the photo on the original recipe.

But, these were nowhere near as delicious and moist as the chocolate crinkles from the bake sale, and definitely not as chocolatey. This recipe also seemed to produce a slightly crunchy outer layer, as well, which I was not fond of.

Updated later: I made up a quick second batch of this recipe. I made the cookies bigger, I reduced the oven temperature to 325F instead of 350F and baked for the maximum recommended time of 12 minutes. Also, I didn’t have any unsweetened chocolate to melt, so I substituted with unsweetened cocoa powder by melting one tablespoon of unsalted butter with three tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder for each ounce of unsweetened chocolate called for the in the recipe. This resulted in a sort of paste-like melted chocolate.

In the end, I was much happier with this batch than the previous batch. They are more moist, more chocolatey and do not have a slightly crunchy outer layer.

I wouldn’t say that these tasted exactly like the bake sale ones, though. Perhaps I will try Martha Stewart’s version, chocolate crackles, next.

Aug 23

Chili Chocolate Truffle Brownies

I had heaps of leftover chili chocolate ganache from my Iron Cupcake: Earth chili cupcakes, so I decided to try out Martha Stewart’s truffle brownie recipe, except instead of her semi-sweet chocolate ganache I would use my chili chocolate ganache:

It was more hot on the brownies than on the cupcakes; I presume that all that sweet frosting on the cupcakes took some of the chili sting out. But the brownies just weren’t sweet enough to cover up the chili that much! But, overall, this was a very tasty dessert.

Aug 20

4 Comments

Iron Cupcake Earth: Chili

I have finally completed my entry for Iron Cupcake Earth’s challenge of chili pepper. I made two variations of my entry and chose the one I liked best.

My entry is a chocolate cupcake, filled with chili chocolate ganache, topped with a layer of chili chocolate ganache, frosted with peanut butter frosting and sprinkled with a dash of cayenne pepper.

My other variation was the same as the above, but with chocolate frosting.

I chose the one with peanut butter frosting because it tasted more interesting. I loved this cupcake; it tasted like a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting, but with an extra spicy tingle. When my husband took his first bite he said, “I don’t taste any chili in these!”. I smiled and waited. A second later, he said, “Oh, now I do!”.

What I also love about these cupcakes was the fact that I used our own chili peppers that we grew in our garden. We dried them and kept them to use for later. I ground them up today and mixed them up in the chocolate ganache, along with a dash of cayenne pepper.

I didn’t post a cross section of this cupcake because the chili chocolate ganache was so dark that you couldn’t even tell that the chocolate cupcake was filled with the ganache in the photos!

The winner of Iron Cupcake Earth receives prizes from Cakespy’s Etsy shop, Cupcake Courier, Fiesta Products, Hello, Cupcake, Jesse Steele, and Taste of Home.

Recipes:

Chocolate Cupcakes
Adapted from a post at Cupcakes Take The Cake
makes 12-14 cupcakes

Ingredients
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla

Method
Preheat oven to 375, then turn it down to 350 just prior to baking

Beat the butter with an electric mixer until it is soft, then add sugar. Beat about 3 minutes.

Add the eggs, one at a time beating until they are well combined.

In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients and whisk them to incorporate them.

Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and beat it just to combine. Add 1/2 of the liquids (milk & vanilla), scrape down bowl and beat to combine. Continue adding the dry and wet ingredients alternately making sure you END WITH THE DRY.

Fill cupcake liners 2/3′s of the way.

Bake for about 20-22 minutes. Do not overbake! Allow to cool, then frost.

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Chili Chocolate Ganache
Adapted from Cupcake Bakeshop
makes about 1/2 cup ganache, you’ll probably have some leftover

Ingredients
1/4 cup + 3 tblsp + 1/2 tsp heavy cream
1 tblsp + 1/2 tsp butter
1 3/4 tsp ancho chili powder
1 small pinch ground cayenne pepper
3.6 ounces dark chocolate, chopped

Method
Heat cream and butter over medium heat until butter is melted and cream bubbles around saucepan edge.

Place peppers and chopped chocolate in a medium sized bowl, pour heated cream and butter over the chocolate.

Let the mixture sit for about 30 seconds then start whisking it until smooth.

Set aside mixture and stir occasionally with a wooden spoon, until it cools enough to use.

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Peanut Butter Frosting
Adapted from Shazam In The Kitchen

Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup peanut butter
3 cups powdered sugar
2-4 tablespoons milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 small pinch cayenne pepper (optional)

Method
In large bowl, combine butter, peanut butter, sugar, salt, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons milk. Mix well, adding more milk as needed to make a fluffy spreadable frosting. Sprinkle with a very small pinch of cayenne pepper if desired.