Whenever the opportunity presents itself to bake something, I rarely turn it down. My mother-in-law’s birthday was no exception. I was particularly delighted because I know she prefers chocolate cake to vanilla, and although I feel I have “mastered” a vanilla cake, I haven’t had too much success with chocolate cake. My other attempts at chocolate cake have been semi-disastrous; too dry, too crumbly, just wrong. The recipe I decided to go with this time was from the King Arthur Flour website, a site in which I have gotten other recipes and had success with, so I felt pretty confident that I could pull it off. And, if it wasn’t good enough, my husband and I had gotten her a Snuggie anyway so it wouldn’t be the only gift.
I have posted the three recipes I used in making these cupcakes, and they can be found here at the bottom of this post or by going to the Recipes page.
First things first; the oven is set at 350 degrees and I distributed the cupcake liners into two muffin tins. The KAF recipe says to spray the insides of the cupcake liners with cooking spray, but I didn’t. I don’t really see the need, and I would be too nervous that the baked cake would pull away from the paper and get crusty.
Next, I assembled my dry ingredients: all-purpose flour, baker’s sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In case you haven’t used it before, baker’s sugar is also called “ultrafine,” and is somewhere between being granulated and powdered sugar. I like to use it in cakes as it seems to give the cake a better texture – smoother rather than bready. Does that make sense? If you don’t have access to baker’s sugar, granulated is fine to use; it’s what the recipe calls for anyway.
I also lined up my wet ingredients so they’d be handy: milk (I used whole), butter, vegetable oil, eggs, pure vanilla extract, and water. The butter was room temperature – I actually left it out overnight and it was perfect. I always try to do that if I know I’m going to make something using room temperature butter the next day, since I don’t know any other way to artificially replicate the way butter is at room temperature – microwaving it even for 10 second spurts just doesn’t cut it.
I used a standing mixer, so I sifted my dry ingredients right into the mixing bowl. Since the amount of dry ingredients was more than my sifter could handle, I just sifted most of the flour first and added the rest after. Next goes in the butter and starting the mixing on a low speed for a minute. What I forgot to do was add the oil after having mixed in the butter. Otherwise, the recipe says it should look like sand.
Instead, I went ahead and added the water, milk and vanilla all at once and mixed at low-medium speed for a minute, scraped the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl and mixed another 30 seconds at the same speed. Scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl often is especially important when you’re using a standing mixer, as the way the mixer is it simply cannot get all the way to the bottom or sides, and you’d otherwise have a big glob of unincorporated stuff at the bottom when you go to fill your pans, or a pocket of dry ingredients. And that sucks!
I then added the eggs one at a time, mixing for about a minute on medium-high speed after each addition. It was after the eggs that I realized I forgot to add the oil, so I did it then and mixed it in for about a minute as well. After a tense moment of waiting (hoping I didn’t totally ruin the batter), I was relieved to see that the oil incorporated itself into the batter without a problem. The batter was ready then!
I had my tins ready with the liners, the batter, and a mechanical ice cream scoop. I like using the scoop since it seems to handle the task well; it delivers the exact right amount of batter to the tin wells, and you don’t have to worry too much about overfilling/underfilling one well or the other. It does the job rather cleanly too.
After I filled the wells of the muffin tin, I kind of shook the tin side to side just to get all the batter smoothly settled into the wells. Then it was into the oven for 21 minutes. While that was baking, I filled the other muffin tin I had prepared.
For my oven, 21 minutes was just enough! These came out beautifully. I actually love to watch them bake in the oven; I watched for a few minutes. I have realized that it really makes a difference when you open the oven door or not during the baking process; you can run the risk of the cake collapsing (the air inside the cake that makes them fluffy, light and airy escapes and you’re left with a mealy, tough and dense cake).
After my cupcakes were done baking, I took them out of the pan immediately and set them on cooling racks. This seems fairly logical, but it too is important. Since the metal of the muffin tin is still hot and takes several minutes to cool, leaving the cupcakes in the tins can actually continue the baking process outside of the oven, potentially drying them out. They cool a lot faster on the racks in any case, and you cannot frost the cupcakes until they are no longer hot.
So as I was waiting for my cupcakes to cool, I got started on my buttercream frosting. I again assembled my four ingredients: powdered sugar, butter, pure vanilla extract, and milk. I always make more frosting than I need, since I’d definitely prefer to have too much than too little.
First I put my butter in the mixer and turned it on medium speed for a minute, just to get the butter distributed throughout the bowl. I then added the vanilla and the first cup of powdered sugar. I added the sugar one cup at a time and mixed on medium-high speed each time for about a minute.
After adding the sixth and final cup, it looked quite… dry. This is normal! That’s where the milk comes in. Just a splash of milk, then the mixer on medium-high speed for a couple of minutes turns it from pitiful to perfect. The medium-high speed helps incorporate air into the frosting, and the force from the speed gets the frosting off of the paddle too.
I had already made a batch of ganache a couple days earlier and had some leftover, so I zapped it in the microwave for about 10 seconds, just enough to make it spreadable.
So now my cupcakes have cooled, I have the ganache and the buttercream frosting. The plan for these cupcakes is to coat the top with a smooth, thin layer of ganache and use a piping bag to put the buttercream on top of that. First things first, I have the offset spatula for the ganache.
I took the cupcake in my left hand and a dab of ganache on the spatula in my right hand. More or less, the goal is not to so much use your right hand with the spatula, but rather rotate the cupcake with your left hand underneath the spatula. Since ganache does dry or “set” after a few minutes, it would be good if you wanted to do more than one layer of ganache. I only did one, but I would probably do two or three layers in the future. It depends how chocolate-y you really want it, and if you have enough ganache to do it.
Next, I assembled my piping bag. I use a coupler, which is a two-part tip and ring that you use when you are using a piping bag; it allows you to interchange tips without having to empty the piping bag first. I used it even though I was only using one tip, the star tip.
I wasn’t planning on making the designs on the cupcakes uniform, so I just experimented and played around with different patterns and techniques. I haven’t taken a cake decorating class before/yet, but it’s fun and easy to make something look pretty anyway!
So there you have it! The cupcakes turned out beautiful and delicious. Having both the ganache and buttercream frosting really gave it a certain something – the ganache kept it very chocolate-y, and the frosting gave that classic vanilla and butter flavor everyone loves. I indeed gave a batch to my mother-in-law and she loved it, my husband and I kept a few for ourselves, and the rest went to my parents and sister. Everyone was amazed that it wasn’t from a box too!
Here are the recipes I used individually:
Chocolate Cake (King Arthur Flour Recipe)
Ganache
Buttercream Frosting
Thanks for reading!
Veronica Baggs
