With all the ideas from my Pinterest page to inspire me, I had my plan.
Part 1: Figure out how to make, dip and decorate cake pops. (completed)
2. Find the best tasting chocolate cupcake recipe.
Next up, I had to find a recipe for the best tasting chocolate cupcake.
Should it be milk chocolate or bittersweet chocolate, or a combination?
Should I enhance the flavor with coffee, espresso powder or neither?
Buttermilk and/or sour cream, extra egg yolk, dutch processed or regular cocoa powder… the options were endless!
My requirements were simple: it had to be moist and taste deliciously of chocolate. Sounds silly doesn’t it?
All too often though, chocolate cake/cupcakes don’t have a rich chocolate flavor, it’s just brown colored cake.
Next time you eat one, close your eyes and really concentrate on whether you can taste chocolate.
You’ll be surprised!
If you can, you’ve got a great chocolate cake/cupcake! If not, find a different recipe or a different bakery.
I had several chocolate cupcake recipes in my own collection and there were thousands online.
In the end I narrowed it down to two: one recipe I had, although I had never made, I will call it A.
The other is an adaptation from a recipe I found at handletheheat.com
claiming to be the Best Chocolate Cupcake Recipe ever, I’ll call that B.
(I actually found many that claimed that title, go figure.)
I made each recipe, baked them in different cupcake liners (so I could tell them apart),
left a couple plain and iced the rest with a chocolate fudge buttercream.
Time for taste testing!
I was first.
I had a bite of each of them plain first. I knew immediately that Recipe B was the winner.
It wasn’t even close. It had a bold chocolate flavor and a moist tender crumb.
Recipe A was a little tough and the chocolate didn’t come through as strongly.
I tried them both with the buttercream and my favorite was still Recipe B.
Steve and Zach were the next “victims”.
They also tried a bite without any icing and didn’t have a preference.
They tried them with icing and still couldn’t isolate a favorite.
It really didn’t matter at that point though, my mind was made up.
My backup plan, you always need a backup plan,
was to enlist the neighbors to help choose the winning cupcake recipe
if Steve, Zach and I couldn’t decide.
With the winning recipe already decided, I had 40 cupcakes leftover and no reason to ask for their help.
Instead, I just delivered an unexpected treat for them to enjoy.
Chocolate cupcakes off my to do list!
The winning recipe makes approximately 24 cupcakes depending upon the size of your liner!
Chocolate Cupcakes
8 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
2/3 cup dutch-processed cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
1 cup boiling water
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon vanilla/vanilla bean paste
- Preheat oven to 350. Place your cupcake liners in the muffin tin.
- Put 1 cup of water in small saucepan on high and bring to a boil. While that is heating up, in small bowl add chopped chocolate, dutch-processed cocoa powder & espresso powder. Once the water is boiling, pour into the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 5 minutes. Whisk gently to combine and keep whisking until smooth. Set aside to cool.
- In large bowl whisk: flour, granulated sugar, dark brown sugar, salt and baking soda.
- In another large bowl whisk: sour cream, vegetable oil, eggs, yolks, white vinegar and vanilla until combined. Add cooled chocolate and mix.
- Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and slowly mix until all incorporated. Don’t overmix!
- Fill muffin liners 2/3-3/4 full and bake 18-20 minutes.Watch closely, chocolate cupcakes have shiny tops and they can fool you into thinking they are not done cooking when they really are. They are done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Remove from oven and place muffin pan onto wire cooling rack. Leave in pan 2 minutes and then remove to the wire rack to cool completely. Once completely cooled ice as you desire.
