Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes

Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes

Because what's more Christmassy than chocolate and peppermint? Nothing, obviously. There is no other significance to the holiday. None.

Cupcakes:

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

14 tbsp (1 3/4 sticks) of butter

1 cup + 2/3 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla paste

1 tbsp peppermint extract

4 eggs, separated

3/4 cup milk

1 bag miniature chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside.

Beat butter until fluffy, then add 1 cup sugar and the vanilla and peppermint. Mix well. Add the egg yolks one at a time.

Alternate in the flour mixture and the milk until just combined.

In another bowl, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Remember that the bowl should be metal or plastic and no yolk may touch the whites or they will not beat properly. Slowly add in the 2/3 cup sugar in a stream and beat until stiff peaks form. The mixture will look like boiled frosting or meringue.

Gently fold the egg whites into the batter until smooth and pale. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Fill cupcake tins about 3/4 full. The cupcakes don't rise that much, surprisingly, so you'll want to adjust the amount of batter depending on how big you want them to be. I had to make another half batch after this one because I needed a certain number of cupcakes for an event, and the second batch I filled the tins much fuller. You can see the results in the split-decorated cupcakes, which were puffy enough to be cut in half and filled.

Bake for 10 minutes, turn, bake 12 minutes.

Let cool.

Makes 32 without the extra half batch.

Frosting:

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter

4-5 cups xxx sugar

3-4 tbsp heavy cream

1 tbsp peppermint extract

About 8 candy canes, crushed into a small pieces

Beat butter until soft and fluffy. Add xxx sugar and cream and beat until everything is well-combined and the cream has started to whip, making the icing extremely fluffy. Add in the peppermint.

Frost cupcakes generously, then roll the frosted part in the crushed candy canes. I did half my cupcakes this way, then ran out of candy canes, so if you want to use that approach get a few more candy canes. 

The other half I decorated with a junior mint candy and green & red sprinkles.

Recipe adapted from We Are Not Martha.

Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes with Almond Frosting

Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes with Almond Buttercream

I think my favorite part of these cupcakes is how elegant they look, even though the decorating is really easy! Also, no I will not stop making cupcakes with raspberries. I love raspberries.

Cupcakes:

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

4 oz unsweetened chocolate (I used a Ghirardelli bar)

1 cup buttermilk

2 tsp vanilla

24 large red raspberries

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs, one at a time. Stir in the melted chocolate.

In another bowl, sift together flour and soda. Add alternately with buttermilk; add vanilla. Mix until just combined.

Fill cupcake tins about 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 13 minutes, turn, bake 13 minutes.

Warning: these cupcakes rise out, not up, so be careful not to overfill the baking cups. I ended up having the trim the edges off a bunch of the cupcakes because they were so overflowed. Also, the cupcakes are not very structurally sound when baked, so be gentle with them -- I lost two or three because they just fell apart while I was handling them.

Let cool.

When cool, use a small serrated knife or apple corer to cut a small hole in the center of each cupcake. Place a raspberry inside the hole.

Makes 24.

Icing/Decoration:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, soft

3 cups sifted xxx sugar

1 tbsp almond extract

chocolate syrup

24 red raspberries

24 chocolate chips

Beat butter until creamy. Add sugar and almond extract and beat until smooth. If the frosting is not yet the right consistency to pipe, you can add more sugar to stiffen it or a tablespoon of cream to make it softer.

Using a piping bag, pipe a spiral of frosting on top of each cupcake, covering the cored center.

Place a single chocolate chip inside each raspberry.

Drizzle chocolate syrup over frosted cupcakes so that it kind of runs down and gets in the grooves of the icing.

Place a raspberry on top of each.

This cupcake, like I said, looks fabulous for very little work, and the cupcake itself tastes delicious. However, the cake part is very fragile, and I think I might make a few adjustments to the recipe if I were to try it again. On the other hand, making the batter chocolate by stirring in the melted chocolate bar creates an amazing flavor, so definitely keep that part.

In terms of how many raspberries to buy, 48 of them is about what you'd expect to get out a pint box.

Adapted from The Baking Robot.

Candy Bar Cupcakes

Candy Bar Cupcakes

Cupcakes:

1 2/3 cups flour, sifted
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup butterscotch chips
1/4 cup toffee pieces
1/2 cup cashews, smashed into bits (or your favorite nut)
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Sift together flour and baking powder. Cream butter and sugar together. Add in the eggs and vanilla and beat until well combined. At this point, the batter is really, really thick. Add in the fixin's. Again, the batter feels a lot like cookie dough at this point.

Drop chunks of it in prepared cupcake tins, filling about 3/4 full. Bake 15 minutes, turn pans, bake for 10 minutes and test to make sure cupcakes are done; if not, do another five minutes.

My experience with these cupcakes is that they are very, very crumbly. Everyone who tried them said they tasted great, but they really had no structural integrity. They were also very heavy, more like a brownie/blondie than a cupcake. I think if I made these again I would probably double the batter but keep the amount of fixin's the same, or use a lighter vanilla cupcake recipe and use the same fixin's. On the other hand, if you like a thick, cookie bar type of baked good that happens to be cupcake shaped, then change nothing!

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes