As it turns out, I really like blogging about food! I had some friends over for a film fest one night last week, and as it was approaching Easter, I thought it was a great opportunity to try out some Easter Baking! I had all kinds of ideas, but knowing us, there would be LOADS of food, so I thought I’d keep it simple and go for some cupcakes.

I knew exactly what I wanted to make, and with hindsight, I could have easily made them myself with the good Ol’ Bero chocolate cake recipe, but I as I have previously mentioned, I am wanting to expand my baking choices so I did quick google search, and found myself back at the BBC Goodfood website.

The Brownies I had made from their site had gone so well, I thought why not give these cupcakes a try?!

So, here they are!

Chocolate Fudge Cake Easter Cupcakes

Easter Cupcakes. Photo Credit – Sweet Silver Linings Blog

The recipe makes 16 cakes, and listed as easy. I do agree, it is very easy but I don’t think I agree with the method entirely.

Ingredients –

Photo Credit – Sweet Silver Linings Blog

• 140g soft butter
• 140g golden caster sugar
• 3 medium eggs
• 100g self-raising flour
• 25g cocoa, sifted – As with all of my baking, I use a good quality organic Cacao instead of cocoa.

Icing

• 85g milk chocolate, broken
• 85g soft butter
• 140g icing sugar, sifted
• 235g/1½oz packs white chocolate – I misread the recipe and used milk chocolate. I’m actually only just realizing this now… I don’t think  it would have made a huge difference the end result though!
• Maltesers, mini foil-wrapped chocolate eggs We use Fairtrade Divine milk chocolate eggs from Waitrose – I used Cadbury’s Mini Eggs.

The Method

The method for these cakes consists of two steps – bake the cakes, and ice the cakes. That’s it.

• Preheat your oven to 190c/fan 170c/gas 5 and line your cupcake tin with cases. Similar to my brownie tray, I have a Lakeland silicone cupcake/muffin tray, and you don’t need to line it. I highly recommend this range. Tip all of the cake ingredients into a bowl and beat with a hand whisk till smooth, then divide between the cases and bake for 12-15 minutes, until risen. Cool on a wire wrack.

My well used cupcake tray, from Lakeland. Photo Credit – Sweet Silver Linings Blog

• For the icing, microwave the chocolate on high for 1 minute. Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the melted chocolate. Spread on the cakes and decorate.

I deliberated a little over how to do step one, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I wasn’t sure if the butter would break down enough, I’m used to creaming the butter and sugar together first before doing anything else. Secondly, I wasn’t sure about whisking the entire recipe. I would usually use my paddle attachment on my standing mixer for cakes. I also don’t have a hand mixer anymore, just my standing mixer, and I feel like the attachments are very different and would have different effects on the cakes.

There was nothing but praise for how easy and wonderful these cakes were in the comments, so I decided to meet in the middle – I put all of the ingredients in and mixed it with my paddle attachment for the most part. I swapped to a whisk towards the end, because as I had worried, the butter wasn’t fully breaking down, so it wasn’t a smooth cake mix, and I wanted to see if this would make a difference. Unfortunately, I didn’t.

My cakes didn’t rise to well, and whilst they did taste nice, there wasn’t a lot of flavor in them. I don’t know if this has anything to do with recipe or if it was just bad luck, but I think I would do a few things a little different if I were to make them again.

Photo Credit – Sweet Silver Linings

With regards to the ingredients, I would put some vanilla essence in, and I would add about a teaspoon of baking powder, just to encourage them to rise further.

I would remember to take my butter out of the fridge earlier on in the morning, so it was softer! I would also cream it with the sugar first, then add the eggs and beat them, before adding the rest of ingredients, and for the most part, I would use my paddle attachment.

I would also add a little vanilla to the icing, or just make standard butter icing with cacao powder in.

All in all, they were still nice, and there weren’t any left by the next day! Not as impressed as I was with the brownies, but it just goes to show that you should follow your instinct!

I also still love the BBC Goodfood website!

Categories: Baking, Uncategorized

Tags: Baking, BBC, BBC Goodfood, Bero, cadbury's, chocolate, Chocolate cupcakes, Cupcakes, Easter Baking, Easter Cupcakes, Easy cupcake recipe, easy cupcakes, Food Review, kitchen, Lakeland, Lakeland review, minni eggs, one dish baking, one dish cooking, Reviews, Sweet Silver Linings, Sweet Silver Linings Blog, Sweet Silver Linings Kitchen