Chocolate Graduation Cupcakes

This graduation cupcake was inspired from the Cake Central's Pinterest board for their Graduation Cupcake Inspiration Challenge. It was a chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting and modeling chocolate decorations. The theme I had chosen was "Go and rule the world Grads". I am going to share the recipe for chocolate cupcakes which is originally adapted from Joy of Baking.

INGREDIENTS:
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup oil (original recipe calls for 1/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature)
1/4 cup Hershey's cocoa powder
1/2 cup boiling water
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line  muffin cups with paper liners.

In a small bowl stir until smooth the boiling hot water and the cocoa powder. Let it cool to room temperature. In another bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder.

Then in the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat egg and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat only until incorporated. Then add the oil and the cooled cocoa mixture and stir until smooth.

Fill each muffin cup about two-thirds full with batter and bake for about 15 - 20 minutes or until risen and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean.

This makes around 12 small cupcakes (2 inch diameter) or 6 regular cupcakes.

Victoria Sponge Cupcakes

The recipe for these cupcakes were shared with me by few of my cake forum friends. I wanted to try these cupcakes from a long time and am glad that I did!! The recipe is just amazing!! The cupcakes came out so spongy and the taste was perfect..I did have the problem of dry texture though but I guess I just over baked them about  5 minutes; that surely did make difference.

INGREDIENTS:
225 g (1 2/3 cup) of self-rising flour
225 g (1 2/3 cup) of castor or confectioner's sugar
225 g (1 stick) softened butter
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 C). Line the muffin pan with cupcake liners. In a bowl, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Then add one egg and beat well. Then just fold in one spoon of flour. Then add other egg and beat well; fold in one more spoon of flour. Do this till all the eggs are used up and then fold in rest of the flour. (Do not beat). Fill the cupcake liners and bake the cupcakes for about 15-18 minutes. I baked mine for about 20 minutes and they got a bit dry. So I strongly recommend to check it after 15 minutes. Let the cupcakes cool on the rack.

Once cooled, dust the cupcakes with confectioner's sugar using a strainer for even spreading. For the jam filling, I used the store bought mixed fruit jam. With an apple corer, just take out the central part of the cupcake. Insert the corer just about less than half way and pull out which will leave a hole in the center. With a jam filled pastry bag (with or without tip attachment) fill out the jam in the hole. I had used tip no.12 or the round tip for filling out the jam. Enjoy with a cup of tea!!!

TIP:
If you do not have self-rising flour, you can add 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt to all-purpose flour. I have done this almost all the times and it works out very well.

Golden Anniversary Cupcakes

The Cake Central had announced their Golden Anniversary Inspiration challenge and I had made these cupcakes as my entry. They had an inspiration board with a few pictures on it and a "white and gold theme" which we had to imbibe into our cupcakes and display. I did not win the challenge but enjoyed doing these. They are vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting with all the modeling chocolate decorations. This was my first time using the golden pearl dust for the golden effect on the decorations. I had made cupcake wrappers from the paper doilies and wrapped around each cupcake.

Sonic-The Hedgehog Cake

I had made this "Sonic-The Hedgehog" cake for my son's 10th birthday. I had carved this cake out of a 9x13 rectangular cake. I had used the template from the internet and just had blown it up a little to get it to the size I wanted. I usually carve the cake when it is frozen so that it becomes easy to cut it. I have used the simple star fill-in technique on this one with the star tips 16 and 18. The basic cake was a marble cake with buttercream frosting. The kids at the party were excited to see the cake.

Two-Tone Rosette Cupcakes

These strawberry cupcakes with buttercream frosting were made for my son's birthday at his school for all his classmates. I had to try out this technique of two-tone rosettes. You will find plenty of youtube videos on how to make these rosettes and they are pretty simple to make. This technique really gives a very special effect to the cupcakes and I really loved it.

Little Mermaid Cake

This was a two-tier little mermaid cake I made for a "1st birthday party" recently. It was a vanilla cake filled with strawberry mousse and frosted with buttercream. The decorations like the seashells, starfish, seaweeds, pearls were all handmade out of the modeling chocolate. This did take me a lot of time as I did not have molds for any of the things. So I had created my own templates and did the decorations with their help. I used mixture of brown sugar and graham crackers for the sand.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am sharing the Original Nestle Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe here.

INGREDIENTS:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup chocolate mini morsels
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 375° F.
Combine flour and baking soda in a bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in the mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto parchment lined cookie sheets.
Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes and remove to wire racks to cool completely.  The above recipe yields around 4-5 dozen cookies.

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