Chocolate Cupcakes with Sticky Chocolate Icing

Yesterday's recipe came from the Pioneer Woman. I decided to try her chocolate cupcakes. I made a slight variation to the recipe by omitting the Hershey kisses because I was choosing to use her sticky choclate icing. Since it seemed to be a richer icing I thought the Hershey kiss might be overkill. I'd like to try the ganache she has paired with the chocolate cupcakes, but the sticky icing required me to purchase less ingredients so it won for yesterday's test.

Cupcakes

2 cups Sugar
2 cups All-purpose Flour
1/4 teaspoons Salt
1/2 cups Buttermilk
2 whole Eggs
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Vanilla
2 sticks 1 Cup Butter
4 Tablespoons (heaping) Cocoa Powder
1 cup Water, Boiling

(If you don't have buttermilk on hand, you can measure a little less than 1/2 cup milk and top it off with white vinegar to make your own buttermilk. Since I have no regular use for buttermilk, this is what I generally do when I need it.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 18 muffin cups with baking spray. (My Baking Joy let me down yesterday which is why I generally prefer to use muffin liners)

To make the cake batter, combine flour, sugar, and salt. Set aside.
In a separate container, combine buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, and vanilla. Stir to combine and set aside.

In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and stir to combine. Add boiling water, allow to bubble for a few seconds, then turn off heat.



Pour chocolate mixture over flour mixture. Stir a few times to cool the chocolate.





Pour buttermilk mixture over the top and stir to combine.



Pour 1/4 cup cake batter into each muffin cup.



Bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then remove cupcakes and allow to cool on a baking rack.



Sticky Chocolate Icing



3/4 cups Sweetened, Condensed Milk
6 ounces, weight Semi-sweet Chocolate
2 Tablespoons Butter

Mix ingredients together in a small/medium saucepan. Melt ingredients over medium low heat, stirring gently. Icing is ready when all ingredients are melted and combined.
Spoon warm icing over warm cupcakes, stirring icing to smooth after every third cupcake or so. Allow iced cupcakes to sit at least ten minutes before serving.






We had a jumper. Tragic, isn't it?

Want to know what's funny? I don't really like cake and I always seem to forget that when I get inspired to try a new cake recipe. The cupcakes and icing were good (my preference was the chocolate over the store-bought white), but they didn't blow my skirt up as the Pioneer Woman would say. Not because her recipe isn't good rather because I'm just not a cake person. So I can't fairly judge this recipe and I ended up sending all the cupcakes to school with Stalena for her fellow teachers. Oh well.