Chocolate Cupcakes

 

I can't believe it's taken me this long to post about cupcakes. Cupcakes are a passion with me. I love making them and I LOVE eating them but I really enjoy making cool, different kinds of cupcakes. This probably began as a small child when my mama threw me an animal themed party just because. She painstakingly made cupcakes look like bears, pigs, elephants, porcupines, tigers, lions, etc.

These animal cupcakes became something of big deal in our house as we continued to make them for my baby brother's kindergarten class, a friend's graduation and other parties. And then I stumbled upon the book 'Hello, Cupcake' which instaneously restarted a need to make outrageous cupcakes.

I started with some the cupcakes in the book:

Spagetti Cupcakes (which tasted awesome!)

and Corn on the Cob Cupcakes (which tasted good when you scraped off the jellybeans)

 

For my parents 35th Anniversary, I made 24 different blue and white cupcakes.

Following that, I made cupcakes for a close friend's engagement party...

and her bridal shower.

And then some random cupcakes for a BBQ...

and for superbowl...

and my last endeavor, a surfboard/beach themed cupcake-scape with surfboards that were 'painted' to look like the surfboards owned by my husband and his friends.

This one was my favorite so far to make. And it was my first adventure into decorating sugar cookies with royal icing. I loved it.

I don't knwo why it's taken me this long to try royal icing but I am hooked. I freely admit that I did cheat and buy a royal icing mix instead of making my own but I do promise to try making my own soon. I did make the sugar cookies from scratch though. Will post that next.

All of these cupcakes were chocolate. I have yet to come up with a vanilla cake that I really like. This is a recipe of my mother's for DARK chocolate cake that mama and I adapted for cupcakes. Warning however, the batter is extremely thin and the cupcakes come out so moist that they are a bit difficult to frost. But they taste amazing so I deal with the frosting issue.

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

 2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

1 cup cocoa

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup olive oil

2 eggs

2 cups water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In the bowl of your electric mixer (or a bowl if you are using a hand mixer), combine flour, sugar, baking soda and baking powder. Add oil, eggs and water. Mix very, very throughly.

Line cupcake pan with choice of paper liners. Carefully add batter to a large ziploc bag or pastry bag. Snip end of ziploc bag. Squeeze enough batter into each cupcake liner 3/4 full.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cupcake comes out mostly clean.

When cupcakes are completely cooled, frost and decorate.