The Best Chocolate Cupcakes with Ganache Frosting

Today I needed to make some quick cupcakes for…well, just because I wanted to! ha. So I made the old classic stand-by, the best chocolate cupcakes recipe. And just let me give you a little tip. And keep this near and dear to your heart. If you don’t use a good quality cocoa in this recipe, it will turn out sub-par. Trust me. I’ve done many tests and trials. Try to use a full out cocoa powder that is really dark in colour and smells like strong chocolate. It will give it a much deeper and richer flavour. Also make sure to use natural cocoa powder and not alkalized or ‘dutch processed’ cocoa (dutch processed, or alkalized cocoa has been processed with an alkali to neutralize the acids in it. So when you use a natural cocoa powder that still has its acids, it reacts with the baking soda in the recipe to help it rise in the oven. This is what makes this recipe so good. Perhaps I should edit it to specifically say natural cocoa powder..hmm..)

The cocoa that I use is from a natural foods store. It’s called Ambrosia Natural Foods and I buy their big bags of cocoa whenever I’m in the area It just tastes much better than anything like Hershey’s or your store brand since most of those are dutch processed (well, they are in my area anyways). But hey! That’s just my tastebuds talking. They like a deeper chocolate flavour in things (:

So for the frosting on the cupcakes, I made a quick ganache with 8oz of callebaut milk chocolate and 3/4 cup of hot heavy cream. Then when it was liquid and warm I whipped it in my stand-mixer for a few minutes until it was cool and held its shape so it could be piped easily.

Voila! Delicious and easy cupcakes.

And I promise to have an actual new recipe soon! I’ve been busy making halloween costumes lately so I haven’t had much time to experiment with many new recipes.

The Best Chocolate Cupcake Recipe

Out of all the years of my life that I have been baking, I have not found one chocolate cupcake recipe that tasted good to me. They all tasted the same. Lacking in chocolate flavour, un-moist, and dense. Then I found this recipe. I was reluctant to try it, because I was afraid it would turn out like every other cupcake recipe I had found. But no! It was really good. Here it is.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temp
2-1/2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, room temp
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (**Edit!! be sure to use natural cocoa powder and not dutch processed/alkalized cocoa powder.)
1 cup 2% or whole milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Beat the butter until it’s softened. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, that should take about 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until well combined. Measure out the flour, baking powder, soda, salt and cocoa powder into a small sized bowl and whisk it to combine. Measure out the milk and vanilla and stir to combine. Add about one third of the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture and beat to combine. Add about half of the milk/vanilla mixture and beat to combine. Continue adding, alternating between the wet and dry and finishing with the dry. Scoop the batter into cupcake cups about 2/3’s full. Bake the cupcakes for about 22-25 minutes, until the cake tester comes out clean.

Just for fun, I wanted to turn these cupcakes into german chocolate cupcakes. So what I did was coat the sides of the cupcakes with a ganache and rolled it in toasted coconut and finely chopped pecans. For the icing on top, I used a dulce de leche frosting, which I made by combining the dulce de leche with a bit of a good buttercream frosting. I piped that on top in a swirl and on top of that, I drizzled some of the extra ganache in a thin strand. Oh my god they were delicious! Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of these awesome cupcakes, only the chocolate cupcakes by themselves. Enjoy!

♥ Tara

The Beginning: Salted Chocolate Cookies

I love to bake, I am an aspiring pastry chef and I have loads of recipes that are just laying around. So I decided to keep them all up to date and organized on the computer. And what better way to do that than to share them with the world at the same time?

This first recipe is one of my favourite cookie recipes. If you love the combination of salt and chocolate, these cookies are for you. They are packed with chocolate intensity and are soft! And they STAY soft! Enjoy : )

Ingredients:

1 cup of unsalted butter
1 cup of brown sugar, packed
1 cup of granulated sugar
2 tsp of good vanilla
2 eggs
2/3 cup of good unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups of all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Directions:

Cream together the butter and the sugars until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and the eggs one at a time and mix until well combined. Add the cocoa powder and mix. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt and add to the chocolate mixture. If you are using a stand mixer, only let it go for a few seconds, then turn it off and switch to either a wooden spoon or a spatula. Do not over mix this batter or else your cookies will turn out semi-hard and cakey. Drop the cookie dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silpat mat. I like to use a tool specifically for cookie dough, but an ice cream scoop works well too to assure you get even sized cookies. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 13 minutes. (The original recipe says 15 and no more, the cookies will seem underdone. I find 15 is too long in my oven and the cookies end up more like a flat hard cake. So just keep an eye on the cookies. They WILL seem underdone. When they come out of the oven and are still kinda hot I like to flatten them slightly with my full length of my (clean) fingers, I like the texture better this way and they end up more fudgey, and plus they get a fun little pattern on them.

These cookies are great to use for ice cream sandwiches, or to crumble over a sundae, or to just enjoy on their own with a cold glass of milk. Enjoy!

♥ Tara
(*the picture used is not mine, it’s just temporary until I make these later today and get to take a picture of them. The ones in the picture have white chocolate chunks in them. I’ve tried it and it’s yummy!)