Hello friends (-:
Tomorrow is my brother's 20th birthday and I thought that I'd should do something for him since twenty is quite a milestone (I mean, come on - having survived two decades is pretty... dope, for the lack of a better word) and he did in fact get me something for my birthday this year (for the first time!) So, I decided last night that I should bake him black forest cupcakes. Black forest is his favourite cake flavour - it is my least favourite, to be perfectly honest, because I do not get why people would want cherries in a perfectly good chocolate cake! A black forest cake basically consists of a chocolate cake with whipped cream and cherries.
I don't understand why I can't seem to successfully bake proper big cakes and it's too much a hassle for me since I decided to bake only the night before. Besides, cupcakes are much more convenient to make and eat, and are much prettier and much cuter!
If you're wondering where I get my recipes, I actually don't follow any but I do some online research before baking. And in the kitchen, I just do things as I go along and judge what to put in by eye! So these are my own creations (':
Apologies for another recipe post but I really really enjoy being in the kitchen! (-: That being said, here is the recipe for
BLACK FOREST CUPCAKES
Ingredients:
1. 50g chocolate (any kind, preferably baking ones)
2. 150ml milk
3. 175g plain flour
4. 2 teaspoons baking powder
5. 1/4 teaspoon salt
6. 100g unsalted butter, softened at room tempt
7. 200g white sugar
8. 2 eggs
9. 2 teaspoons vanilla essence/ extract
10. 1 can of cherry pie topping
11. 200ml whipping cream
12. 2 tablespoons icing sugar
(yes I know the ingredients list looks kind of intimidating, but this isn't that difficult, to be honest)
1. Melt your chocolate together with your milk either in a bowl over a saucepan filled with water placed over a fire or in the microwave. (I used the former because I somehow always burn my chocolate in the microwave)
3. Preheat your oven to 190 degree Celsius.
4. Mix your flour, salt and baking powder well together.
5. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and sugar well till light and fluffy.
6. Add your eggs and vanilla extract/ essence.
7. Once well combined, add in your flour mixture and gently fold it in (please do not overmix! stop mixing even when not all the flour has been incorporated)
8. Drain half of the cherries from the syrup they came in and chop them up roughly into nice chunks.
9. Add your cherries into the mixture and fold them in.
10. Add the melted chocolate into the mixture and combine well.
11. Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners 3/4 of the way full and make sure that there are bits of cherry in every cupcake.
12. Bake them for 15-20mins (mine took 15 mins) - just test with a toothpick inserted into the cupcakes, if it comes out clean, they are done and ready to go!
13. Transfer them onto a cooling rack to let them cool!
I'm not exactly sure why the cupcake liners were detaching themselves from the cakes but it wasn't that pretty a sight :( That being said, I think this is the most moist and light cupcake that I have ever baked - to be honest, my cupcakes usually turn out quite dense and hard and I think it's because I used to overmix them to ensure that all my ingredients are incorporated well but today I didn't mix that much! :-)
Light and fluffy!
The cupcakes are still not done yet - there's still it's crowning glory to be assembled!
14. Slice the remaining cherries into half and place them onto the cupcakes, allowing for the juices to seep into the chocolate sponge!
Now for the tricky part - my whipping cream was a major disaster but I shall just show you what I intended to do and tell you what I did wrong :( It was my first time using whipping cream.
15. Add the icing sugar into your whipping cream and whip it up till stiff peaks form.
Now, in the photo above, I managed to get some stiff peaks after a lot of strenuous beating by hand - my arms were sore and I was tired. Then, I wanted to get even more stiff peaks and beat even more because I imagined that they would get stiffer. No they didn't (I did read this somewhere but at that point in time, I completely forgot) and guess what? My whipped cream turned into butter and buttermilk. It looked absolutely disgusting and I was so upset :-( I'm now reading up on this and I realized that I could have kept the butter for future use - I threw the mess away.
I was really sad - what would by blackforest cake be without whipped cream? Then I remembered that I had whipped cream in my fridge - those that came in the aerosol spray cans that people usually put atop fancy coffee based ice blended drinks. Those were very much lighter and would disintegrate quickly into a wet mess. But I decided to go for it since it was my last resort and stabilize the whipped cream with heaps of icing sugar.
It worked (': The whipped cream didn't melt but it was a bit on the sugary side but that's okay with me :-)
16. Spoon your whipped cream onto your cupcakes.
17. Garnish with chocolate shavings if you wish (I grated some leftover chocolate)
And there you have it (': Black forest cupcakes! I personally don't think that the topping is anything to rave about (partially due to the whipped cream part but if you have more success than me then good for you!) but everything really came together quite well and it did indeed taste like a black forest flavoured cake overall.
I added some edible gold balls on top (-:
HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY, BROTHER! (-:
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