Mini chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting - Eggless

For Hasini’s 4^th birthday last week, I made these cute mini chocolate cupcakes with THE most amazing chocolate frosting, to take to school. Her class has 50 odd kids. So I doubled the recipe here (to make 80 min cupcakes) and spent a large part of the previous night spooning cake batter into those teeny weeny cups. But the part that I dreaded most, the frosting, turned out quite well. I’ve had plenty of frosting disasters in the past and making those seemingly simple swirls is the hardest thing for me. I realized I don’t have the large sized star tip that is required for that pretty ruffled look. I had to make do with the smaller star tip that I had. And I never ever get the frosting consistency right. Moreover to be honest, I never really liked buttercream (the way it is universally made in the blogosphere). I find it too sweet and it always seemed a bit gritty. But this chocolate frosting is like no other frosting. It’s creamy, luscious and absolutely delicious. I found this chocolate frosting recipe at Ourbestbites a really beautiful site chockfull of great recipes and how-tos.

The chocolate cake is another beauty. It is so simple – the original recipe calls it a mix-in-the-pan cake recipe. You just mix everything together right in the cake pan and bake. However, I mixed it in a bowl and then turned it into the pan. The mini cupcakes turned out super soft and moist and topped with the chocolate frosting they tasted divine.

What you see here are my most successful frosting swirls to date (Indhe swirls panrathikule naan patte paadu irruke – ayayayo!). Frostings are so fussy and Chennai is so hot. I had to refrigerate them several times in between to get them to the right consistency to be able to pipe those shapes. I was pressed for time and I froze them for 10 minutes - piping bag, nozzle and all and when I took it all out, the frosting within the nozzle had frozen and wouldn’t budge even when the rest of the frosting was softer. So I cut open the bag removed the nozzle cleaned it out and fitted it into a new bag and started afresh. About 10 cakes down the line, the frosting again starts getting too soft. So refrigerate again. I had a good mind to just dunk those mini cupcakes in the frosting like bajjis but I restrained myself. Lesson: Patience and of course temperature are key to frosting. I am sending these mini-beauties to Srivalli's cake mela and Pari's "Only Baked Treats" event hosted by Kalyani.

Prep time: 20 mins

Baking time: 15-20 mins
Makes – 40 mini cupcakes

Cake Ingredients

All purpose flour/Maida – 1-1/2 cups
Granulated white sugar – 1 cup
Cocoa powder – ¼ cup
Baking powder – 1 tsp
Baking soda – ¾ tsp
Salt – ¼ tsp
Melted Butter – 1/3 cup
Warm water – 1 cup
Vinegar – 1 tbsp (I used Apple Cider Vinegar. You can use any vinegar you have or substitute with lemon juice)
Vanilla extract – 1 tsp

Frosting Ingredients

Granulated Sugar – 2/3 cup
All purpose flour/Maida – 1/3 cup
Cocoa powder – 3 tbsp
Milk – 1 cup
Butter – 1 cup softened
Chocolate chunks/chocolate chips – 1 cup melted

Method

1.      Preheat oven to 180 C and line mini-cupcake pan with paper liners.

2.      Sieve flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt together twice and set aside.

3.      In a bowl beat together melted butter and sugar for 1-2 minutes. Then add vinegar, vanilla extract and warm water and beat for half a minute. Add the flour and beat for a minute till all the flour is properly incorporated. Use a teaspoon to spoon batter into mini-cupcake liners. Fill the liners so that they’re 3/4^th full.

4.      Bake for 15-20 minutes or till a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from oven. Let cool for 15 minutes before frosting.

5.      For the frosting – melt chocolate in a double boiler or in a microwave. Stir till smooth. Let cool.

6.      In a pan, combine flour, cocoa, sugar and milk and heat whisking continuously till the sugar dissolves and it has thickened to a thin pudding consistency. Remove from fire and let cool.

7.      Beat softened butter till smooth and fluffy. Add the cocoa-flour-sugar mixture and beat till smooth. Add the melted chocolate and beat for a further 1-2 minutes. You can add up to 4 tablespoons of cocoa powder to reach your desired taste and consistency. Chill for half an hour or so. Frost or pipe frosting on to cake. Enjoy.