Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Icing

& The Cupcake Trend!

Every person who bakes, even from mixes, has jumped on the cupcake bandwagon. I was reading a couple of days ago about what the next dessert trend is going to be to take the reigns from cupcakes. Snickerdoodle cookies some food bloggers say while the more common consensus is Pies! Soon on this blog I will visit pies and my battle with not the making, but rolling out pie dough! It's tricky, that's all I'm going to say about it at this point. 

My go to cupcake recipe comes from the Complete Magnolia Bakery cookbook. Unfortunately the book does not appear to be sold directly by Amazon currently, but there are some re-sellers on the site or you could always check out one of the local book stores in your area. I've personally had the cookbook for a couple of years and purchased it at Barnes & Noble.  Here's a picture of the well loved book and the little chomp that Atticus took out of the top right corner of it when he was a puppy. 

This particular bakery, if you recall, first became famous when Sex and the City was airing on HBO. It actually, surprisingly enough, became part of a Manhattan "Sex and the City themed tour" as crazy as that sounds. Several years ago, while I didn't go on the tour (I personally thought it was stupid), I did go and visit Magnolia Bakery to find out what all of the fuss was about. I was not disappointed. While I wouldn't say they are the GREATEST cupcakes I've ever had they are moist and not terribly sweet, but the icing compensates for the lack of sweetness in the cupcake itself. 

Why is it that short work weeks always seem longer? Is it because we have to stuff 5 days of work into 4 days or is it just one of those natural rules of the universe? Regardless, David and I both had a tough work week and were exhausted. While David was sitting on the couch yesterday afternoon I decided I would make him cupcakes as a treat! I made sure I had all of the ingredients on hand and halved the recipe, from 24 to 12, for the Chocolate Cupcakes (pg. 108) and Vanilla Buttercream frosting (pg. 127) and was on my way! 

Below the ingredients for the cupcakes themselves are displayed. The unsweetened chocolate was melted and cooled before being combined into the batter. As a general rule in baking I like to use more high quality chocolate, but I am all about using what one has on hand which is what I did for this recipe. Buttermilk is called for in the recipe and gives the cake a nice subtle tang but I'd imagine if you didn't have any buttermilk you could substitute regular milk or even soy milk for the lactose intolerant! 

Many cupcake recipes tell you that you can use a stand mixer for the procedure of combining the ingredients, which is fine, but I personally use an old fashioned whisk once the flour mixture comes into play. As I've said before I will say again, do not over beat batter which adds too much gluten! Too much gluten in cake or a cake type product is BAD. If you want a cupcake that would break your teeth, go ahead and over beat the batter (obviously I'm kidding here). I'm sure you've had an over beaten cake product before and it's not pleasing to the palate. It's just yuck! Hard to explain, almost tough, but yuck!

The ingredients for the vanilla buttercream are quite simple. The recipe calls for plain milk, I only had skim milk, buttermilk and heavy cream in the house. The cake already has buttermilk in it and skim milk is just crazy talk when making a decadent baked good. I went with heavy cream and the result was delicious! 

The prepared cupcakes are pretty special looking just waiting for the frosting to be piped on after they've cooled of course. I'm still working on my piping techniques as I've had no training whatsoever so you're just going to have to bear with me on the fact that my piping doesn't look so great and professional. 

Naked Cupcakes

A singular surprise for my husband. I won't lie - I sped up the process of the cooling process for a few of them by placing them in the refrigerator like they do on cupcake wars! 

Davids comments included "Wow" and "you could sell these" etc. While those compliments are appreciated from my loving and amazing husband, this is not a business. I certainly do have aspirations of one day owning a bakery however at the current time, my baked goods are for the enjoyment of my family, friends and co-workers only. Now if you know someone who wants to do a business venture of a not so typical bakery in Dallas, please ask them to contact me!