Nov. 9, 2007

You Can Thanks Me Later

I signed up to bring two dozen cupcakes to our visiting teaching conference. In the same breath as the announcement to attend this "special event" the planner asked for volunteers to use a cake mix and bring cupcakes to the event. Blasphemous right? Special events do not have cupcakes made from a mix. Cupcakes made from a mix are for rugrats who mostly crumble the cake around them and just lick the frosting off.* Or ones who drop them in fountains. Cupcakes for adults at "special events" deserve to be homemade. So my pompous self agreed to make them for the event if I could make them homemade. I was quickly reassured that the mix would be fine but if I insisted I could bring them homemade. No surprise that this request came from the same person who only contributed recipes that contain cream of crap soups to our Relief Society cookbook. Anyway, last night I was set to make homemade cupcakes for Enrichment. I have a tried and true cake recipe that always turns out moist and delish but this week I had some buttermilk that I needed to use. I went searching for a chocolate cupcake recipe that included buttermilk and after trolling a few recipes online I settled on the one listed below.

Let me reassure you that this is probably the most delectable cupcake recipe I have ever tasted. After I mixed it up in Ruby Ann I was slightly nervous. It tasted heavenly but having never seen a cake batter that consistency I was admittedly nervous that I had made a mistake. The batter is very, very thick. Rest assured, there was no mistake. These babies baked up beautifully, evenly, and brought tears to my eyes from the first bite. These babies made me swear, outloud. Cupcakes for church made me sin but I am pretty sure if I could make these cupcakes for the judgment bar I would be forgiven. (And I am calling using a cake mix blasphemous!) If you have any excuse at all this weekend to make cupcakes I implore you to try out this recipe. If you don't have an excuse, make one up you won't regret it.

Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes
Ingredients

* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
* 1 cup granulated sugar
* 1 cup firmly-packed light brown sugar
* 4 large eggs, room temp
* 6 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted
* 1 cup buttermilk
* 1 tsp vanilla extract


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin tins with paper liners.
2. In a small bowl, sift together flour and baking soda. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, on medium speed of your mixer, cream butter until smooth. Add sugars and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add chocolate, mixing until well incorporated.
4. Add dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the buttermilk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure ingredients are well blended and the batter is smooth. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about 3/4 fulls.
5. Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes until the tester toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the tins for 15 minutes before removing them from the tins and cool completely on cooling racks before frosting.

*Our appropriately used box mix cupcakes early this week in class.

(lots os photos, will try and add them later!)