Monday, October 10, 2011

Terrifyingly Good Cupcakes and Butter Cream Frosting

My daughter turned 9 today. She is an amazing child. She has beaten the odds in many physical arenas. She has a group of fairly rare medical anomalies that makes life challenging at times, particularly gaining and maintaining weight. She is a sweetaholic. She loves her cupcakes, frosting, candy corn, starburst, maple candy, snickers etcetera. I counteract this caloric junk fest by trying to at least make from scratch some of these things so at least we KNOW what is in them. It is a balancing act the need for calories and the challenge of feeding this food adverse child.
There are no pictures of the making of these amazing cupcakes or frosting because we were really busy doing this:


and this:








By the way, the Viking is my peanut.
The best thing about these cupcakes is that they are not overwhelming sweet so the butter cream frosting works well to balance them.

One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes
(adapted from Martha Stewart)
3/4 c unsweetened cocoa powder (get the good stuff, because its chocolate and why the hell not)
1.5 cup King Arthur Cake Flour -yes, I am name dropping
1.5 cup maple sugar flakes (thank you www.sugartreemaplefarm.com)
1.5 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 Large Eggs (thank you www.jerichosettlersfarm.com)
3/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup Kate's Buttermilk (read  REAL buttermilk, plus you need it for pancakes and waffles)
3 tablespoons of grape seed oil (or any other mild tasting oil)
1 teaspoon real vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Get out your muffin pan, line with cute paper liners. Get out a mesh strainer or sifter and sift all the powdery stuff (cocoa, flour, maple flakes, baking soda, baking powder and salt). Then add the liquidy stuff (all the other remaining ingredients). How simple is that? One bowl!
Mix everything until the batter is smooth and scrape down the sides to make sure you have incorporated everything.
Pour the batter into your muffin tins (did you line them? because if you didn't it's gonna be a hellava mess). Fill only about half way, I filled 2/3's of the way and they got very weirdly shaped as they popped out of the top which is okay for a Halloween decorating cupcake but not so much for other occasions. Bake until tops spring back when touched or about 20 minutes. I don't really poke at them, 20 minutes seems reasonable and it worked well in my case.
It makes 18 to 20 cupcakes.

For the frosting I am going to refer you over to Alice at http://savorysweetlife.com/2010/03/buttercream-frosting/ because she put it together and it is fabulous. I added an extra stick of butter because as I've said, I need to get calories into the kid.

Happy Birthday to those October Babies!





1 comment:

  1. Those were the best cupcakes Susy. And ... what a fun party!

    ReplyDelete