Chocolate cup cakes

I thought I might start the new blog off with a lovely chocolate cup cake recipe.  I spent last week baking 5 dozen of these for school cake day and Mother's day morning tea and topped them off with a glossy chocolate icing with a sprinkling of hearts.  This recipe comes from my trusty old Best Recipes from the Weekly (Australian Women's Weekly) cookbook.  It's an old one and I picked it up second hand in a bookstore in Chilliwack, BC Cananda back in 1997 for $5.50.  I've tweaked the recipe a little to suit me but it's pretty much the same as in the book.

Chocolate cup cakes

185 g butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups plain flour
  2 tspn baking powder
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 cup milk
1 cup dark chocolate chips

Chocolate icing

60g dark chocolate melts or choc bits
15g butter
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
2 tblsp milk

Turn oven on to 180°C/350°F. Mix sugar and butter until pale and fluffy, add eggs.  Sift dry ingredients and mix together and add chocolate chips.  Combine the wet and dry ingredients together until the mixture becomes lighter in colour.

You can either pour all of the mixture into a greased loaf tin and bake for approx 30 mins in a moderate oven until a skewer comes out clean, don’t over cook, you want to keep it a moist cake.

Or you can bake as cup cakes and put desert spoons of the mixture into lined cupcake pans and bake for approx 16 mins. The cup cakes will bounce back when ready when you press them, don’t over cook.  Cool cakes completely before icing.  Unless of course you like hot cup cakes with gooey chocolate icing running down your fingers then it's entirely up to you.  If you can wait, here's the icing recipe.

Chocolate Icing:  Melt chocolate and butter in a small pan over low heat, stir in sifted icing sugar and enough milk to soften the mixture.  If you prefer to melt the chocolate in a bowl over boiling water that is fine. Take off the heat and mix in more icing sugar or milk depending on how thick you want your icing.  I like to get that shiny glaze and smoothness to the icing before I put it on the cakes so when it sets they look smooth and glossy.  If the icing starts to roughen up or harden add a little milk and put on stove for a minute to loosen it up.