Monday, August 22, 2011

Black Forest Cupcakes

As promised..
 I had some family over for dinner the other night and thought it might be nice to have some cupcakes. I Googled 'Black forest cake recipe', chose one that looked relatively easy to make and whipped it up (with a few modifications)! After the cupcakes had cooled, I used a paring knife to cut a dime-sized hole into the top middle and packed in some sour cherries that I had gotten from a tree in my front yard. Then, I whipped up some buttercream icing, piped it onto the cupcakes, and voila!

Easy Black Forest Cake (makes 24 cupcakes)
Ingredients:
· 1 cup milk or cream (I used half and half milk and cream because I ran out of milk) 
· 1 tablespoon vinegar
· 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
· 2 cups white sugar
· 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
· 1 teaspoon baking powder
· 2 teaspoons baking soda
· 1/2 teaspoon salt
· 2 eggs
· 1/2 cup vegetable oil
· 1 cup strong instant espresso, cold
· 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
· 2 cups sour cherries 

Instructions:
· Preheat your oven to 350° F
· Put muffin papers into muffin pan.
· Make sour milk by combining milk and vinegar. Set aside.
· Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
· In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, coffee and vanilla. Stir in the sour milk. Gradually beat in the flour mixture, mixing just until incorporated.
· Pour batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
· Allow cakes to cool
· Cut out a dime-sized hole from the centre of the cupcake, going to approximately the middle of the cupcake in depth.
· Fill hole with sour cherries (2-3, depending on how many you can fit so that the top of the last cherry is flush with the top of the cupcake), make sure to reserve 24 cherries for the tops of the cupcakes
· Frost cupcakes, and add cherry on top of frosting as shown above.

Buttercream Icing (*Caution, this recipe will only ice 8 cupcakes in the fashion shown above. I ended up having to make this twice to get the correct amount of icing)
· 1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
· 1 1/2 cup icing sugar (Sifted)
· 1-2 tsp pure vanilla extract
· 1-2 tbsp milk

Instructions:
· In a mixing machine, beat butter until smooth and creamy (about 2 minutes, depending on temperature of butter)
· Slowly add icing sugar
· Add vanilla extract
· If the icing is not at a spreadable consistency, slowly add the milk 1 tsp at a time until spreadable.

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