A Chocolate Velvet Swirl

This month the choices for recipes for the Cake Slice Bakers included Whoopie Pies, a decadent Ambrosia Cake, a classic Italian Cream Cake and my choice, Chocolate Velvet Cupcakes. We are baking from Southern Living's The Southern Cake Book, so all the recipes looked amazing. It was really hard to choose. I finally settled on the Chocolate Velvet Cupcakes because I decided that was the perfect recipe for using the mini-swirl Bundt cake pan that was a Christmas gift. These little cakes aren't cupcakes, but they are not too far off. A tender chocolate cake baked up beautifully as small swirl cakes and looked so pretty with a decoration of melted chocolate mixed with whipping cream.

We were supposed to make a cream cheese based browned butter frosting, but the recipe made 5 cups! That would have been perfect for 36 cupcakes, but I cut the recipe down and made 1/3 or it, so that much frosting was too much.

These little cakes made the perfect treat to celebrate our daughter's birthday. It is really, really early to be celebrating, but she will be gone for work on her actual birthday, so we celebrated over the weekend.

I made the cake batter as described with one small change (other than the portion). I could have sworn that I bought sour cream, but couldn't find it, so I substituted plain yogurt. Worked like a charm.

Do try this recipe if you like chocolate cake. The crumb of the cake is tight and tender, the chocolate flavor is just assertive enough and your kitchen will smell heavenly while you make these treats.
I'm including the full recipe for 36 cupcakes in case you want to go big.

Chocolate Velvet Cupcakes
Makes 36 cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and prepare enough cupcake pans to hold 36 cupcake papers.

Melt 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate morsels in the microwave at HIGH in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for about a minute at a time, stirring well after each, until chocolate is melted and smooth. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat 1/2 cup soft butter and 16 oz. of brown sugar until well blended (about 5 minutes). Take three room temperature eggs and add them, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the melted chocolate. Beat until well blended, scraping beater(s) and bowl as needed.

Sift together 2 cups of all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add this mixture to the batter alternately with 8 oz. sour cream, adding a third of  the flour first, then half the sour cream, a third of the flour, the rest of the sour cream and the final third of the flour mixture. Scrape beater(s) and bowl as needed. Blend thoroughly , then gradually add 1 cup hot water in a slow, steady stream at low speed, mixing just until blended. Stir in vanilla.

Fill prepared baking cups 3/4 full. Bake in preheated oven for 18 - 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans to wire racks and cool completely (about 45 minutes) before frosting.

Pipe frosting on cupcakes. (you will need about 5 cups frosting).

Browned Butter-Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
In a small heavy saucepan over medium heat cook 1/2 cup butter, stirring constantly, for 6-8 minutes or until butter begins to turn golden brown. Butter will start to smell nutty. Immediately remove from heat and pour butter into a heat proof bowl. Chill butter 1 hour, or until butter is cool and begins to solidify. Beat butter and two 8-oz. packages of softened cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add two packages (16 -oz each) powered confectioners; sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Stir in 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract. Makes 5 cups.

An InLinkz Link-up

Mmmmm Pumpkin

I blame Costco. There I was today, minding my own business, headed for the produce section, when I passed a whole end filled with HUGE pumpkin pies..probably 12 inches across or larger. To make matters worse, these enormous pies were less than $6 each. Now all I wanted was to eat pumpkin pie!...or at least something with pumpkin in it. There is no way that Sweetie and I should ever have a pie that big in the house unless we will be having guest over, too, because we could eat the whole thing at one sitting...so the pie stayed at Costco. Since the yen for pumpkin was now fixed in my brain, I made some little pumpkin fairy cakes instead. That way we can each have one and I can freeze the rest for another time when the urge for pumpkin and spices and sweetness comes over me. This also gave me a way to use up some of the left over cream cheese frosting from the macarons. Always a good thing to use up left overs, right?

You can bake this as one large pumpkin flavored pound cake as the recipe was originally written, too. Just slather the top of the cooled loaf with the frosting or dust with sugar.

Pumpkin Spice Fairy Cakes
adapted from Instant Gratification by Lauren Chattman

1 cup all purpose flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 large eggs
One 15 oz. can pumpkin puree (or equivalent fresh cooked pumpkin puree)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray small cake pans, muffin tins and/or loaf pans with cooking spray and dust with flour if not included in the spray. I recommend Bakers’ Joy if you are using Nordic ware pans as I was today for the small heart shaped fairy cakes.

Combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg in the work bowl of a food processor and pulse once or twice. Cut the butter into 8 or so pieces and add to the bowl (I distributed the butter pieces evenly around the bowl).

Add one of the eggs. Process until the dry ingredients are moistened.

In a mixing bowl mix together the pumpkin puree, second egg and vanilla.

With the food processor running, add the pumpkin mixture through the feed tube and process until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice as necessary.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pans with the spatula and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The time will vary with the size of the pan but the small cakes took about ½ hour and the mini-loaf pan took about 45 minutes. If you make this in a regular size loaf pan as the original recipe calls for, allow about 1 hour 10 minutes.

Let cool in the pan(s) on a wire rack about 10 minutes. Invert the pans or gently remove from the pans, reinvert and let cool completely.

Sprinkle cooled cakes with powdered sugar using a fine mesh strainer, or frost with icing. I used the leftover cream cheese maple apple frosting from the macarons.