Cupcakes Galore

Last night we celebrated my sister's birthday in style.  Over cocktails and mountains of delicious middle eastern finger food everyone laughed and chatted the night away.

My contribution to the night was dessert in the form of cupcakes.  Even after the mountains of delicious finger food I was happy to see that the cupcakes went down a treat.  I made two types, super chocolate and orange and poppyseed.

The chocolate ones are probably my signature cupcake and are regularly requested.  I use this recipe but for cupcakes add a packet of choc bits and bake them for 14-20 minutes depending on your cupcake size.  It makes about 15-20 large cupcakes (depending on how large they are) and about 40 small cupcakes.  Once iced, I always refrigerate these cupcakes as it sets the icing and makes the cupcake go more dense and fudgy.

The orange and poppyseed cupcakes were from this recipe which is worth the read just for the hilarity of the writing.  It was the first time I'd made this recipe into cupcakes and it made 21 large cupcakes which took 30 minutes to bake.  It is a flourless recipe, but beware, baking powder usually contains gluten so it isn't a perfect option for someone with a serious gluten intolerance.  The recipe doesn't have icing, so I made a pretty standard cream cheese frosting of:

125g butter
250g cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups icing sugar
orange zest to taste

You just beat everything together and it makes an extremely tasty frosting.  For me the secret to this however is to use light cream cheese.  It just makes for a better tasting, easier to spread or pipe frosting.

Seeing as the cupcakes were for a special occasion I had a lovely time piping icing and decorating them.  But the best part of making anything like this is watching everyone enjoy them - oh and getting the leftovers to take home.  S and I will be having a yummy afternoon tea today!