Devil's Food Cupcakes- My First Sweet Punch!!!!!

                 

The power baking powder has over me is amazing!!! I almost cried when I missed making the Tiramisu for the first Sweet Punch challenge. I did not want to miss the second one, but was unable to retrieve the mail with the recipe from the S P team. Sent an SOS and got a reply from SP. Thank God there were 5 days more to go before the reveal date. The weekend followed by the All India Bandh, gave me a chance and time to make these cupcakes. Well, doing this over the weekend meant  juggling school assignments, preparing my groaning 8 year old son for upcoming assessments, feeding 2 hungry kids every now and then, completing weekend chores, catching up on reading my newly acquired baking book - and then baking and decorating with my 3-year-old daughter literally hovering over the cupcakes. Hubby working furiously over a deadline was an added challenge, cos it meant only yours truly handling the kids :-))Whew!!!! But am not complaining as it was all absolutely worth the effort.

The thing about participating in a challenge is it forces you to stretch beyond your comfort zone and learn new things. Or left to myself, I would have again tried another kind of tea cake and would not have ventured to try out the vanilla cream. I am a die-hard whipped cream fan and  found the vanilla cream surprisingly good and not-too-sweet. The cream is a keeper of a recipe, so is the idea of filling the cupcakes. Thanks Sweet Punch team!!!! Looking forward to more !!

The recipe and method :

Devil's Food Cupcakes with Vanilla Cream filling
Recipe source - Baking Bites

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
3/4 cup sour cream (low fat or full) -can be substituted with yogurt or cream mixed with a tsp of yogurt - I have used yogurt.
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2-oz dark chocolate(1/4 cup)
1 cup water, boiling

Method

Preheat the oven to 350F and lightly grease two 12-cup muffin tins.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light.
Beat in eggs one at a time, followed by sour cream and vanilla extract.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt.
Add half of flour mixture to the butter mixture, followed by the sour cream and vanilla extract, followed by the addition of the rest of the flour mix.
Stir well between each addition and mix until no streaks of flour remain.
Stir the cocoa powder and the dark chocolate into the boiling water (easiest in a large measuring cup).
Pour chocolate water into the rest of the batter and stir until uniform.
Evenly distribute batter into prepared baking cups. Bake for 13-15 minutes, until a tester comes out clean and the cakes spring back when lightly pressed. (It’s fine if you can’t fit both trays into the oven at the same time, just wait until one batch finishes before putting in the second pan)
Turn cupcakes out onto a wire rack to cool completely before frosting and filling.


Vanilla Cream Filling

1 1/2 tsps all purpose flour (the original recipe has 3 tablespoons)
1/2 cup milk (low fat is fine)
1/2 cup butter (or trans fat-free shortening)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 scraped vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk together the flour and milk and cook in a small saucepan over medium heat until thick. This will only take a few minutes.
Stir continuously to prevent the mixture from clumping and do not bring all the way to a boil.
When thickened (consistency will be that of a thin pudding or custard), strain with a mesh strainer into a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let cool completely to room temperature.
When the milk mixture is cool, cream the butter (or shortening) and sugar together in a medium bowl until light. Add in the milk/flour mixture and the scraped vanilla bean seeds (or vanilla extract) and beat at high speed with an electric mixer for 7 minutes, until light and fluffy. Scrape into a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip, or a large ziplock bag with the corner cut off, and set aside until ready to fill your cupcakes.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2-3 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and beat, with an electric mixer, until frosting is creamy, 3-5 minutes. Add additional powdered sugar as needed to achieve a thick, but not stiff, frosting that is easy to spread. Add additional milk, if necessary, to thin the frosting if it gets too thick.

Assembly
(A photo how-to of the assembly method can be found here.) Take a cooled cupcake and, using a small pairing knife, cut a cone of cake (1-inch across by 1-inch deep) out of the top. Trim off the pointy end of the cone, leaving a flat circle of cake. Set aside and repeat this process for all the cupcakes.                                                                

Take the cream filling and squeeze a tablespoon or so into each cupcake cavity, filling the hole up to the top with filling. Top off with a flat circle of cake to plug the hole and keep the filling in place.(  I used a ziploc bag to fill).Using a butter knife or a small offset spatula, frost each cupcake with a layer of chocolate buttercream frosting. Place a dollop of icing in the center of the cupcake (on top of the cut out circle of cake) and spread from the center to the sides of the cupcake.

If you have leftover filling, transfer it to a fresh ziploc bag and cut a very small opening in one corner. Pipe a swirly line down the center of each cupcake.

Store in an airtight container until ready to serve.
Makes 2-dozen.

My notes: I have halved the recipe for the cupcakes, which made approximately 14 small cupcakes. Halved the vanilla cream recipe too, but found the quantity of flour mentioned here too much as the cream became extremely thick . I have used only 1 1/2 tsps flour and it worked perfectly fine. I have frosted the cupcakes lightly with chocolate ganache.

                      

                                                      
I do wish I had frosted the cake more generously and better. A perfect pleaser for a kiddie crowd.