Chocolate Cupcakes and my Fantastic Cake Carrier

Tomorrow is the second time myself and a few others will be running the NZRC (or NZ Resuscitation Council) Day where we teach a group of more senior nurses the new guidelines for newborn resuscitation. The first time we ran it I took in some cupcakes so I thought it is now going to be a thing that I do from here on in.... at least if time permits! This time I made these chocolate cupcakes from a lovely little book called 'Divine Cupcakes' by Tamara Jane. She is a NZ author so it really makes it easy as far as measurements and for sourcing ingredients. I have made this recipe a number of times and it is my second favourite one after the Crabapple Bakery ones. Again the cupcakes are lovely and light with a rich chocolate flavour. My favourite recipe is possibly a bit richer but that has coffee in it which I think adds a different dimension to the flavour of the cupcakes. These ones are well worth trying though and the mixture makes loads of them. I only made 3/4 of the recipe and I got 30 standard sized cupcakes and 12 mini cupcakes. The recipe states that it makes 36 cupcakes from the full mix so maybe their cupcake sizes are bigger than mine.

Another reason for this post is to show you this amazing cake carrier I got from Living and Giving. It is collapsible and can hold up to 24 cupcakes or a tall cake. As I bake so much and am often taking food into work, I find that this stops the cupcakes form falling over and getting crushed, (which seemed to always happen no matter how carefully they were packed).

Isn't it great!!! Quite possibly this is one of the best things I have ever bought. Anyway here is the recipe to which I have slightly adapted the method:

Chocolate Cupcakes

430 gm flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt (I miss this out as I use salted butter)
1 c hot water
100 gm cocoa
1 c cold water
200 gm unsalted butter, softened
560 gm caster sugar
4 eggs
4 tsp vanilla

Oven to 170 C and line cupcake tins.

Sift together flour, soda, baking powder and salt.

Whisk together the cocoa and hot water to a smooth paste then add cold water and mix til smooth.

Cream butter for at least 2 mins until really creamy. Add the caster sugar in 2 lots making sure you cream it really well in between. Add the eggs one at a time and beat for at least a min after each, then add the vanilla.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and beat on low speed until it is just combined. Then add 1/2 of the cocoa mix followed by the flour again and so on until it is mixed in. Don't overbeat.

Put into your cupcake tins but don't overfill.

Bake about 20-25 mins until cooked. Take out of the tins and cool on a rack.

I iced mine with a chocolate buttercream which I piped on with the large Wilton star tip.