cake recipes – MAGPIE STREET

When somebody in the house is having a birthday, but work schedule is not letting you have a party, what do you do? In our case, we’ll just have cupcakes!

I found this simple chocolate mud cupcake recipe in one of my books, but as usual, I had to adjust parts of it to suit my preferences. Whatever works for you, right? So, here is how I made the chocolate mud cupcakes:

CHOCOLATE MUD CUPCAKES

Ingredients:
300g plain chocolate chips or cooking chocolate
300g butter
5 eggs
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 cup self raising flour

Melt chocolate and butter in a pan on the stove, or in a bowl in the microwave oven. Stir well and set aside to cool a bit.

Beat eggs and sugar in a bowl until thick and pale. Sift 1/2 cup flour into the egg mixture, then fold. Sift the remaining flour into the same mixture and fold again. Stir in the melted chocolate and butter until well blended.

Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. (I prefer turning the oven on when I have already finished mixing the batter and just before I transfer the batter into the cake tin, as I find that if I start preheating the oven before mixing anything, it reaches the desired temperature waaaaaayy before I’m finished making the cake batter, so it’s just wasting energy for quite a while afterwards, until I put the cake in.)

Spoon the mixture into paper baking cases in a muffin tin. This recipe should yield around a dozen cupcakes. Bake for approximately 20 minutes. The cupcakes are expected to be soft and gooey. Remove muffin tin from the oven and let cool for about 5 minutes before removing the cupcakes from the tin.

You can dust the cupcakes with cocoa powder or icing sugar, or decorate them with your favourite icing.

Many many years ago, when I was a child, I learned to bake cakes while helping my aunt. We made chiffon cakes, chocolate cakes, fruit cakes, and many other baked goodies. But when my aunt decided to retire her side business of making cakes, I stopped baking as well.

It was only a few years ago that I decided to bake cakes again. After nearly two decades of not baking cakes, I was a bit lost, without a single trusted cake recipe, neither a single baking tin, nor a single decorating tip.

The funny thing is, I cannot remember how I met this carrot cake recipe. But this is the cake recipe that got me baking again, and I have made this carrot cake so many times. We love how it’s moist and not too sweet (in contrast to a bakeshop-bought one we’ve tasted once, which was the complete opposite – too sweet and dry!). But then, the best way of creating a moist cake is not over-baking it – when it’s done, take it out of the oven right away!

So anyway, here’s the delicious carrot cake recipe, tweaked to suit the taste of me and the crowd I feed. Enjoy!

Ingredients:                                       Icing:
Olive oil (for greasing)                        250 g    spreadable cream cheese
2 (300g) carrots, finely grated           1/3 c   icing sugar
1   c   self raising flour                          1/2 t      vanilla essence
1/2 c plain flour
1   t    bicarbonate soda
1/2 t   ground cinnamon
2/3 c   brown sugar
3/4 c   organic olive oil
1/2 c   maple syrup
3        eggs
1   t    vanilla essence

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius, or 150C if using a fan-force oven. Lightly grease a cake pan with oil and line with baking paper.

Sift flours, bicarb soda and cinnamon in a bowl.

In another bowl, whisk brown sugar, oil, maple syrup, eggs and vanilla. Pour this mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix well with a wooden spoon. Stir in the grated carrots.

Place the mixture into the pan and bake for approximately 55 minutes. Then, let cool in the pan for a few minutes, before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

For the icing, combine the cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla essence in a bowl, using a wooden spoon, until well mixed. Spread the icing over the cake.

Tag: cake recipes

Chocolate Mud Cupcakes Recipe

Carrot Cake Recipe