I’ve always been envious of those food bloggers who got together to bake, whether via Skype—and may I just say how brave you are to have laptops in the kitchen with flour and batter flying—or in person.  So when my friend Kate, who was visiting for the weekend, said that she quite fancied doing some baking, I practically bit her hand off.

After some deliciously sugary discussion, we settled on making some chocolate cupcakes—two ways—which would slake her craving for chocolate and let me indulge my new-found fondness for cupcakes.

Amusingly, Lucas has re-christened Auntie Kate to Auntie Cake, which is terribly appropriate given how much chatting we’ve been doing recently about cakes and baking in general.  He did look a little sad when we picked Kate up at the train station and discovered that she was not, in fact, made of cake.  He did perk up again when he realised that we would be making cakes, though.

I’m months, years behind the curve on the whole Cupcake Craze thing, but now that I’ve discovered their joys, I’m really enjoying baking them.  I recently treated myself to the Wilton Cupcake Decorating Kit, which seems to be the only way (in the UK) to get hold of the huge 1M piping nozzle for big, sexy swirls of frosting atop your cupcakes.  I don’t mind duplicating some tips, but it does seem a bit mad that you have to buy a set when you just want one tip!  Along with that, I managed to find some nice foil liners at a decent price, so pretty cupcakes are mine at last!

Anyway, cupcakes.  We turned one simple chocolate cupcake recipe into Black Forest (ish) cupcakes and Chocolate Decadence cupcakes.  I say ‘ish’ as I’m acutely aware that it should really have a whipped cream topping and loads of Kirsch soaked into the cupcakes, but neither of us fancied whipped cream (shock, horror) and there was no Kirsch to be found.

We experimented with adding a chocolate truffle to half of the cupcakes, the idea being that when you bit into the cupcake you’d get a lovely melty centre.  That was the theory at any rate.  Alas, we should have chosen a more solid truffle than a Lintdor, in itself quite melty.  The majority of the truffle disappeared into the cupcake once baked, but it tasted wonderful so we weren’t that sad.  I will try again at some point as I’m certain that it can work.  Perhaps freezing the truffle would help, too…

This half of the cupcakes were iced with a bittersweet whipped chocolate ganache, using a recipe that the lovely Tartlette posted recently.  This was an incredibly rich and heady experience, and whipping the ganache seemed to open out the flavours in the chocolate.  (Do trust me when I say incredibly rich… one was almost too much!  And I’m a chocoholic!)

The other six cupcakes were first filled with some black cherry jam and then topped off with some cream cheese frosting, a cherry, and a final flourish of some grated dark chocolate.  These were utterly scrumptious—I loved all the different textures and biting down through cool, creamy frosting into a fluffy chocolate cupcake is one of life’s little pleasures.

I can’t decide what is better… a dangerously dark and decadent cupcake which leaves you slightly stunned and unable to go back for seconds as you’re still too busy recovering from the first contemplating the complexity of flavours, or a slightly kitsch yet very delicious cupcake that just begs for second helpings.  But… do I really have to decide? Quite simply, these were some of the best tasting—and looking—cupcakes that I’ve ever made.  I reckon that’s because they were made with lots of love and laughter.   And you know, along with friendship, those are the secret ingredients of baking…

For the basic chocolate cupcakes

Makes 12
Source: How to be a domestic goddess, Nigella Lawson

• 2 scant tablespoons cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons boiling water
• 75g golden caster sugar
• 50g dark muscovado sugar
• 125g self-raising flour
• 2 large eggs
• 125g very soft unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon milk
• For chocolate decadence cupcakes, 6 dark chocolate truffles

• 12-hole muffin tun, lined with paper or foil cases

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.

Mix the cocoa to a paste with the boiling water and set aside while you make the cupcake mixture.

Put the sugars, flour, eggs and butter in a food processor and blitz to combine smoothly.  Scrape the mixture down from the sides and blitz again while you add the cocoa mixture, vanilla and milk down the funnel.  You should have a soft dropping consistency; if not, add a little more milk and blitz again.

Divide between the cases—if using truffles push them into the batter and make sure that they’re covered—and bake for 20 minutes.  Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Chocolate decadence cupcakes

• 6 chocolate cupcakes, baked with a truffle in the centre of each
• bittersweet whipped ganache (recipe below)
• gold dragees or whatever decoration you fancy

Put the whipped ganache into a piping bag fitted with a large open star tip.  I used a Wilton 1M tip.  Pipe generous swirls on top of each cupcake and scatter as few or as many gold dragees on top as you like.  Serve at room temperature so that the ganache is thick and voluptuously sexy (rather than cold, hard and unappealing.)

For Black Forest Style Cupcakes

• 6 chocolate cupcakes
• approx 20g black cherry jam
• cream cheese frosting (recipe below)
• approx 10g of dark chocolate, chilled in the freezer to make it easier to grate
• 6 natural glacé cherries

Cut out a cone shaped hole in the centre of each cupcake, wide and deep enough to take about a teaspoon of jam.  Reserve the bits you cut out!  You don’t want to put too much jam in, otherwise it becomes sickly sweet and also very difficult to eat.  Fill each hole with jam, then cut the pointy part of the cone away to leave a little flat cap.  Pop this back on top of the cupcake to conceal the filling.

Put the frosting in a piping bag, fitted with a large open star tip.  I used the Wilton 1M tip.  Pipe swirls of frosting over the cupcakes.  Grate the chocolate over the cupcakes and finally pop a cherry on top of each.

Bittersweet whipped ganache

For 6 cupcakes, generously

Source: Tartlette

• 90g good quality bittersweet chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
• 125ml double cream

Place the chocolate in a medium size bowl and set aside. In a large saucepan set over medium heat, bring the cream to a simmer. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let sit for a couple of minutes. Stir
the cream and chocolate together gently until the mass becomes smooth and shiny. Let cool and refrigerate until very cold. When ready to use, whip the ganache until it is holds its shape and spreads easily. Use as soon as it is made or it will be too stiff to pipe.

Cream cheese frosting

For 6 cupcakes, generously

• 100g full-fat cream cheese, chilled
• 30g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 100g icing sugar, sifted
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat the cream cheese and butter together until well combined.  Add the icing sugar and beat until fluffy.  Stir in the vanilla extract.  You may need to chill this before piping onto the cupcakes.