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Hi Guys! I'm Laura Vitale
On this episode of 'Laura in the Kitchen', I'm going to show you how I make my chocolate cupcakes
They are super simple and easy to do
Um...you should always have one cupcake recipe that's basic. I've showed you how to make a vanilla one. This is my chocolate one.
So before we get started of course we need to go over the ingredients so let's do it!
Your gonna need some: All purpose flour, some cocoa powder, brown sugar, granulated sugar, unsalted butter at room temperature, buttermilk
an egg, some salt, baking soda, baking powder, instant expresso powder, and vanilla extract.
That's it super simple and easy. Now first thing you wanna do is get your oven to 350. Get that ready.
Second thing you wanna do is take your muffin liner or your muffin pan and just put in the little liners
Just like that so nothing sticks and comes out easy
Now for the butter milk. If you can't find that at your local supermarket, you can make your own
Just go to my website at www.laurainthekitchen.com and go take a look at my recipe on how to make your own buttermilk
It's not like how to make exactly exactly butter milk but it's a great substitute if you can't find it
So. Hey there you go. Simple and easy.
Now. The instant espresso powder in this recipe is totally optional. I just think it makes the chocolate taste even better
But one thing that's very crucial-I know I'm gonna get a lot of questions for this so I'm gonna answer it right now
For the cocoa, it has to be pure cocoa powder. It cannot be the instant or the hot chocolate packet. It cannot be that.
It has to be pure cocoa that's it. So if you wanna ask the question, I've already answered it for you
So now we're gonna get started. In this bowl, I'm going to add in the butter
It's really important that it's at room temperature
And the brown sugar and the granulated sugar
And using a whisk I'm just gonna cream these together. That looks great!
Now to this I'm going to add in my egg
And a splash of vanilla. Bout a teaspoon
Now if you don't wanna use brown sugar, you can just substitute with just a whole cup of granulated sugar. I'm using 3/4 of a cup of granulated sugar
and a 1/4 cup of brown sugar because I like that sort of molassy taste it gives to the cupcake but
that's totally optional. Again just use whatever you have on hand. Just mixing this together.
Now I'm going to add my dry ingredients. I'm just gonna quickly mix them together
It doesn't have to be perfect at all
These are gonna go right in
And I'm just going to start mixing them
until they're just about incorporated and then we'll add in our buttermilk
That looks great
We're gonna add in our buttermilk
and just mix this whole thing together until it's all combined
That looks perfect. It has a few lumps in there but that's perfectly fine because a good cupcake is a little lumpy
Keeps everything really nice and moist
Just means that you haven't over mixed it and then it will be really tough [incoherent]
Definitely don't want that
So (clanks) now that we have this all combined I'm going to take my handy dandy ice cream scooper and I'm going to divide the batter evenly
until we have everything all filled up
Last one! Now I'm going to put this into the pre-heated oven 350 for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean with no wet batter on it
And then I'm going to let them cool completely before I start frosting them with some simple butter cream
My cupcakes have cooled completely and they've baked for about 20 minutes which is perfect for these
So now I'm just going to decorate two of them just to show you kinda like how I do it
I just take like a regular plastic disposable piping bag. You can use a big ziplock bag if you don't have one of these and just snip off one of the corners
And now I just-you can start at the center
and work your way out or vice versa. It doesn't really matter
I just build like that
I guess I'll start from the outside in
Just...
build and then what I do is I take a piece of chocolate
and taking a vegetable peeler. What you're doing is creating little chocolate curls
Just like that
And once you have plenty-Oops! Or it breaks
You just take it and I love to just pile some right on top
Not a whole lot. I just like that way that they look
Kinda...makes it look a bit fancier
You can just do it right over the top if you wanted to
But chances are they'll fall all over the place like mine did
If you have a really big piece of chocolate obviously you're gonna get bigger curls
but this is just really simple and easy
I'm not a professional decorator. I'm a professional eater
And this is where I say: "Don't you wish you were here?"
So cute
But of course
The test is always in the taste
I can see these are really moist though
That's what I'm talking about
The moistest chocolate cupcake you'll ever eat
Wow!
[muffled]
Now also for the buttercream frosting I do have a recipe on this so if you wanna check that out go right ahead. It's super simple and easy
A basic got to recipe everyone should know how to make
So...I hope you enjoyed spending time with me
And I hope that you go to www.laurainthekitchen.com to get the recipe and make them yourself
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