I'd promised you to let you in on the new flavours and combinations that I'd being playing with for my Boss' 60th birthday cakes last week. Whilst they are nothing ground breaking, I was trying to experiment with a few more staple flavours that I could add to the repertoire. This time I'd been toying with the idea of a mint buttercream with a nice dark chocolate cupcake, after the peppermint essence had caught my eye in Waitrose. I was so pleased with how these cupcakes turned out both in taste and visually. I think the mint green buttercream icing contrasts fantastically well against the deep chocolate sponge, topped off with a sprig of fresh mint from the garden.
What You'll Need
Basic vanilla cupcake recipe
Basic vanilla buttercream receipe
100g Green and Blacks Organic 70% Cooking Chocolate
1 handful of Waitrose Cooks Ingredients DarkChocolate Chunks
1/2 - 1 teaspoon Peppermint Essence
Natural Green Food Colouring
Sprig of Fresh Mint
What You'll Need to Do
Similarly to the white chocolate cupcake recipe, mix up your cupcakes using the basic vanilla cupcake
recipe
At the same time, it makes sense to melt the Green & Blacks darkchocolate so it is ready to be added to the mixture when you've mixed everything together. Again, I don't have a microwave so I melt my chocolate in a small heatproof bowl, that stands in a small saucepan of simmering water. But, if you do have a microwave, it only needs 20-30 seconds properly at the most, but I'm not sure as I don't really use one. Just double check though.
When you've mixed up all the cupcake ingredients together, add the melted dark chocolate, slowly blending it in, until you've a nice chocolately cupcake mix. If you want you can add so dark chocolate drops at this point, but I use them for decoration.
Cooking time is the same as the basic vanilla recipe, but you might want to experiment with reducing the time down to about 17 minutes rather than 20 minutes, as I was finding that they were catching a little on the top and I was having to cut the tops off. By reducing the time, they are still cooked through properly, but they don't become too heavy and overcooked.
As usual when you're happy that they are cooked through,
leave them in the baking tin to cool down and the place them onto a wire
rack to cool properly
To get the fantastic mint green buttercream you'll need to make up the basic vanilla buttercream, but instead of adding vanilla extract, substitute this with the peppermint essence. Now you'll need to be a bit careful with the peppermint essence, and have a steady hand. Too much essence and you'll overpower your cupcakes and it would be a bit like eating toothpaste.. not good! Add the peppermint essence a drop at a time and taste as you do, soyou get itjust as you want it. I add about 1 teaspoon for enough buttercream to cover 12 cupcakes.
When you've got the right flavouring, add a couple of drops of natural green food colouring, and blend it in really well, so that you get a fantastic mint green buttercream.
When you're happy that your cupcakes have cooled down and are ready for decorating, fill a piping bag with the buttercream and pipe it on top of your cupcakes in swirls. I've been experimenting with both round and starred nozzles; I must say I prefer the look of the starred nozzle, unfortunately I didn't manage to get photos of the ones that I used the star nozzle with, as they were all gone by the time I got to them.
To finish off, decorate with a couple of drop or small chunks of dark chocolate and sprig of fresh peppermint or mint from your garden.
I ended up making these again this weekend just gone for a friend's birthday, and they all disappeared rather rapidly so I take it that they were rather good! Work really enjoyed them too! I also experiemented with a caramel cupcake for my friend's birthday, and I'll get those up next...
Thanks again, and enjoy!