I’m back from the US now, and came home to find that the foreign man had installed a new security system.
He also gave me my first ever business card.
While it’s great being home with my friends, foreign man and small black punctuation mark cat, I’ve been blindsided by jet lag and feeling a little, well, unstable. I spent the better part of yesterday hammering away joylessly at an entry about Donna Haraway and my pilgrimage to the American Museum of Natural History, but for the good of the internet public I decided to let that one slide. Then I remembered the Day of the Mint Cupcake.
For someone with a noted antipathy towards the dominance of cupcake cute, I seem to make an awful lot of them. They are a great party cake, portable and easy to handle and non-plate intensive. About a month before I left for the US a graduate journal I was marginally involved in was launching this year’s issue, and I offered to make cupcakes to hand out with glasses of cheap sparkling at the launch.
I think everyone else forgot about the offer, but I didn’t. I thought long and hard about what would be the most appropriate cake, and settled on Cheryl from Chockylit’s chocolate and mint cupcakes, reasoning that the mint was distinctive and mature and everyone likes chocolate. I also decided to buy a mini cupcake tin, as many small cupcakes seemed more elegant than fewer large ones. What I didn’t expect was that the whole process would take all. Freaking. Day.
The thing is, a dainty little cupcake doesn’t use up much cake batter, and Cheryl’s delicious and simple cake recipe makes, well, a very large amount of batter, and I had only one four-by-four cup pan. Therefore, I spent all day hovering about the kitchen, transferring baked cakes to a wire rack and scooping out batter from a seemingly never-ending bowl. Then I had to make the icing, a simple buttercream flavoured with peppermint oil, and then I had to wrassle with the pastry bag and my own icing incompetence. The good news is I am now marginally better at piping the most basic of icing stars on to very small cakes.
Still, it was more than worth it. The cake was moist, flavourful and deeply chocolate, the icing minty and fresh, and together they did something very special. I would make them again in a heartbeat, so long as three more mini cupcake pans appear in that heartbeat.
Chocolate Cupcakes with Mint Buttercream
Makes a great deal.
For the cakes:
- 200g good dark chocolate
- 330g butter
- 2 1/4 cups sugar
- 8 eggs
- 1 1/4 cup flour
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
Roughly chop the chocolate, then put it in a large heat-proof bowl along with the butter. Melt together over a pan of simmering water. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, then let cool for 10 minutes. Beat with an electric mixer for 3 minutes, then mix in the eggs one at a time, mixing for 30 seconds each. Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and a pinch of salt.
Scoop out batter into cupcake cups and bake for around 15 minutes for mini cupcakes, 25 for regular type, until a cake tester comes out clean. Repeat until you are done. It may take a while. Cool baked cupcakes on a wire rack.
For the icing
- 220g butter, softened
- 4-5 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 1/4 cup milk
- 3-4 drops peppermint oil
Beat the butter until creamy in a large bowl. Add four cups of powdered sugar and the milk and beat until combined. Add a drop or two of peppermint oil, then taste, then add some more until it tastes minty but not overpowering. Yes, it will taste a little like toothpaste. Don’t let this discourage you. Keep adding powdered sugar until you get the right consistency.
Ice using a pastry bag if you’re feeling ambitious, a spoon if not. Serve to the waiting masses.
