Valentine’s day – Part 2

Although you can buy practically everything from the supermarket its always nice to have some personal touch to the food we cook or share. They don't have to be perfect and that’s the beauty of it.

I have got these beautiful bars of chocolate from Sainsbury, you can eat them just like that or you can use for your baking. I did. I noticed I don’t have any cupcake recipes here. Its Valentines day, another excuse to have chocolates and cakes. Not that I would like to bake a huge cake but a small one just for two of us or some cup cakes which we can finish in one go.

 

I had some beautiful little chocolate truffles which I thought I could use for decorating these chocolate muffins as my dear husband is not very fond of creamy icing.  After all, I was making these muffins for him only. BTW guess what I got in return, a trip to SFO and LA. Isn’t that great! Well it's our milestone anniversary weekend as well!

 

As usual I am referring to Nigella’s recipe. As you know if it involves chocolate and indulgence but is quick and easy, it has to be Nigella. For these little chocolate cupcakes I used her recipe from Nigella Feasts – Comfort Food. Here is a link to the video Choc Chip muffin.

  Ingredients :

For the cupcakes:

First the list of dry ingredients:

100 gm of dark chocolate (melted)

1/4 th cup of dark chocolate chip (recipe suggested 3/4th cup but as I used 100 gm of dark chocolate so I reduced the chocolate chip amount )

1+ 3/4 th cup sugar

1 + 3/4 cup plain flour

2 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda

List of wet ingredients:

1 cup of milk

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

For the icing:

100 gm dark chocolate

100 gm white chocolate

100 gm melted butter

2 tbsp cherry Liquor (for the dark chocolate icing)

Sainsbury’s TTD Chocolate truffles

 

Method:

Pre heat the oven to 400 degree F. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and keep it aside. In a separate bowl add one by one all the wet ingredients and whisk it together so that the egg is mixed well. Now add the mixed wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix it well. Place the muffin cups on the baking tray and scope the cake mix in them. Bake them in the oven for 20 minutes.

For the icing melt the dark and white chocolates separately and add 50 gm of butter to each of the melting chocolate. keep stirring and then finally add the cherry liquor to the dark chocolate for little extra flavouring.Once the muffins are cooled down I put the icing on them and decorated them with the chocolate truffles.

I am sending this as an entry to Maison Cupcake’s event Forever Nigella #2 “Seduced by Chocolate”