Orange-Brownie Cupcakes with Bicolor Frosting
Hello, everybody!
Ah, I feel so happy when Christmas is around. The town gets decorated, people are nicer aaaand I get a great excuse to make a super huge desert that I know will not go stale.
BUT this post is not about that desert because we still have one long week before Christmas. I just thought I should practice a bit of baking before the big show comes up.
Anyway, I wanted to eat a lot of things, and in the end I couldn't decide between my long beloved and classic chocolate or something baked with a fruit.
But then I thought: why not both?
Say hello to my little friend: organge-brownie cupcakes with bicolor frosting!
Well, in my case life did not get me oranges. Surprisingly, I did not have any at home. Stubborn as I am, I wanted to eat orange cupcakes. And I found a nice little replacement that goes by the name of orange juice. The downside is that it was soy orange juice (ewwww. I don't really like its taste...). But my desire spoke louder than my good judgement. So my orange cupcakes were made with soy orange juice... Yep.
I used two simple recipes found on allrecipes (for the brownie recipe) and the cookbook (for the orange cupcakes).
Recipes will follow shortly at the end of the post!
Moving on, I made the brownie recipe first and put about 1/3 of the cupcake liner and baked for about 10 minutes. While it was baking, I made the orange cupcakes recipe.
If, like me, your brownies grow waaay to much, you can dip a spoon in hot water or in butter (to avoid anything to stick... we don't want that) and lightly press the top of the brownies to make a little more room for the cupcake.
Anyway, I then filled the cupcake liners to about 2/3 with the orange cupcakes recipe and put it in the oven for the rest of the time. Hooray! They turned out awesome.
For the frosting, I made my all times favorite chocolate frosting. One with bittersweet chocolate and another with white chocolate (recipes at the end of the post). I put the frostings in two separate piping bags and used only on tip. The
result was quite awesome, though I had some doubts at the beginning.
May I say that these are one of the best cupcakes I have ever eaten? The orange flavor of the cupcakes (not at all like soy juice!) was really great with the chocolate, and the frosting was not too sweet. All in all, it was an awesome practice.
So, after taking my beloved pictures, I finally relaxed to eat my sweets when... I felt... Something looking at me... Very closely...
I think he wants some.
- Brownies recipe
1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 8 inch square pan.
In a large saucepan, melt 1/2 cup butter. Remove from heat, and stir in sugar, eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat in 1/3 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup flour, salt, and baking powder. Spread batter into prepared pan.
Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Do not overcook.
- Orange cupcakes recipe
1 large orange, zested and juiced
125g butter, softened
120g caster sugar
225g self raising flour
2 large eggs
Preheat oven to 180°C and line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases/liners (you can order some lovely cupcake cases for many different types of occasions from cake decorating suppliers).
Place butter, eggs, sugar, flour, orange juice and zest into a food processor. Process together for 2-3 minutes until smooth. Spoon mixture into cupcake cases/liners, they should be two thirds full. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes until golden, rotating the tin once during cooking. When tested with a skewer, the skewer should come out clean.
Remove from the oven, allow to cool for 5 minutes in the tin, then remove from the tin and place on a wire rack to cool completely.
- Chocolate Frosting
Same measure of condensed milk, but for milk (I pour it in the empty condensed milk can)
1 tablespoon of butter
White and bittersweet chocolate (I used about 1/3 cup of both of them)
Divide the condensed milk, milk and butter in half and pour each half in two separates saucepans. Start making one of the frostings, then after you're done start with the other.
Say we're starting with the bittersweet chocolate frosting. Pour the bittersweet chocolate in the condensed/milk/butter mixture and put it on high heat. Keep stiring non stop, otherwise it will burn. After 5 minutes or so, it will start boiling. If it gets to the point of spilling out of the saucepan, remove from heat until it sets, and put it over the heat again.
Keep removing from the heat everytime it threatens to spill, but do not leave it out of the fire for too long. I used a pretty high saucepan and did not have this problem. This often occurs if I use a whole can of condensed milk in one saucepan, which fortunetaly is not the case.
After another 5 minutes, it will start getting consistent. If you make a straight line with your spoon and you can see the bottom of the saucepan, it's probably good to turn off the fire. We want a consistancy that is good enough to pipe over the cupcake, but remember that, once it starts cooling, the mixture will get a little bit harder.
Repeate these steps for the white chocolate mixture.
Wait a few minutes for the mixture to cool off a bit before putting it in the pipping bag.