Dark Chocolate Cupcakes
I have a three-day weekend off from work, so might as well do some baking, eh? I used the Dark Chocolate Cupcake recipe from America's Test Kitchen. It's the first time I've actually used one of their recipes. Glad it wasn't a disappointment. I love the show and magazine and just bought one the cookbooks.
This particular cupcake recipe had a couple of firsts for me: it was the first time I used the double boiler method for melting chocolate and the first time I used sour cream in a baking recipe. I'm happy to say that with the former there was no unfortunate seizing of the chocolate or any other misfortunes that can befall a amateur home baker, aside from water steam scalding my fingers when removing the bowl from the pot. But that happens once every five times I deal with boiling water.
The sour cream made the batter and the resultant cupcake rather light. By the time all the ingredients were mixed in and ready to be scooped into the muffin tin, it was almost like a mousse.
The frosting is just a simple vanilla buttercream. It's originally a vanilla bean buttercream, but I didn't have any vanilla beans that weren't several years old, so I just used extra vanilla extract.
BTW: It did make the actual 12 cupcakes the recipe says it makes; my mom just snagged one before I could frost them or take pictures. She enjoyed them, especially the lightness.
