BASIC: chocolate cupcakes

I've baked amazing cupcakes today! Although I didn't decorate them with frosting today, I've made them so many times before and they are definitely my favorite recipe for the chocolate cupcakes batter. The frosting is up to you, you can decorate it with whatever your little heart desires. I'm just gonna give you the BASE today.
Another recipe to my BASIC series.
(first one was this one, if you haven't checked it out yet, go!)

  CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES

ingredients:

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(makes 12 muffins)

• 1/2 cup (50g) unsweetened cocoa
• 1 cup boiling hot water
• 1 1/3 cup (175g) all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder 
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup (113g) room temperature butter
• 1 cup light brown sugar (you can substitute with white, yet it, in my opinion, tastes better with brown)
• 2 large eggs
• a few drops of vanilla extract

What to do?

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1. Preheat oven to 190C and line muffin tins with paper liners.
2. In a small bowl stir until smooth water and cocoa.
3. In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking powder & cocoa.
4. In a big bowl beat together butter with sugar with an electric mixer. When nice and fluffy start adding the eggs, one at a time, and beat that together Add vanilla extract.
5. Mix in (with a spatula) flour mixture. Then add the cocoa and stir it all just until incorporated. 
6. Fill muffin tins til about 2/3 and bake for 16-20 minutes .
7. Let them cool down and DECORATE.

And this oldie was my frosted basic chocolate cupcake ;)

The recipe is adapted from joyofbaking.com recipe :) 

Have a great week! 

xx Annie

PUMPKIN MUFFINS

Ohhh yes! This time of the year is awesome not only because you get to wear those cute coats and sweaters, but it's also the PUMPKIN SEASON.
Okay, point taken, you can't wear pumpkins, but they're delicious. And healthy. And you have to eat SOMETHING.
So what I think you should try is....

  PUMPKIN MUFFINS

ingredients:

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(makes about 18 muffins)

• 1,5 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon (I love cinnamon so I put a bit more!)
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger 
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 113g (1/2c) butter
• 1c white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• a few drops of vanilla extract
• 3/4c pumpkin puree (as it's not really available in Poland, or at least I've never seen it around here, I                              make one myself, if you want to know how I make the pumpkin puree let me know)

What to do?

---

1. Preheat oven to 175C and line muffin tins with paper muffin cases.
2. In a small bowl sift together the flour, soda, spices and salt
3. In a big bowl beat butter with sugar. When nice and fluffy start adding the eggs, one at a time, and beat that well together. Add vanilla extract.
4. Incorporate half of the dry ingredients and half of the pumpkin puree to the big bowl (butter, sugar, eggs mixture).
5. Add the remaining halves of dry ingredients and pumpkin puree.
6. Pour the batter into muffin cases and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Yummm! They're soo good! This time I decorated them with little panda heads made from fondant and for halloween as little spiders and with worms going through them! Ugh! Nasty! 

Take a look!

Oh, by the way, just wanted to share my enthusiasm, they opened a store with everything you need for baking close to my house! I could not be more happy! I mean, there was one I'd buy everything in but it was soo far away! So now, no worries! :) Ahhh!

BAKE THEM!

NOW!

haha 

xx 

Annie