Mocha Cupcakes
Printable Recipe - Chocolate Cupcakes
Printable Recipe - Coffee Swiss Meringue Buttercream
My sister and her son, Jackson live in Portland, Oregon. We've decided to take a trip to Vancouver, BC. So they came to stay with us on a Friday night and I asked them to star in a guest appearance on my blog.
I wanted to feature Mocha Cupcakes but Jackson doesn't like coffee so we decided to do a mix of chocolate and coffee frosting.
It's important that your butter is room temperature if you intend to make Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Just leave it out all day on the counter.
It all starts with my favorite Chocolate Cupcake recipe which is the same as my favorite chocolate cake recipe. I've used a LOT of chocolate cake recipes and this is my go to recipe. Hershey's
has a great recipe for Perfectly Chocolate Cake and I think it's a great cake for beginners or for those days when you don't have buttermilk in the house.
I like to modify that recipe by adding a good buttermilk and hot coffee instead of hot water.
Here is Angie revealing my favorite buttermilk. I buy it at PCC. Whole Foods might have it also. It's Grace Harbor "You Get all the Cream" buttermilk. It's full of yumminess and fat which helps the cupcakes have full flavor and moisture.
First, we put the dry ingredients into a sifter. Jackson was super helpful with the baking soda and the baking powder.
I prefer to give the wet ingredients a gentle stir in a separate bowl before adding them to the dry ingredients.
After adding the wet ingredients to the dry, add a cup of hot water or coffee. I used hot water because Jackson doesn't like coffee. This is a very runny batter so use a scoop and clean up any drops of batter that fall on the side of the pan.
I prefer to use the good quality foil cake liners, I have found over the years that they help to keep the moisture in the cupcakes and they make the cupcakes less messy for eating! Here is Angie showing that the foil cupcakes liners have a paper coating on the inside. She's pretty excited about that!
I have a double gas oven and cupcakes tend to be done well before the recipe indicates. These were done in 12 minutes!
We set the cupcakes aside to cool and started on the adventure of the Swiss Meringue Buttercream.
Add the cup of sugar to 7 egg whites and set that on the double boiler. You need to stir constantly, do not step away or you will have cooked sugared egg whites which will not turn into frosting.
I always choose safety first so I insist that my egg whites cook to 160 degrees F which is in the safety zone.
Once the egg whites reach 160, add the cream of tartar if you have it and pour them into your mixxer and set it to high. The cream of tartar seems to help with the volume which increases the fluffiness.
The whites will need to whip until they are stiff, glossy and room temperature. The bowl can not be warm. If it is, put the bowl with the egg whites in the fridge for 3 minutes, then whip before adding the butter.
Once the egg whites are cooled to room temperature, add room temperature butter one tablespoon at a time. If your frosting looks curdled, do not despair. Just keep whipping it - it'll come together eventually. Whip it, Whit it good!!
For a full batch of coffee frosting, you would now add the 2 packs of Starbuck's Via that was mixed into 1/4 cup of hot water that had cooled to room temperature. For chocolate frosting, you would add 4 ounces of melted and cooled semi-sweet chocolate now.
I prefer to add my frosting into a piping bag with a good frosting tip for fancy cupcakes. Jackson had fun learning how to pipe frosting.
My neighbors often benefit from my obsessive baking. Here is a pack of 10 finished cupcakes ready for delivery to a neighbor.
Here is what Angie had to say about the cupcakes, "That was the yummiest cupcake I have ever had. Terri only allowed me to have one". That's not true, she could have had more but it was 10:30 PM by the time we were done with the cupcakes because we had too much fun goofing off along the way.