A basket full of chocolate cupcakes!

Update on May 05: Tony was kind enough to feature this in his weekend curry mela. Go check out the mela to see what other foodies have submitted!

Well..the basket of cupcakes didn't stay as full for long. They were gone very quickly! This is what I made late Sunday night when a "something chocolate" craving hit us. I thought of making pudding first but I didn't have any cream on hand so settled for the cupcakes. And the thought of letting the pudding cool in the refrigerator before we can devour it did not appeal to me. As I said, it was kind of late at night!

These cupcakes are very easy to make and take only 15-20 minutes of prep time. The rest of the time is baking time. Unless I am baking cupcakes for a party/give away, I never frost my cupcakes so I can avoid the extra sugar and all the work. I just sprinkle them with some decorative sprinklers or just a dusting of powdered sugar will satisfy my "frosting" desire!

I got the basic recipe from Hershey's Website. They are called "Spring Surprise Chocolate Cupcakes". I have made "filling/surprise" cupcakes before where a "surprise filling" is put in the cupcake and baked. When someone bites into the cupcake, they may either bite into the filling or see the filling and get "surprised"! Get it? I have done a cream cheese and chocolate chip filling, fresh raspberry filling, any kind of fruit jelly/jam fillings etc. Basically the surprise filling can be anything you fancy, just that if you put something heavy, you may risk the filling dropping to the bottom of the cupcake which is not such a good thing. May be next time I bake cupcakes, I will put a surprise filling in so I can capture that on the camera!

As with every recipe, I make, I did modify this recipe quite a bit. I added in flax seed flour, some nuts, some more chocolate, in a typical Rachael Ray style added some nutmeg, added salt, reduced the sugar etc. Here goes my recipe!


Software
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• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup flax seed flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa or dark cocoa
• 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg powder
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup of finely chopped walnuts
• 1 tbsp confectioners/powdered sugar

Hardware
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• one muffin pan
• one large mixing bowl
• one sifter
• one small sifter

Method
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• Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
• Sift together the flour, salt and the baking soda into the large mixing bowl. Add the flax seed flour, cocoa, sugar and mix well with a fork so all the dry ingredients get mixed thoroughly. At this point the dry mix looks like a pre-packaged chocolate mix package.
• Add in the water, oil, egg and the vanilla, beat at a medium speed using an electric mixer until the dry ingredients are well incorporated into the wet ones. Beat for 4-5 minutes until you see the bubbles on top. Mix in the nuts.
• Put the paper muffin cups in the muffin pan. Fill the muffins until they are a little more than 3/4 full. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
• Cool on a wire rack.
• After the muffins are completely cool, take the powdered sugar in a small sifter and "sift" the sugar on top the muffins!
  

This makes about 15-18 cupcakes.

Serving Suggestion: Serve with a tall glass of soy milk! YUM!

PS: This is a totally non-food related paragraph! Does anyone watch LOST on ABC? If yes, did you watch tonight's episode? My jaw totally dropped after watching it. I CANNOT believe they did what they did! This is probably the best episode this season in my opinion. Sorry, I just HAD to talk about it as I cannot seem to stop thinking about the episode!