Today we’re going to be talking about the cupcakes that ranked number 2! These are a five part chocolate cupcake, and they are from the cupcake project over here. They have some pretty cool projects and I definitely plan on reblogging from them more often.

So the cupcake that ranked number two contained five different types of chocolate, heres a list for you all!

1. Chocolate cupcake
2. mini chocolate chips
3. chocolate mousse
4. chocolate ganache
5. white chocolate drizzle

The result: our featured picture!

So back to the recipe, you can find the original recipe as a trackback on the image but I’ve made a couple of changes to the recipe. I also doubled the recipe which gave me about 64 mini cupcakes.

The chocolate cake recipe came from Chockylit’s cupcake blog. I know this constant series of reblogging might get confusing at some point but here goes. Over at the Chockylit’s they recommended to fill 2/3 of the way full and I did the same. The cupcake project only filled it up to 1/2. If you do so, plan to make more cupcakes because I doubled the recipe and got 84 cupcakes by filling them 2/3 of the way up.

Chocolate cupcakes

Makes 84 mini cupcakes.

• 2 sticks butter, room temperature
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 1/3 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven at 325 and line cupcake tins.
2. Beat butter until softened. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about three minutes.
3. Add eggs one at a time, beating until well combined, scraping down the sides as needed.
4. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder and whisk.
5. Measure out milk and vanilla, combine.
6. Add a third of the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar, beat and add half of milk/vanilla, combine, and another third of the dry ingredients, beat, add the second half of milk/vanilla, beat, add the last third of dry ingredients, beat to combine.
7. Stir in the chocolate chips.
8. Fill cupcake tins from ⅔ full. Bake for 18 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean

Mousse

For the chocolate mousse I have written my own recipe, which is an adaptation from Alton Brown’s Chocolate Mousse as well as another user posted recipe on allrecipes.com

The recipe I made was more than enough, I ended up only needing about maybe 1/3 of the recipe I made but I’m going to go ahead and just post it anyways. I mean… who doesn’t like some yummy chocolate mousse?

1 packet Gelatin

½ cup Heavy Or Whipping Cream

½ cup Heavy Or Whipping Cream

12 ounces Semisweet Chocolate Chips

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

1 pinch Salt

2 cups Heavy Or Whipping Cream

¼ cup Sugar

1. Ahead of time, set a mixing bowl and the beaters in the refrigerator.
2. Set up a double boiler with the following : ½ cup heavy whipping cream, chocolate chips, vanilla extract and salt into a bowl .
3. While the chocolate mixture is cooling, bloom the gelatin with ½ cup of the heavy whipping cream.
4. Stir the chocolate occasionally until just above body temperature. Heat the gelatin mixture and stir mixture into the cooled chocolate.
5. In the cold mixing bowl, beat cream and sugar until stiff peaks form. Stir ¼ of the whipping cream into the chocolate mixture to lighten it. Fold the remaining whipping cream in two doses. Spoon and chill for at least 1 hour.

There are two ways to fill the cupcakes. The one used on cupcake projects is as follows: use a small paring knife to cut a cone into the cupcake. Spoon or pipe (I found piping to be easier) chocolate mousse into the hole. Replace the top.

As far as I was concerned, I made over 200 cupcakes and cutting, filling, and replacing the top was NOT an option for me. Instead, I filled my piping bag, used a wilton tip. Then I inserted the tip to the center of each cupcake and pipped until they bulged slightly.

Ganache

Next came the ganache:

• 3.5 oz of dark chocolate broken into small pieces (I used Patric chocolate)
• 1/3 C heavy cream

Place the chocolate in a small glass bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan until it just starts to boil. Pour the cream over the chocolate and stir until all the chocolate is melted and integrated with the cream. While it is still warm, spread a thin layer of it over the cupcakes. It will slightly harden when it cools.

Finishing touch

Finally, melt 2 ounces of white chocolate. You can do this on the stove, but I find it easier to do in the microwave. I do it for 20 seconds at a time. Stir after each round. When it is all melted, you are done. It should take about a minute.

Pour the melted chocolate into a plastic sandwich bag or a disposable pastry bag. Cut a very small hole at the tip of the bag and draw whatever kind of funky pattern you want onto your cupcakes!