Dark Chocolate and Orange Cupcakes

‘Tis the season for Christmas baking. I love to cook. I do. However, baking isn’t my favorite thing to do. Again, it all comes back to having to follow a recipe. For some reason, over the past week I have felt motivated to make a cake or cupcakes…something. I have also felt motivate to do something with some really nice chocolate. What is a girl to do??? How would I combine that desire? And today it finally came to me. I did cupcakes because I wanted to see how it came out first. It seemed like a good and tasty way to test my idea.


To start, I purchased Swans Down cake flour. I used the recipe for the 1-2-3-4 cake. However, omit the almond extract. I only made 12 cupcakes so I halved the recipe. The ganache icing below will only make enough for 12, so if you make the whole cake recipe, double the ganache.


4 oz. good dark chocolate
1/2 c. whipping cream
1 tbs butter
1 tbs orange zest (or the zest of one tangerine)
3 tbs powdered sugar
White chocolate shavings

Break up chocolate into small pieces and put into a bowl. Heat butter and cream just until it begins to boil. Pore over chocolate and let stand for 5 minutes. Using a whisk, stir until blended. Add powdered sugar and orange zest. Let stand until thickened and ice cupcakes.

I shaved some white chocolate on top, some orange zest would be good also.