Friday, December 12, 2008

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.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh yum! Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum! I swear - I'm coming over! I can almost test them. Boy did I miss you!

Chef E said...

Those are two of my favorite flavor combinations...Yum I will have to go home and buy my favorite orange sherbert with dark chocolate pieces in it...

Tiffany said...

chocolate and orange is yummy! That looks great.

Swestie said...

And for those of you who didn't have the good fortune to taste one in real life, it's a pitty!

Anonymous said...

I'll probably double the ganache anyway regardless of how many muffins I'm making. Not everyone likes oranges and chocolate but I love the combination.