BAKING

IT’S CHOCOLATE ORANGE CUPCAKES FOR CHRISTMAS THIS TIME!

“Let’s dance and sing and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year.”
Sir George Alexander Macfarren

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CHOCOLATE ORANGE CUPCAKES

Festive food for Christmas!

In a span of 2 days I baked over a 100 cupcakes & iced them as well. The first 80 were vanilla cupcakes, the ones for the playschool Christmas party. These last batch I had to do a little different for my own experimentation & therapeutic pleasure! The flavours of chocolate & orange complement each other beautifully. I love the way the Christmassy ones turned out with the red, white & green; & also the pink ‘n’ purple ‘very girly ones’. For the chocolate stars & flowers, I drizzled the stars, flowers, zigzags etc onto butter paper, & peeled them off gently once they were set. These can be made in advance and stored in an airtight box in a cool place. Fix them onto the top of the cupcake with a little melted chocolate. Makes the cupcakes look so good & ‘dressed up’.

Ingredients: IMG 0155

Flour – 2 cups
Baking powder – 2 tsp
Salt – 1/2 tsp
Butter – 1/2 cup
Sugar – 1 1/4 cup

Eggs – 2
Vanilla Essence / extract – 1 tsp
Milk – 1 cup

Baking Chocolate – 50gms / melted with 1 tsp of cream
Zest of 1 orange

Method:
  • Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Line or grease the muffin pans.
  • Sift flour + baking powder + salt 3 times. Keep aside.
  • Cream butter + sugar well.
  • Add vanilla + eggs and beat well.
  • On low speed, beat in flour mix + milk alternatively in 3 lots.
  • Mix in the melted chocolate.
  • Fill muffin cases to 3/4th depth, and bake for 20-25 minutes till done.
  • Remove from muffin pan immediately & cool on racks.
  • For the icing, drizzle melted chocolate over the tops, sprinkle immediately with slivered pistachios, Christmas sprinkles, silver dragees etc.
  • Makes approximately 18 muffins.
    Note: For the 2nd lot , if you make 6 muffins in a 12 pan tin, fill a little water in each of the empty cases to ensure even baking.

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Served with slices of freshly baked moist & delicious chocolate cake which has whole-wheat flour too!

collage With the same batch I iced a few differently to gift to a friend of my daughters’ where all the girls had gone to spend the day. They disappeared before I could even say something…

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This post is for Bindiya at ‘In Love With Food’ who is hosting a delicious chocolate event ”MY FAV THINGS” … & celebrating her wedding anniversary today! All the best Bindiya…hope your day was great!!

About me: I am a freelance food writer, recipe developer and photographer. Food is my passion - baking, cooking, developing recipes, making recipes healthier, using fresh seasonal produce and local products, keeping a check on my carbon footprint and being a responsible foodie! I enjoy food styling, food photography, recipe development and product reviews. I express this through my food photographs which I style and the recipes I blog. My strength lies in 'Doing Food From Scratch'; it must taste as good as it looks, and be healthy too. Baking in India, often my biggest challenge is the non-availability of baking ingredients, and this has now become a platform to get creative on. I enjoy cooking immensely as well.

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