Choco Coffee Cupcakes - adapted from Kevin Chai Beautiful Cupcakes

The finished product. Thankfully Mum has this convenient cupcake holders for me to carry the cupcakes to work.

A few weeks ago, after I told Mum that I wanted to try out some basic cupcake decorating she made an impromptu purchase of a cupcake recipe book at the newspapers agent near the place she goes for facial. The book, Beautiful Cupcakes, recipes by Kevin Chai is filled with photos of gorgeous cupcakes along with their respective recipes. 

The book Mum bought Beautiful Cupcakes by Kevin Chai

In the first week (since I am working full-time, I can only bake during the weekends), after viewing some how-to videos on youtube, I tried out some easy cupcake decoration ideas but without the cupcakes. In the second week, I baked cupcakes and mini cupcakes from a basic yellow cake recipe. It totally slipped my mind to use a muffin pan and the cupcakes turned out wonky. The cupcakes did not look so bad after I frosted them with pink and purple butter cream.

In the first week: I just practised frosting on a plate.

In the second week: Yellow cake based cupcakes.
 I baked 8 normal sized cupcakes but only 4 were "saveable" and the other 4 were way too wonky and the rest are pop-in-your-mouth mini cupcakes. My sis said they look like princess party cupcakes. Too girly for her liking.

Then in the third week, as we will be having a farewell lunch for one of my colleagues, I decided to make and bring some of my home made cupcakes to share. My initial idea was to bake black forest cupcakes and Mum proposed that I use a recipe from Beautiful Cupcakes. Actually the recipe in the book was for choco coffee cupcakes but according to Mum, the recipe for black forest is similar and she wanted me to try the recipe in the book. In the end I totally deviated from my initial idea of black forest cupcakes. I skipped the cherry filling in the cupcake and frosted the cupcake with cream cheese and butter cream (I think whipped cream is used in black forest cakes). The only thing that remotely links my cupcakes to black forest cake is the way I decorated them.  

It was a sunny Sunday morning and it was a hot day to be baking. Mum took out the butter from the fridge to soften them and she was off to shop for the rest of the day so I was left to bake the cupcakes on my own. In respect of baking the cake, I think everything went smoothly except that it was a bit difficult to spoon the batter into the cupcake liners. I used a muffin pan this time. We used to have an ice-cream scoop at home time but I couldn’t find it so I had to use two spoons to spoon the thick batter into the liners.

In the third week: Choco Coffee Cupcakes
 Was not easy spooning the batter into the liners. Will try a piping bag next time.

After removing the cakes out of the oven, I think I made a mistake by not removing them from the pan to let them cool on a cooling rack because from what I read online, even when the cake is out of the oven it will continue to cook if you fail to remove it from the pan. What more, it was a hot day! The cupcakes turned out a bit dry and I think that that was the cause of it.  

The cupcakes after I removed them from the pan. I should fill the liners with less batter next time so that the top comes out neat.

While the cake cooled/ continued to cook in the pan, KC and I went to Tropicana City Mall (our usual hang out place) to get cream cheese and in the meantime we had our lunch there. When we got back I started on the frosting for the cupcakes. I had to alter the recipe for the frosting a bit because there wasn’t any cream well left so I substituted it with butter. Oh, and I was sceptical in using caster sugar for the icing, I just thought caster sugar can’t be easily dissolved so I used icing sugar instead. 

I got mixed reviews for my cupcakes the next day. Well, my sister and Mum said the cupcake is a bit dry. KC who has quite a sensitive taste bud, surprisingly, did not find the cupcake dry but pointed out the frosting was a bit weird, well no surprise there because I altered the frosting recipe. My colleagues were very kind because they said the cupcakes were good.  I tried the cupcake and I find that it was a bit dry and the frosting indeed tasted a bit strange. Mum said she will guide me the next round. I want to bake strawberry shortcakes next!