Chocolate Valentine Cupcakes

This Christmas past I became acquainted with a little book. My sister gave me a delightful cook book for Christmas for making cupcakes, cheesecakes and cookies. As I turned the pages all I saw was utter perfection, that made me aspire to create everything that I visualized. I could not decide on what to create first. Was it to be a cupcake, a cheesecake for I have never had made one in my life. Or was it to be a biscuit, the short bread button cookies that looked unique and so unlike a common biscuit. Each recipe was worth creating in its own good time. Seriously, there are so many recipes in this world that you shouldn't really have the same thing week after week. Though there would be plenty of energy expended on searching, deciding and then shopping just to cook each one and so therefore the familiar and known is much more easier.

Womens Weekly Cupcake Cheesecake cookies

During the course of creating the chocolate valentine cupcakes I have found an arch nemesis. It did not come in the human form but as a innocent looking jar of FONDANT. I would not have dreamed of it being so difficult to handle. Sure I have read about the issues which people face when dealing with this lump of sweetness but I did not expect what on earth meet me when I removed it from the jar. I believe I was being far to optimistic. My ghastly fight with it is captured in the photos below. Goodness, would I return to make a cake using fondant again? Questionable.

Well, with Valentines Day fast approaching and the month of January slipping by, I decided upon a recipe in my new little big book that was themed for Valentines day.

Note the chocolate valentine cupcakes were meant to have a layer of chocolate fondant. I just used regular fondant as I do not have the time during the day to drive around, find all the ingredients and then create chocolate fondant. The recipe I will present will include the chocolate fondant. Here it goes.

The ingredients

Double chocolate raspberry cake

60 grams dark eating chocolate, chopped coarsely

1/2 cups water

90 grams soften butter

1 cups of brown sugar

2 eggs

2/3 cups self-raising flour

2 tablespoons of cocoa powder

1/3 cup almond meal

100 grams frozen raspberries

Decorations

2 tablespoons of cocoa powder

900 grams chocolate fondant

1/3 cup raspberry jam, warm and strained

1/2 cup icing sugar

150 grams red prepared fondant

150 grams white prepared fondant

pink food colouring

The method

Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius for fan forced. Line a cup cake pan with 12 paper cases.

On the stove, combine water and chocolate on low heat until smooth.

Water and chocolate

Beat butter, sugar and eggs with an electric mixer until combined.

Stir in sifted flour and cocoa, almond meal, then the warm chocolate mixture. Fold in the raspberries. Divide mixture evenly among cupcake cases.

Adding sifted flour, cocoa and almond meal

Adding the warm chocolate mixture

Folding in the raspberries

Now the recipe suggests to bake the cup cakes for 45 minutes. I did this and I found them too dry when I removed them from the oven. Is this a trick of the trade for something? My limited cooking knowledge leaves me blank. I suggest checking them until they are done and not what the clock is telling you as per the method in the cook book. Remove them from the oven and allow to cool. The recipe now suggests to remove the cases, I left my own on for no particular reason apart from an oversight of this step. Why do I keep doing this?

Cake mixture divided evenly among cases

Cupcakes all ready

Now, if you have your chocolate fondant, dust the bench surface with cocoa and roll out the fondant until it is 5mm thick. Cut a circle of fondant that is enough it cover the top of the cupcake. Brush the tops with the warmed raspberry jam and cover with the chocolate fondant. Right, I didn't make chocolate fondant so I just used my shop bought fondant and left it white to cover the cupcake tops. Now this is when the nightmare begins. Now cooking, baking, frying, et cetera is filled with shockers and winners. This is my shocker of a shocking fondant moment. The fondant was too hard it started cracking, to soft it stuck to everything. The perfect rolling fondant was never achieved!  Maybe it is the fondant I bought that is in the wrong? Maybe it is not design for the purposes I had designed for it? Some other than myself can only tell me this. I am ignorant about such facts of cooking. I am straying. Now back to the method.

This was the fondant I used

One badly covered cupcake

On a spotless surface dusted with icing sugar, kneed the white and red fondant separately until smooth. Now use the pink coloring to tint 100 grams on the white fondant pink and the remaining white fondant and paler pick. Each shade of pink is to represent a different colored heart on the cupcake. I only used two different heart shapes as the third smallest heart shape cutter was wider than the cupcake.
Here is some of the chaos that ensued.

 

 

Roll out each color fondant to a thickness of 5mm. Then using heart shape cutters of graduating sizes to fit the size of the cakes. Now here is the mess I created when trying to roll and then cut out the heart shapes.

Decorate the cupcakes. Using a tiny touch of water to stick the hearts to each other. Just use the what the cupcakes should look like picture as a guide below.

What my cupcakes looked like

How they should of looked like

This won't put me off using fondant again. I will try a different kind or I will become more read about it, which will then translate to improved fondant hopefully via the practical. So my little chocolate valentine cupcakes, may you spread the love this valentines day.