Nigella's choc-cherry cup cakes.
These are so yummy. I'm making them for Imran's birthday cake this weekend.
I put some choc-chips in with the flour at the end for extra chocolatey goodness.
For Imran's birthday I'm icing them in differant colours instead of using her chocolate icing. I've bought pre-made icing because it's smooth and I'm planning to make a few bright colours and shapeing and arranging them to look like a bunch of balloons. I wanted to do it for Yasin's birthday but I didn't have the right head space for baking (Thanks MIL :( ) so Imran gets lucky instead.
I'm thinking of using cherry jam instead of sugar syrup as the cake/icing adhesive. Fingers crossed that it will work.
for the cupcakes:
125g soft unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
300g morello cherry jam
150g caster sugar
pinch of salt
2 large eggs, beaten
150g self-raising flour
12-bun muffin tin and papers
for the icing:
100g dark chocolate
100ml double cream
12 natural-coloured glace cherries
Preheat the oven to 180?C/gas mark 4.
Put the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan on the heat to melt. When nearly completely melted, stir in the chocolate. Leave for a moment to begin softening, then take the pan off the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the butter and chocolate are smooth and melted. Now add the cherry jam, sugar, salt and eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon and when all is pretty well amalgamated stir in the flour.
Scrape and pour into the muffin papers in their tin and bake for 25 minutes. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
When the cupcakes are cool, break the chocolate for the icing into little pieces and add them to the cream in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, remove from the heat and then whisk – by hand or electrically – till thick and smooth. Ice the cupcakes, smoothing the tops with the back of a spoon, and stand a cherry in the centre of each.
Makes 12.
