Velvet Cupcakes

This cake is very dense but not sweet. Due to the high cocoa powder content if you can, use high quality cocoa powder as you can taste the difference. To paraphrase my colleague when I told her I bought 300g of cocoa powder for $15, "The normal stuff is gritty. You can taste this is good quality.". I hope she wasn't trying to make me feel better but I'll have to agree because this stuff gave more of a 'cocoa' flavour than the supermarket stuff. I've tasted this stuff and sadly for my wallet I can never go back. The chili powder gives it an extra something and the red colouring (using cake decorating gels) enhances the cocoa colour.

Unfortunately there are no pictures as the ones on the camera turned out really crappy.

Velvet Cupcakes

Ingredients
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup caster sugar
8 tbsp cocoa powder
3 eggs
1 cup milk
150g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence/extract
1/2 tsp chili powder (optional)
1 tsp red food colouring (optional)

Method
1. Cream butter and sugar until creamy. Add vanilla and eggs, one at a time. Beat until smooth.

2. Add the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined.

3. Dissolve the colouring into the milk. Add in milk a bit at a time. Mix until smooth.

4. Bake for 20mins. The result should be dense and has a velvety texture.

Icing
75g dark cooking chocolate
2 tsp icing sugar
sprinkle of chili powder (optional)
1 tsp red gel colouring*
Hot water, as needed

Melt the chocolate then add the colouring and chili powder. Add hot water, a teaspoon at a time until runny and smooth. Mix in icing sugar. If it is too runny add more sugar, if it is too hard add more hot water.

*You can get gel colouring from speciality food stores and cake decorating shops. If you use basic good colouring it will be very runny. If you omit to use the gel colouring, omit the water as well.