If you know me at all, you’ll know how much I love my Portland Trailblazers. If I’m not in the stadium with 20,000 other people cheering on the team, I’m probably sitting at my house yelling at my tv.
The team reached the playoffs this year for the first time since the 2010-2011 season and they’re currently facing the Houston Rockets in round 1. We won the first two games in Houston and lost last night at home (in overtime; I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing about halfway through the game, these games are probably not good for anyone’s blood pressure).
But don’t worry. I have a good feeling about tomorrow’s game. No one beats us twice in a row at home. No one.
Back to the cupcakes.
I had a lot of fun whipping up these little babies. The Blazers team colours are red, black and white so I made good use of those when I was making these. The base for the cupcake is the same as the cupcake recipe I developed for The Oregonian on Valentine’s Day. It’s so deliciously chocolatey and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?
I did double the recipe because it only makes 12 and I wanted a cupcake for each player (15) and some other Blazer-centric things. I’m not going to lie, I’m not totally happy with how the frosting turned out. I think next time I would do red/white frosting instead of red/black and have the numbers and letters in black. But you live and learn, as they say. Getting the frosting to turn black required a lot of food colouring.
Yesterday I used candy melts for the first time and I’m pretty happy with the results. It’s a really easy way to make cute little decorations (or in my case, numbers and letters) to put on top of cupcakes. Melt the candy, pipe it onto some wax paper, let it set and you’re done. Easy!
I also baked up a little something else yesterday, but I’ll wait until tomorrow or Monday to post that one. Don’t want to overload you with too much goodness 😉
Ingredients
Cupcakes:
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
- 2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped (bittersweet chocolate chips will also work)
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate cocoa powder (or regular, if you prefer)
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 3/4 tsp. baking powder
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/2 cup sour cream
Frosting:
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- Food colouring (I use gel so it doesn't change the consistency)
Decorations:
- 1 bag candy melts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a muffin tin with paper liners.
- Combine butter, chocolate and cocoa powder in a heatproof bowl over gently simmering water. Heat until the butter and chocolate have melted, stir to combine and set aside to cool.
- In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and baking powder.
- In a larger bowl, whisk the eggs. Add sugar, vanilla and salt, stirring to combine. Add the chocolate mixture and mix together.
- Pour in 1/2 of the flour mixture and stir together. Whisk in sour cream, then add remaining flour mixture and whisk again until just combined. Do not over mix. Divide batter between liners and bake for 18-20 minutes. Let cool.
- To make the frosting, cream the butter. Slowly add the powdered sugar and mix together until combined. Divide frosting in half and use food colouring to dye it.
- To get the swirl effect that I have, place one batch of frosting in a 12" pastry bag and the other batch in another 12" bag. Cut off the tips of the bags. Place both bags into a 16" pastry bag fitted with a star tip. Pipe onto cupcakes.
- For the candy melts: place in a plastic decorating bag or ziploc and put in microwave for 1 minute. Squeeze bag and put back in microwave, checking and squeezing the bag every 30 seconds until the candy has all melted. Snip off the end of the bag/corner of ziploc and pipe desired shapes onto wax paper. Allow to set for at least two hours. Place on top of frosted cupcakes.
1 thought on ““Rip City” Cupcakes”
Comments are closed.