These cupcakes are from Nigella Lawson’s website, they apparently also appear in her book “How To Be A Domestic Goddess”. The description certainly whetted my appetite, and I was keen to try them. However I was delayed, courtesy of Amazon Logistics failing to deliver my chocolate, as I explained in my previous post. Finally they got their act together and the chocolate arrived this afternoon, so I set to and made them.
The recipe is simple enough, and should make 12. However I think they are slightly too large, after cooking,as they overflowed the cups rather more than expected, and I would recommend making 14 from this recipe.
I also don’t buy self-raising flour these days. Rather I use plain flour and add 2 teaspoons of baking powder per 150 grams to create self-raising. That was another tip I found on Nigella’s site.
I am afraid that when it came to applying the topping I only had 11 cupcakes to work with. That is because they gave off such a lovely aroma that I ate one before they had fully cooled. It tasted wonderful and I had to stop myself from eating another.
I am sure I will be making these again very soon.
Ingredients:
for the cupcakes:
- 125 grams soft unsalted butter
- 100 grams dark chocolate (broken into pieces)
- 300 grams morello cherry jam
- 150 grams caster sugar
- 1 pinch of salt
- 2 large eggs (beaten)
- 150 grams self-raising flour
for the icing:
- 100 grams dark chocolate
- 100 ml double cream
- 12 natural-coloured glace cherries
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4/350ºF.
- 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.