Black Forest cupcakes

message for Christmas of 2009 :

When I prepared the first recipe of cupcakes for Christmas - the craters dates, you know - I realized that if I followed the book for all the quantities of the others cupcakes, I'd find myself with a hundred small cakes to eat. If they were biscuits it would be all right, but they're definitely not... The two recipes that I give here are complete and correspond to a dozen muffins or thirty cupcakes. In both cases, they were eaten quite fast.

Recipe 1: Black Forest cupcakes

The Black Forest is the huge birthday cake I've often wanted to do. Lack of patience or sufficient company for me to hitch, I don't know which is true ... What is certain is that when I fell on the miniature version of Nigella Lawson in How to be a Domestic Goddess, I litteraly jumped at the idea.

Ingredients : 

90g butter 

120g dark chocolate 

200g morello cherry jam 

100g sugar 

2 eggs 

120g flour 

2 teaspoons baking powder 

For the icing : 

120g cooking chocolate 

100g fresh and creamy cheese

candied cherries for decoration 

Preheat oven to 180 ° C. 

In a saucepan, melt together over low heat the butter cut into small pieces and chocolate. Stir continuously with a wooden spoon, and when the mixture is melted, remove from heat. To make sure that nothing cooks or stick to the saucepan, I withdraw my it before. As the content is hot, chocolate finishes melting off the heat. 

Pour the chocolate in a bowl and gradually add the jam, sugar, and eggs, while continuing to mix with a spoon. When the mixture is homogenous, add flour and stir with a whisk to avoid lumps, but do not whisk too long. Divide batter into the cupcakes boxes and put them in the oven for 20 short minutes. 

Meanwhile, prepare the frosting. Melt chocolate over low heat and then add the cheese, stirring until fully incorporated. If the frosting seems hard enough without all the cheese, then stop. Using a cooking socket or a pierced freezer bag, decorate your cooled cupcakes and place a cherry on their top to complete.

Detail from Arthur Rackham's illustration of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung.