Here is the first of the promised cupcake recipes. I'd recently indulged in some cardamom chocolate and it was so delicious and worked so well, I was keen to try it out in cake format. I took Nigella's Cappuccino Cupcakes recipe as a starting point and adapted it somewhat. This is how I did it:
- Creamed 125g unsalted butter with 125g soft brown sugar
- Ground seeds from 8 cardamom pods in a pestle & mortar then beat into butter mixture with grated zest of 1 orange.
- Beat in 2 large eggs (had run out of duck eggs) one after the other.
- Sieved in 125g flour (1/2 wholemeal, 1/2 gluten free) with 2 tsp baking powder and 1 tbsp cocoa powder.
- Mixed in 3 tbsp milk.
- Divided this between 12 cupcake cases and baked at 180C in a preheated oven for 18 mins.
- Melted 100g milk chocolate (35%) and allowed to cool slightly.
- Creamed 75g butter with 75g icing sugar.
- Mixed in chocolate and 1 tbsp orange liqueur.
- Iced the cooled cupcakes and decorated with a Minstrel.
As I'd hoped the flavours here worked really well together. The texture was good although not quite as light as the chilli cupcakes. The icing was so good I could have eaten the whole bowl. Luckily for those concerned, I managed to restrain myself.
Hmmm - the jury is still out for me on the whole chocolate and cardamom flavour combo. I had a white choc and cardamom cheesecake at one of my fave bars / places to eat and it didn't rock my world while everything else I have tried from there has. Might have to try these to see if it was just the cheesecake ....
ReplyDeleteI have to say cardamom in cheesecake doesn't sound wonderful. The cupcakes proved popular, so might be worth trying it with a darker chocolate? Try the milk chocolate & cardamom 100g bar from M&S - I defy you not to like that!
ReplyDeleteChocolate, orange and cardamom? Yum!
ReplyDeleteLove this combination, I was thinking about cooking a cardamom, coffee and chocolate cake that I spotted in the October issue of Olive for our Halloween party this weekend, the cupcakes are also tempting. Can you have too much chocolate cake?? What a silly question!
ReplyDeleteCan you have too much chocolate cake? It depends on how good the chocolate cake is!
ReplyDeleteI just came across this one. I just made some cardamon and clementine shortbead which we all really liked but was worried about using cardamon as this is a first for me. As they liked it perhaps it's cupcakes next then.
ReplyDeleteCakeboule - I think with cardamom, it just depends how much you use. It does go very well with orange. It's the same combination I used in the nonnettes recently. I really like it.
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