I was excited all day about baking the chocolate cupcakes that Clara chose for TWD. I almost always look forward to baking, but I was downright giddy this time. With the variety of desserts I make lately, I guess I forgot that classic chocolate cake is my favorite!
Clara also suggested that we decorate these for Halloween. Ack…even simple cake decorating inevitably ends up as a huge mess for me, and I’m incapable of making things easy on myself. My six little cupcakes required four colors of frosting, one of which I didn’t actually have food coloring for (orange – I had to mix yellow and red) and another that involved chocolate (black – to give it a head start toward being dark enough). And I am far from an expert cake decorator, so my design options were limited to the few piping tips that I know how to use properly.
The cake itself was a little disappointing. I was getting worried that I would start to sound like a Negative Nellie when it comes to Dorie’s recipes, but this time it seems that a lot of people ended up with dry cupcakes that were a little too tame in chocolate flavor. Not that they were inedible or anything, but Dave and I didn’t need a side-by-side comparison to recognize that we like my other recipe a lot more. One nice thing, since it took a few days for us to eat all of them, was that these seemed to get denser and fudgier with time instead of tasting stale.
Whether I think it’s the best chocolate cake ever or not, I’m always happy to eat cupcakes. I made my favorite Easy Vanilla Buttercream instead of Dorie’s ganache frosting since I needed something that would pipe well. To check out Dorie’s recipe, go to Clara’s blog.
Yours look great!
I thought they needed more chocolate flavor.
What you talking about?? You have great piping skills. I love all your cupcakes but I think the mummy is my favorite. Thanks for baking with me this week!
Clara @ iheartfood4thought
You should really try the glaze for these…..I used semi-sweet rather than bittersweet and it was really fantastic! They look really cute, though!
Hey, I think your decorations are cute! I’d certainly enjoy them (just leave ’em in the fridge for a few days before, though 😉
Thanks for the link to the icing comparisons. Very informative! Though I LOVE choc cake with seven-minute icing!
I did like the glaze. It was pretty easy. Love your mummy cakes.
I found them to be dry too. I’ll have to give your other recipe a try. I think they look really cute. My favorite is the one decorated like a pumpkin 🙂
super cute–i love the mummies, especially! i agree, not that they weren’t good, but not the world’s best choco cake.
your piping skills are awesome! they look wonderful… esp the mummies 🙂 sorry the cakes were dry for you,though.
Those all look great, but I have to say, the mummy idea is genius! So cute! I will definitely have to try that one. Great job! Sorry they were dry – I know a lot of people had that problem. Mine weren’t dry at all, but I only baked them about 20 minutes and I weighed the flour (scant 4oz). Hope that helps if you ever decide to make these again!
Those are the cutest cupcakes! I LOVE the little mummies-so creative!
Darn! I can’t get the link to work for your recipe. 🙂
I loooooove the mummies! So cute. This recipe was nothing to write home about, but your cupcakes are adorable.
Your decorations are so cute! As always, wonderful photos too. I just want to crawl into my computer and grab one!
Love the different decorations. Isn’t it weird that so many of Dorie’s cakes taste better after a day or two?
Your cupcakes look great! The Mummy one is my favourite – so cute!
I totally agree..I thought it was only OK…not Dorie’s best….
Fellow Chocolate Fan,
Mary
Make room on the bandwagon…I agree the mummies are super cute!
Those are super cute!!!
Love your cupcakes, especially the mummies! Good for you on taking the time and effort to decorate these. I really wanted to color some frosting orange to decorate mine, but just lacked the motivation.
Oh your decorations are adorable! They are the cutest. I love the peek-a-boo eyes. Great job.
Sorry the cakes were disappointing. They look lovely!
I love how you decorated them, especially the mummy, very original! I agree with you though, the cakes themselves were disappointing, especially considering the effort that went into them.
These are very cute. The link for the other recipe doesn’t seem to work and I can’t seem to find it on your site. I’d be curious to see what it is.
Janet – Oops, I totally screwed up that link. It’s fixed now.
The cake was disappointing but those decorations are SO cute!
I love the mummies!
I love them, how festive!
I know what you mean. I think it’s hard to admit when recipes aren’t as good as you expect them to be. The only source I feel like I can truely trust is from Cook’s illustrated… although I’m interested in their dark chocolate cupcakes (which don’t require a mixer and it’s all done my hand) Honestly, I would rather pull out the mixer for a more superior product than have something that’s just easy to make (sometimes it’s just impossible to cream butter and sugar by hand!)
Btw.. I was a little disappointed with these cupcakes. They weren’t horrible, but they weren’t amazing either..