Spusht: Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes (using butter) with Buttercream Frosting

Cupcakes are the in-thing these days; becoming much more popular than cakes. People are preferring the small and pretty cupcake portions, individually decorated with different frosting or fondant toppers - for birthdays, baby showers, graduation parties, you name it. And chocolate cupcakes, who doesn't love them?!

Good things come in small packages, a friend used to say. So do these little cakes, these cupcakes.

Eggless chocolate cupcakes can basically be made in various ways. For fats and moistness, you can use butter or oil - you can use the one-bowl-dump-in method with oil, or the creaming method with butter. For sweetness, you can use brown sugar, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, honey, and many more things. For the liquid factor, you can use plain milk, vegan milk (soy, almond, etc), water, orange juice, and so on. For variety in flavor, you can add different extracts, liqueur, and fillings. There are so many options.

According to me, a chocolate cupcake recipe is not limited to a certain measurement or procedure - although, it is imperative you first understand the science and concept behind the ingredients and proportions in a recipe. There are butter-less, flour-less, sugar-less cupcake recipes out there too, if that's your thing.

Recipe for Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes (using butter)
yields: 12 standard cupcakes

1¼ cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

½ cup (1 stick, 4 oz, 113 gm) unsalted butter, room temperature

½ cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp vinegar (plain, or apple cider, or flavored)

½ cup - ¾ cup milk (to adjust batter consistency)

0. Line a 12-cavity cupcake pan with paper liners. Prepping beforehand saves rush later. Preheat oven to 350F when you are ready.

1. Sift flour + cocoa powder + baking soda + salt in a medium bowl, keep aside.

2. In a large bowl, beat butter + sugar for 2 minutes (by hand) or 1 minute (by hand mixer) until pale in color. Add vanilla extract + vinegar, beat. This mixture can be kept aside for 10 minutes if you need time, but once you mix the dry ingredients that have baking soda, and then add milk to the vinegar, they start to react and that's when you cannot leave the batter out for too long.

3. In the butter-sugar bowl, add half of the sifted dry ingredients and half the milk, mix until combined, ensure no lumps. Add remaining dry mixture, mix, and add just enough milk until it forms a dropping, ribbony batter. You do not want to add all of the milk at the beginning and end up with a runny batter.

4. Fill cupcake pan with batter reaching about 2/3 of the liner to get a nice little dome on your cupcake. Bake for 16-20 minutes at 350F, or until toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean (with may be just a couple of crumbs clinging). Ovens are different, so check yours at 16 minutes first and then keep an eye.

5. Remove pan from oven onto the cooling rack, leave on it for 10 minutes, then transfer all the cupcakes onto the rack and leave alone until completely cooled down.

My chocolate cupcake recipe will give you slightly less sweet cupcakes than normal. I like to keep the sugar moderate in the cupcake, especially when I know there will be a sweet frosting on cupcake that will balance it out. But feel free to increase the sugar quantity if you wish.

You can now decorate these eggless chocolate cupcakes with your favorite frosting, or simply sprinkle powdered sugar on top and have them with a glass of milk. Make these cupcakes today, and tell me how you like them.