IT'S CHOCOLATE ORANGE CUPCAKES FOR CHRISTMAS THIS TIME!

"Let's dance and sing and make good cheer,

For Christmas comes but once a year."

Sir George Alexander Macfarren

CHOCOLATE ORANGE CUPCAKES

Festive food for Christmas!

In a span of 2 days I baked over a 100 cupcakes & iced them as well. The first 80 were vanilla cupcakes, the ones for the playschool Christmas party. These last batch I had to do a little different for my own experimentation & therapeutic pleasure! The flavours of chocolate & orange complement each other beautifully. I love the way the Christmassy ones turned out with the red, white & green; & also the pink 'n' purple 'very girly ones'. For the chocolate stars & flowers, I drizzled the stars, flowers, zigzags etc onto butter paper, & peeled them off gently once they were set. These can be made in advance and stored in an airtight box in a cool place. Fix them onto the top of the cupcake with a little melted chocolate. Makes the cupcakes look so good & 'dressed up'.

Ingredients:

Flour - 2 cups
Baking powder - 2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Butter - 1/2 cup
Sugar - 1 1/4 cup
Eggs - 2
Vanilla Essence / extract - 1 tsp
Milk - 1 cup
Baking Chocolate - 50gms / melted with 1 tsp of cream
Zest of 1 orange

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Line or grease the muffin pans.
• Sift flour + baking powder + salt 3 times. Keep aside.
• Cream butter + sugar well.
• Add vanilla + eggs and beat well.
• On low speed, beat in flour mix + milk alternatively in 3 lots.
• Mix in the melted chocolate.
• Fill muffin cases to 3/4th depth, and bake for 20-25 minutes till done.
• Remove from muffin pan immediately & cool on racks.
• For the icing, drizzle melted chocolate over the tops, sprinkle immediately with slivered pistachios, Christmas sprinkles, silver dragees etc.
• Makes approximately 18 muffins.
  Note: For the 2nd lot , if you make 6 muffins in a 12 pan tin, fill a little water in each of the empty cases to ensure even baking.

Served with slices of freshly baked moist & delicious chocolate cake which has whole-wheat flour too!

With the same batch I iced a few differently to gift to a friend of my daughters' where all the girls had gone to spend the day. They disappeared before I could even say something...

This post is for Bindiya at 'In Love With Food' who is hosting a delicious chocolate event ''MY FAV THINGS" ... & celebrating her wedding anniversary today! All the best Bindiya...hope your day was great!!