Giant Chocolate Cupcake Recipe

WHAT’S BETTER THAN A CHOCOLATE CUPCAKE?
A GIANT CHOCOLATE CUPCAKE!

Recipe and blog post courtesy of http://www.saladvsfood.wordpress.com

Cupcakes are still a good old favourite for most of us, even though the trend of the cupcake seems to be on the descent. I still love a good cupcake but what’s better than a cupcake? A GIANT one of course! This week I battled through sickness (I felt like death) to make this birthday cupcake for one of my chocolate loving friends. So I dragged myself out of bed, pulled out a bunch of recipes to try and decide what kind of cake I was going to make, spent hours (like 2 hours) trying to decide before giving into my giant cupcake pan staring at me in the cupboard because I haven’t used it enough! Even when I was baking it, I still wasn’t really sure how I was going to go about decorating it but turns out sometimes keeping it cute and simple is the most effective!

To make this giant cupcake I used a giant cupcake pan from Bakers Secret

Ingredients:
Cake:
– 225g unsalted butter, room temperature
– 410g caster sugar
– 4 eggs
– 90g self-raising flour (sifted)
– 280g plain flour (sifted)
– 90g Cocoa power (sifted)
– 1.5 tsp bicarb soda
– 300ml milk
– 3 tbsp vinegar

Ganache:
To sandwich the top and bottom together
– 200g dark cooking chocolate
– ¼ cup cream

Chocolate buttercream:
– 215g unsalted butter, room temperature
– 370g icing sugar
–  60g cocoa powder
– Sprinkles to decorate

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 140°C (fan forced). I used a lower temperature for this cake to avoid a getting hard crust. Prepare your pan by greasing the pan with spray oil or butter and place a circle of baking paper in the bottom of the base section. It’s really important to grease this pan very well because of its irregular shape.
2. Measure the milk into a measuring jug and then mix in the vinegar and set aside.
3. Beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. It is important that you complete this step correctly so you have enough volume for the mixture.
4. One at a time, beat the eggs in slowly, ensuring that after each addition you beat it until the mixture is fluffy again.
5. Beat in the flours, cocoa powder, bicarb and milk into the mixture. Alternate between the dry ingredients and milk when beating it in. Mix until everything is evenly incorporated and you should have a nice smooth chocolate mixture.
6. Begin filling your pan by filling the top section. Fill the top section until the mixture is roughly a few centimetres from the rim. Then fill your bottom section with the remaining mixture.
7. Bake for 1 hour & 20 minutes. The pan may not fit in your oven very well, mine only fits at a certain angle! Check the cakes regularly by inserting a skewer into the centre. You may find that the top half bakes faster than the bottom and that you may need to bake the cakes longer if the bottom half isn’t fully ready. I often like to have the bottom half of this cake a bit gooey in the centre because gooey cake is yummy, right?!
8. While the cake is in the oven you can begin to make the ganache. Place the chocolate and cream in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir the chocolate and cream together until smooth and then remove the bowl from the heat. Set the bowl aside and allow to cool at room temperature to allow the ganache to thicken.
9. Once you take the cake out of the oven, let it cool in the pan for a half hour. After cooling, turn the cakes over onto a cooling rack. Trim the top of the bottom cake and the bottom of the cake top so they are nice and even.
10. To make the chocolate buttercream, start by beating the butter with an electric mixer. Once the butter starts to become pale gradually beat in the icing sugar and cocoa until it is fluffy and has lots of volume.

Assemble:

1. Assemble the cake by placing the bottom half of the cake on a plate or board. Spread the cooled ganache on top of the bottom half evenly. Then carefully place the top half on top of the ganache, ensuring that the cupcake is standing as upright as possible.
2. Fit a star nozzle onto a piping bag and then fill with chocolate buttercream. Pipe rosettes onto the cupcake top and fill the gaps where needed. Pipe all the way around where the top and bottom cake to make a collar. To finish off, pipe around the bottom of the cake and then shake the rainbow sprinkles on top. TA-DA!

Hope you enjoy this delicious and super fun giant cupcake! Have a great week! Xx

Recipe and blog post courtesy of Salad vs Food
Website: http://www.saladvsfood.wordpress.com
Instagram: @salad_vs_food