Holly's 101 Cuppycake Challenge: #17 Chocolate Chunk Cupcakes

I had an opportunity last weekend to make up a few batches of cupcakes for a friend's harvest party. So I thought it would be fun to try another cookie inspired recipe out of my Martha Stewart cookbook. The top of this cupcake in the book looked exactly like a chocolate chip cookie. Too bad mine looked nothing like the picture. Actually the whole thing was kind of disastrous but I stuck it out. It's definitely a learning experience! So here's the picture that's in the cookbook and later you'll see mine and I bet your going to scratch your head and wonder what the heck I did!!

This was what mine should have looked like...

Chocolate Chunk Cupcakes (courtesy of Martha Stewart)
I ended up making two batches of these trying to figure out what went wrong and both turned out looking like they had a bunch of air bubbles on the top.

The Goods

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed light-brown sugar

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/3 cup whole milk

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, cut into 1/2-inch chunks (i also added mini chocolate chips)

The How To

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 standard 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners; set aside. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.

Put butter and sugars into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and mix on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy.

my butter and sugar

Mix in eggs, 1 at a time, and vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in 2 batches, alternating with the milk. Stir in chocolate chunks with a rubber spatula.

If you look closely you can see all the yummy vanilla paste :)

At this point I knew something wasn't right the batter had an odd texture to it. When I made this the second time it looked exactly the same so I'm not sure what went wrong...

Spoon 1/4 cup batter into each muffin cup.

well at least it tasted good!!!

Bake until pale golden and a cake tester inserted into centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer cupcakes to wire racks; let cool completely.

So as you can see these look nothing like Martha's picture. All the chocolate sank to the bottom and the tops looked really weird. If anyone know what I did wrong please let me know!!!

Since the cupcakes turned out kinda ugly I decided to cover them with dark chocolate frosting and mini chocolate chip cookies that I made the night before.

They ended up being the perfect size for the tops of the cupcakes.

Dark Chocolate Frosting

This stuff was amazing!!!

The Goods

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoon boiling water

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted

Pinch of salt

1 pound semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled

The How To

Combine cocoa and the boiling water, stirring until cocoa has dissolved. Not completely paying attention to the recipe, I only put in 2 tablespoons of hot water in with the cocoa powder and started doing other things.Then coming back to the chocolate I realized it had not dissolved, so I added more water to it, but it never completely dissolved so i just ended up picked the chunks out. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter, confectioners' sugar, and salt until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to low. Add melted and cooled chocolate, beating until combined and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in the cocoa mixture. So mine probably wasn't as rich due to the chunk disaster, but I was still really really good.