Cupcakes.

I just happen not to like cupcakes.
Now before you start hurling expletives at me, just pause a bit while I explain.
As a child, my mum would always pack a white bread and jam (or white bread and salami) sandwich in a lunch box, which I would then drag to school and eat contentedly, while my friends feasted on oily Indian curries and saffron rice, soggy slimy wheezy fruits, luchi and aloo dum and the eternal favourite, Maggi noodles.
I used to hate the fruits. They were always cut and packed tightly into lunch boxes. Four hours later they would emerge soggy and discoloured and thoroughly embarassed to be seen.
However, sandwiches were my favourite. I loved what my mum gave me - the simpler the better. And I went through twelve years of school with them, before I said "Bollocks."
It was sudden and almost out of the blue, but I had started to hate the sound, sight and smell of anything bread, cake, muffin, cupcake, sponge, pie, crust...you get the idea. Call me weird, its been seven years and I would still cringe at the idea of a Christmas plum pudding or a bagel extraordinaire for breakfast. I have softened though considerably over the years and now I won't say a blind 'no' to a piece of chocolate cake smothered in chocolate and I wouldn't say no to iced cupcakes. Iced, please.
And since I've taken up baking lately (more like experimenting with flour, eggs and butter for the last two months), I've been trying to get my cupcakes right. I'm not going to lie to you, I would give up those suckers for a bowl of ice-cream anytime.
Ok, I'm ready for those expletives now. Give it your best shot.

Coffee cupcakes with white chocolate and sour cream icing.



I made these for my friends, about a fortnight back.

Coffee cupcakes:
Pre-heat a fan-assisted oven to 170 C. Prepare cupcake tins with paper holders.
Sift in 1 and a half cups of self-rising flour and 1 and half cups of castor sugar in a mixing bowl. Make some espresso by stirring in a tablespoon of instant coffee powder in 2 tablespoons of boiling water. Add this espresso along with 3 eggs, 1 and a half cups of softened salted butter, one-fourth cup of boiling water and half a cup of sour cream, to the flour-sugar mixture. Stir to combine well - there shouldn't be any big lumps of flour and the batter should be runny and lava-like. Divide the batter evenly between the cupcake holders by filling them two-thirds of the way. I got about 18 cupcakes out of the amount of batter that I had. If there's leftover batter, put it in a ziplock bag and freeze it for later. Pop the tin into the oven and bake at 170 C for ten minutes. Reduce heat to 150 C and bake for a further 10-12 minutes, till a cake needle run through the middle of a cupcake comes out clean. Take it out of the oven and cool.

White chocolate and sour cream icing:
Melt 100gms of chopped white chocolate with 100gms of unsalted butter in a double boiler (or microwave) and rest to cool a bit. Meanwhile whip 125ml of sour cream and 3 tablespoons of castor sugar in a bowl till slightly fluffy (not whipped cream consistency though). Add the chocolate-butter into the cream and combine well. Try not to over mix the icing - it will just turn runny and become difficult to work with. Fill a pastry bag with this mixture and ice the cooled cupcakes. Serve.