Chocolate Cupcakes

After a busy weekend, baking 4 different flavoured loaves for a charity event for the benefit of the 1 Rifles Battalion. All the money raised goes into their private fund to help rehabilitate injured soldiers and also support those families of the fallen heroes too. For the event and also my older brother's graduation, we had to travel to Bristol on Friday until Saturday evening so I wasn't up for much baking on Sunday. As it happened I didn't have all the ingredients needed to make the cupcakes so had to delay them for another day so I could pop to the shops.

After recuperating and the trip to the shops I started on my cheeky recipe. This is one I had made dozens of times over the years since the first Hummingbird bakery cook book came out, but since it is in the second cook book I have to make it as part of the challenge and gives my a bit of a rest making something so simple. Not going to be a long entry because of this and other reason, as you will read soon.

I made up the chocolate cupcake batter mix, all went smoothly and it tasted amazing, forgot how yummy just plain uncomplicated cupcakes were, and I couldn't resist 'testing' the mixture a few times to make sure it was okay, as any good cook knows to do.

Having mixed everything well I spooned it into the cases. Had 16 cases ready and got almost 1 and a half tablespoons of batter into each. This seemed like a good amount and they were popped into the oven for 19 minutes initially. When I got them out to check when the timer went off, I realised things hadn't quite gone to plan...there was too much batter in each case and they had overflowed over the top of the casing and tray and were literally all joined together. They also hadn't cooked properly and ended up going back into the oven for about 9 minutes more. I did have a little laugh at how badly they had turned out, especially with a recipe I have made numerous times and is so simple.

My plan was to try and trim the excess sponge off and then ice them. Unfortunately they were all joined together and as I tried to disengage them from each other they just torn off away from the tin, leaving majority behind and also caused the sides of the cupcake to peel off the casings too. They were an absolute mess and there was no chance they could be salvaged let alone iced so I am just going to admit defeat and say this attempt was a complete failure. Trust me, you will agree when you see the picture. Time to move on and focus on the next baking days..no point crying over ruined cupcakes! And it didn't stop me eating them any way, good cake is good cake regardless of its looks!