I must make a confession. I got disorientated, I remembered we were making a double chocolate cupcake this week and tackled the chocolate- chocolate chunk muffins (on page 19). The boys wanted cake and my computer was in the other room. Anyway, I will save that story for another post. I realised on Monday that Dorie had two double choc recipes and so tackled this today.
It was really interesting reading the comments in the forum of the TWD about some dry cake experiences with this recipe. I went ahead and made the recipe as directed. What it did draw my attention to is all of Dories recipes use All Purpose BLEACHED flours.
Bleached flour is not available in Australia. I have followed with great interest discussions on Rose Levy Beranbaums site about the importance of using bleached flour when it is called for and a rather intrepid English reader of Rose’s- Kate who followed up and did all sorts of experiments involving micro-waved flour. So I used plain flour (130g) and micro-waved it for a 90 sec burst followed by a stir and a 60 sec burst. This is what I do when I try to replicate cake flour.
This is a lovely thick batter (so much neater to portion out than the devils food cake cupcakes I made over the weekend). I set the timer at 15 minutes and then checked at three minute intervals. They needed 21 minutes in my oven.
I got a fair rise out of these given the scant amount of chemical leavening. All about the creaming of the butter/sugar/egg.
The glaze came together easily. I used my immersion blender. I could feel it trying to seize up but the stick mixer is just so good with chocolate mixtures.
My cupcakes were not dry but they do crumble easily, you can see a fudgey layer just under the crust. If I had left them in the oven even a couple minutes more I think they would have really dried out.
There was such interesting discussion about this particular weeks bake. Go check out the TWD blogroll to see not only the pretty cupcakes but the baking science being considered.
12 responses so far ↓
Megan // October 28, 2008 at 6:23 am |
That was a very interesting experiment with the flour. I’ll have to try that sometime.
I also laughed about the recipe mix-up. I’ve done that too!!
Tammy // October 28, 2008 at 9:28 am |
I dont think we have bleached flour in NZ either. I found them a bit dry – but not inedibly so
Caitlin // October 28, 2008 at 10:52 am |
Huh, yours are really crackly on top – maybe because of the flour sub? Looks tasty though.
HoneyB // October 28, 2008 at 6:50 pm |
They look delicious to me!
Amanda // October 28, 2008 at 9:53 pm |
Your look delish! Interesting, I never realized, or never looked, that Dorie uses bleached flour for everything. Maybe that’s the problem with some of the recipes. I was pretty happy with mine though, they were delicious!! I’ve added you to my blogroll
chocolatechic // October 28, 2008 at 10:28 pm |
They look great.
I don’t use bleached flour.
Teanna // October 28, 2008 at 10:50 pm |
Love that fudge under the crust! And the recipe called for bleached flour? Ha! I didn’t even see it!
Maria // October 28, 2008 at 11:05 pm |
They look super yummy!!!
Christine // October 28, 2008 at 11:25 pm |
I like the flour experiment. Your cupcakes look delicious and the glaze came out perfect!
Lindsey (Cafe Johnsonia) // October 29, 2008 at 3:11 am |
They do look good. Mine weren’t dry, but crumbled easily, too. Great job!!!
peggy // October 29, 2008 at 6:24 am |
I must have missed the part about bleached flour. I just use whatever flour is in my pantry! It worked. But yours look fabulous! Love your photos too.
Barbara // November 1, 2008 at 3:14 am |
I visit Rose’s blog a lot too, and have been very interested in all the discussions about flour. As I’m in the US, I can get bleached flour and that’s what I used for this recipe. Glad your recipe worked out for you!
P.S. — you’re not the only one who made the chocolate chunk muffins by mistake! Amy Ruth at http://www.amyruthbakes.com did too.