Devil's Food Cupcakes

Here is the recipe I used for Little Girls cupcakes and cake.  This is actually a cupcake recipe, so if you want to make a cake, just prepare your pans like you normally would, and plan on cooking much longer - check cakes at 30 minutes and guage from there.

Devil's Food Cupcakes

1 2/3 cups cake flour
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup sour cream
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
6 tablespoons melted unsalted butter, cooled

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Place the cake flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, sugar and salt into the bowl of your stand mixer.  Mix together on low, until well combined.
In a large measuring cup, mix together the buttermilk and sour cream.  In a separate bowl, mix together eggs and melted butter.
Alternately add sour cream mixture and egg mixture to dry ingredients with the mixer running on medium low until mixed.
Pour batter into muffin cups, only about 2/3 full and bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when tested.

Makes: 24-30 cupcakes.

Source: This recipe is from the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook.

 Chocolate Buttercream Icing

This is a very good chocolate buttercream, it is pretty easy to make, tastes great and pipes super well, but it has one weird ingredient – Ovaltine.  Don’t ask me why I even made it the first time, but now I have a big jar of Ovaltine in my pantry, so I keep making this icing, partly because it is so good, and also because, what the hell am I going to do with the Ovaltine otherwise.  But I like it so much, I will probably buy another jar when I finish this one.

1 1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 cups icing sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup milk
1 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup Ovaltine

Cream together butter, cocoa powder and salt. Butter mixture will be very thick. Turn off the mixer, scrape down the sides of the bowl and add powdered sugar.

Turn mixer on low and mix in powdered sugar while adding milk and vanilla extract. As the sugar incorporates, raise the speed of the mixer to beat the frosting. Beat until smooth.

In a 2 cup measuring glass, stir together heavy cream and Ovaltine. Turn mixer speed to medium and pour cream mixture into frosting in a slow, steady stream, until you’ve reached your desired consistency. You may not need the full amount of Ovaltine and cream.

The pink icing pictured was just a simple vanilla buttercream with pink food colouring - honestly it was nothing special, so I am not going to blog the recipe.