Chocolate Cupcakes, Chocolate Cake and Crossover!
Wow, that's alot of "C's!" It's that time of year, Scout Crossover, Blue and Gold Banquet, Pancake breakfasts for fundraisers, etc.!
My three boys are all scouts and so this time of year gets busy for us. We have two in a Troop and 1 still in the Pack. If you aren't familiar with scouts, there are elementary age (Pack, cub scouts, dens, etc.) and then middle and high school (Troop, scouts, patrols, etc.). There is so much lingo to keep straight.
Anyway, for my older boys I made their cakes and all cupcakes. Our Pack combines Crossover with "Blue and Gold," with is basically the birthday of scouts and a big celebration.
I have included my chocolate cake recipe which I use whenever I need a chocolate cake below as well as my quick, easy cupcake recipe (HERE). Yep, you guess it... it's a bit healthier and it's just the easiest recipe I have found. I needed easy when I knew I had to make 100 cupcakes!
The pictures are from the crossover a year ago (2022), but we are getting ready for this years and I may or may not be making 100 cupcakes again!
OK, enough of all of that, let's get baking.
Ingredients for Chocolate Cake:
DRY
- 2 cups flour (sometimes I use 1/2 cup whole wheat and 1 1/2 cup white, or even half of each)
- 3/4 cupcocoa
- 2 cups sugar (you can definitely add less like 1 1/2 cups and still be really sweet!)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
WET
- 1 cup milk (whole, skim, almond, coconut, buttermilk, etc.)
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil (to cut more fat you can use 1/4 cup applesauce and then the rest oil).
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup boiling water (for a richer taste, use 1 cup hot coffee)
I've used coffee when I make this for adults and it's a HUGE hit, but does add a bit of caffeine in addition to the already caffeinated cocoa, so if it's for kids just use water!
Buttercream frosting (recipe HERE)
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350oF.
- Prepare 2 - 9 inch baking pans. You can either use some shortening or butter and sprinkle flour or an oil spray. **Note that oil sprays can alter the color of your pans..
- In a bowl, measure all dry ingredients.
- Add the wet ingredients except the hot water.
- Stir until smooth.
- Then add the hot water. The batter will be super runny, but that's what it's supposed to look like!
- Fill each pan with 1/2 of the batter.
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean with you insert into the middle of the cake.
- Allow to cool in the pan for a minute or two and then remove to a cooling rack.
- Once completely cool, you can frost with your favorite icing. My favorite is chocolate buttercream. If it's for my husband's birthday, his favorite is GERMAN CHOCOLATE CAKE!
**Extra Tip: I never have enough time to bake the cake and cool and ice all in the same day! So, I bake the cake days in advance and then once cool, I wrap in plastic wrap and freeze until I need it! The day I plan to ice, I get everything ready and while I make the icing, I take the cakes out of the freezer. By the time I'm ready, it's SO easy to cut the cake and ice it with minimal crumbs.
Something to note with this tip is that if it's the summer and it's hot, you may notice the icing start to have little water beads from the cake thawing. This has only happened to me once because I leave the cakes in our basement once I'm done in summer months. So, just keep that in mind!
- Get whatever you will be serving the cake on. The pic below was on cardboard b/c I was traveling it to a birthday party so it was going in a box.
- Put a small amount in the middle and put one of the cakes on it. Gently slice across the top to make it even with a bread knife.
- Then spread icing on the top. It doesn't need to be pretty because it's the inside layer. Just slather it on!
- Next put the other cake on top. I don't usually cut the top to be even because I don't want to waste that cake! But, if you have other decorations to put on it's much easier to have a flat surface.
- Once I got into making my own cakes, I invested in some simple icing tools. You have to get a large spreader. It's flat and smooth on all sides and makes the main icing much easier!
- I also got a box of various icing tips, which you can use to make different designs.
- Here's another picture of a finished cake. German Chocolate Cake! Find the recipe (HERE) for that cake.
Enjoy! Janel
Comments