Perfect chocolate cupcakes

It's my lovely friend Jo's 40th birthday on Saturday.  It's a birthday breakfast for all the family - what a perfect way to celebrate.  The weather is gorgeous in the morning now, so it will be a barbeque, a gorgeous passion fruit juice served in big jugs and a mass of pork products and yummy smoked salmon that were squeezed into her sister's suitcase between London and Dubai! There's sure to be great coffee too and as breakfast merges into brunch and into lunch there are bound to be a few bubbles involved and some clinking glasses.  I am on cupcakes - and there I am happy.  For me, there is nothing lovelier than creating a tray, a tower or a table packed with perfectly formed mini cakes.

Which icing do I use for my cupcakes?

For years I opted for a flat icing studded with sprinkles, dolly mixtures, tiny sugar flowers - but recently I have fallen in love with the look and taste of something more like a rich buttercream, which I can then pipe onto the top.

In terms of making life easy, the choice of topping is a close call.......  Flat icing needs to be just the right consistency to stop it from dribbling down the sides and the cake needs to have stopped rising shy of the top of the case - for the same reason.  A piped crowning glory can hide a multitude of cake sins, but boy it uses SO much icing.  The other thing to consider is that little children often lick off the icing leaving the cake behind.  Early on I accepted that this is not at all a criticism of the cake and simply a childhood phase ..... so if we're going to embrace it, why not give the cheeky monkeys more icing to enjoy!

If you're baking for a more mature palate and a rich, glossy ganache is more your thing then I've written all about how to create that here.

But I'm currently favouring a recipe based on Nigella's All-Purpose Chocolate Icing from How To Be A Domestic Goddess (it's detailed in the recipe below).  It's a real winner and although it needs to be chilled in the fridge for a while before using, it is SO worth the wait.

I make lots of cupcakes, so how do I do it quickly so that it remains a pleasure and not a chore?

Firstly, I love my handheld electric mixer.

That may seem very outdated in these times of highly desirable, pastel-coloured Kitchen Aids - but I will remain loyal to my old friend. It's not even a fancy one - probably bottom to mid-range - and for me, it performs like a star.  I love the fact that I can weigh everything straight into the bowl; I love that I can hold the mixer and feel how the mixture is developing; I love that I can wrap it up into a small ball when I have finished and hide it away in a small corner of the cupboard.  Years ago, I made Christmas cakes - lots of Christmas cakes .... 1.5 metric tonnes, in fact, in our last year of production - and my handheld electric mixer was the hero of the day.  I would line up 12 large mixing bowls along the worktop and move from one to the next creaming and mixing.  Perfect job.  But back to cupcakes.....

Do these cupcakes freeze?

When I've got lots to make, I will often make them and open freeze them - and by that, I mean laid in a single layer on a baking tray in the freezer and then stored in a bag or box when they are fully frozen.  I would say that they lose 10% of their loveliness in the freezer, but when time is short, that's nothing between friends.

How do I measure out the cake mixture into the cases?

Find your 'spoon of choice' for measuring the mixture into the cases.  Mine is an American teaspoon - or rather it is the 'teaspoon' from a set of cutlery that I bought from Pottery Barn in Boston many, many years ago - and for me, it does the trick.  Experiment; try things out and you will find a size that works for you and makes the job quicker.

And so to the recipe for these chocolate cupcakes -

It's a family recipe, dating back oooh probably 40 years plus.  It's a sponge cake so it's not going to vary too much from any you've used before but it has a few little family tweaks that work for me and to make it truly vintage, it must of course be given in ounces - now I'm showing my age for sure.

This is the ONLY recipe where I ever use margarine.  Generally, I have pretty robust views on the evils of margarine - it is wrong, wrong, wrong - but, for cupcakes, it is right, right, right.  It makes a very light cake but best of all ...... you can make the cakes with the margarine straight out of the fridge - no hanging around required.

For which occasions do I bake these chocolate cupcakes?

This is definitely, my go-to cake recipe. It's what I bake for taking cakes into school; for the cake stall at the Spring Fayre and I will often also stick a candle on the top for a birthday celebration. They are quick, easy, delicious, cute and always go down a storm.

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