30 day blog love affair, day 18

Cold. Rain. Snowflakes mixed in with the rain. Yep, time for more cupcakes. For Valentine's day Matthias asked for chocolate cupcakes. After reading oodles of chocolate cake recipes and reading everything that The New Best Recipe had to say about chocolate cake, I used the recipe printed on the Trader Joe's cocoa powder. I thought it was pretty good. A couple weeks ago Matthias asked me to make more cupcakes. I had just read this post on Rebekka Seale's blog and couldn't help but be swayed by those gorgeous photos and her gushing description of that cake. Oooh, were those cupcakes delicious! The recipe is found here on the Posie Gets Cozy blog. To make just over a dozen cupcakes I made half the recipe (note: I used 2 eggs... the recipe calls for 3. What I could have done was beat the 3 eggs, use half and freeze the rest, but I didn't think of it at the time. Using 2 worked fine).

As for frosting, I used Rich Vanilla Buttercream Frosting in The New Best Recipe. In the past I'd shied away from recipes that used eggs and required a bit of cooking, but once I tried this one... delicious. Not exactly healthy, though. LOTS of butter. And those eggs. And sugar. But it's worth it. Worth the calories and worth having to whisk over a pot of boiling water. I made 1/4 the recipe the first time I made the cupcakes but this time I made 1/2. It's an easy recipe to divide. This is 1/2:

2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch salt
2 sticks butter at room temperature, cut into pieces

• Combine the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Place the bowl over a pan of simmering water (don't let the bottom of the bowl touch the water). Whisk gently but constantly until the mixture is thin and foamy and 160 degrees.
• Beat the egg mixture at medium-high until light, airy and cooled to room temperature (about 5 minutes). Reduce speed to medium and add the butter a piece at a time. (Part-way through the butter-adding process you may find that the frosting looks curdled. After all the butter is added it will smooth out). Once all the butter is added, increase the speed to high and beat 1 minute or so until light, fluffy and thoroughly combined.

You'll have best results using the frosting at room temperature and frosting the cupcakes when they are thoroughly cooled.