Roopa
My goal is to create a cupcake that has a very distinct chai flavour, but also a hint of chocolate. I suppose I should really call them chai chocolate cupcakes, since I want the chai to be the dominant flavour. My first attempt at this was not at all what I wanted; the cardamom and chocolate strangled out the rest of the flavours, and they were basically chocolate cardamom cupcakes.
I used a different type of cupcake base this time, decreased the cocoa and cardamom, and increased the ginger and clove. I don’t know that they’re perfect – I’m not really a big chai fan, so it’s hard for me to tell – but they are much better than the last version. I stuck some malted chocolate icing on them, really only because I had some left over in my fridge. It’s not a conventional pairing, but I guess we’ll see how it turned out!
UPDATE: My parents felt that they tasted sufficiently chai-like with just a hint of chocolate. Success!
UPDATE #2: Apparently the malted chocolate icing goes extremely well with this cupcake. Success again!
CHOCOLATE CHAI CUPCAKES
This made 10 medium sized cupcakes.
- 2/3 cup flour
- 1/8 tsp. baking soda
- ½ tsp. baking powder
- 1-½ tbsp. cocoa powder
- ¼ tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- ½ tsp. cardamom
- ½ tsp. clove
- ¼ tsp. (heaping) ginger
- ½ cup milk
- 1 tbsp. oil
- 1 tbsp. apple sauce
- ¼ cup plain yogurt
- 3/8 cup (¼ cup + 2 tbsp.) granulated sugar
- ½ tsp. vanilla
DIRECTIONS
- Preheat the oven to 350F and line cupcake tin.
- Sift flour and cocoa powder into your mixer, and add baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix at low speed.
- Mix together ground cinnamon, cardamom, clove, and ginger, and add to flour mixture. While I am lazy and have pre-ground clove at home, I ground up the cardamom pods and grated the ginger right before using them to keep the most flavour.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together milk, oil, apple sauce, yogurt, sugar, and vanilla.
- Combine wet and dry ingredients until just mixed. Don’t overmix.
- Fill liners 2/3 high. Bake for 12 – 20 minutes, depending on liner size.
While they did come out pretty good, I would try adding a little more baking soda (and possibly some apple cider vinegar) next time. They didn’t rise quite as much as I wanted them to, but still had a pretty good texture. In general, I’d be inclined to either leave these un-iced and sprinkle some icing sugar or cinnamon sugar on them. They have a sort of muffiny feel, and are actually reasonably healthy as far as cupcakes go. The only reason I even iced them was to use up the icing in my fridge!
