Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Skor Bits Icing

Well its been a few days ... it must be time for another cupcake fix, right?  It was Bonnie's birthday this past week, so I asked her what kind of cupcakes she wanted me to make for her.  Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing.  How boring I thought. So I started making suggestions of how we could 'enhance' the frosting with some flavour!  After tossing around a few ideas we decided on adding some Skor bits.  My thought was that the Skor should be incorporated into the cake but Bonnie thought it would be good just added to the icing. So that's what we settled on.

On the day of her birthday we ordered a whack-load of Thai food from Siam Bistro on Wellington Street in Hintonburg.  We invited our dear friends Andrew and John over to help us eat the Thai food.  The food was delicious, and then for dessert, champagne and cupcakes.

For the chocolate cupcakes, I used a version of the recipe that consistently gets rated by bloggers and bakers as their favourite 'moist' chocolatey cake.   And I agree, the cupcakes are definitely moist and chocolately.  And the recipe is really simple - literally dump all the ingredients together and mix!  When I tasted them after they were baked, they totally brought back memories of my childhood.  I am sure that this is my most favourite chocolate cake that I loved as a kid, that my mom always made for me for my birthday.  Here is the recipe that I used.

Chocolate Cupcakes

1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar (not packed)
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup good quality cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350*F.  Fill muffin pans with liners.
Sift dry ingredients together into mixing bowl.  Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla.  Beat with a mixer for about two minutes, occasionally scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula.
Add the boiling water and beat, just until blended.  Beware!  This mixture is RUNNY!
Pour or ladle into paper lined muffin tins.  Bake for 20-25 minutes until the centre of the cupcakes spring back when touched.

Kitchen porn shot:
My boisenberry KitchenAid mixer.  Loves it!!!!

To be honest, I was really hoping that I wouldn't love this recipe.  Frankly, the batter was so runny it is messy to work with.  It was dripping all over the counter and cupcake pans, by the time I got the cupcakes filled, there was as much batter all over the place as in the cupcake papers.  But, damn it, it was really really good.

Yes, the cake really is that dark chocolatey colour.  I had the idea to incorporate the Skor bits by sprinkling them on the hot from the oven cakes, which ... in theory should have been delicious.  But it just didn't work out the way I envisioned it.  There were Skor bits all over the counter, the board, the floor (the dogs helped clean that up).  It was a mess and they didn't seem to be melting enough to stick to the cake.  So I gave up after trying it on a few.

Now that they are cool, time for the icing.  I just used the regular butter cream icing recipe.

Vanilla Butter Cream

3/4 cup butter

3 - 4 cups icing sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup milk

Then I added about 1/3 of a bag of Skor bits and mixed everything well.  Adjust with more or less icing sugar to attain the desired consistency.

So, in the theory that you should learn something new everyday ... here's what I learned.  When you put Skor bits in icing and then try to pipe it onto cupcakes, chunks are bound to get stuck in the nozzle.  I wanted to do a flower pattern but even with the largest nozzle, the Skor still got stuck.  I was able to use the round tip, but the piping job was petty uneven and erratic as a trapped Skor bit periodically came bursting through and leaving a blob of icing in its wake!

As a finishing touch, I sprinkled some more Skor bits on top of the icing.  All in all, they were pretty good.  The Skor bits lost their crunchiness once they were added to the icing and as they got softer, they became more buttery so the icing was much more buttery in flavour than carmel or sweet.

They did look nice on this beautiful cake stand that my friend Stephanie gave me for my birthday 3 years ago.  It is from the Fairmont Empress Hotel in Victoria, B.C. and is the rose garden pattern.  I don't use it often but I absolutely love it and am excited when I have an occasion to pull it out and use it.