Less guilt chocolate cupcakes (no eggs, less sugar)

This is one good stuff, I kid you not. From the title itself, no eggs and less sugar, the recipe and procedure is easy- peasy. The reason why I didn’t use egg is I ran out of eggs so I was looking for a recipe replacement in the web and one thing in common about no eggs recipe, is they used VINEGAR. Yep, you read that right, vinegar. And it’s quite interesting so I gave it a go.

I would say that missing an ingredient, I expected that this won’t get to the blog. But the finish product was so moist and fluffy, melts in your mouth kind of chocolate goodness– which I really need right now because of my pregnancy hormones that make me crazy.

So as you know (if you read my blog foodie category most of the time), usually I make use of the ingredients that are readily available in my pantry. In the recipes I’ve checked they’ve used all purpose flour or plain flour. But instead, I used self raising flour because I ran out of plain flour for a repeat cinnamon rolls bake for a couple of friends who had dinner with us. Even if I used a self raising flour, I am quite satisfied how it it turned out. It didn’t rose up to like a muffin would so I am very happy. But to be on the safe side, you can use plain flour so we can be sure that it won’t look like a muffin. I based my recipe from simply recipes and made few alterations. I am also quite relieved that I picked this organic icing sugar because it is unrefined and gluten free. My natural unsweetened organic cocoa also came from one of my favorite stores here in central coast which mostly are organic, pure products and environment friendly. Checkout: The Source Bulk Foods, they have one here in Central Coast at Erina (Certainly not an endorser!).

Ingredients:

Cupcakes:

• 1 1/2 cups plain flour (I used self raising flour because that’s what’s within reach :D)
• 1/4 cup  natural unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 cup granulated sweetener (I used natvia)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt (use fine salt, not rock salt)
• 1 cup BREWED coffee or instant black coffee dissolved in 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil ( I ran out of olive oil so I used 1/4 olive oil and 2 tbsp of softened olive butter)

Frosting:

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/3 cup  natural unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 powdered sugar (I used organic icing sugar, gluten free, almost less guilt)
• 3 tablespoons milk (I used lactose free) 
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Materials:

cupcake/ muffin pan

cupcake liners

2 mixing bowl

measuring cups and spoons

spatula

piping bag or ziplock bag (to cut a small hole in one corner)

oil spray (I use coconut oil spray)

 

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 175ºC
2. Prepare cupcake pan with cupcake liner and spray with oil
3. Mix all dry ingredients first: Sift the flour, cocoa powder, granulated sugar, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl
4. Then on a measuring jug mix all the wet ingredients: the coffee, olive oil, vinegar, vanilla extract. Make sure that before pouring it to the dry, all the wet ingredients are homogenous.
5. Pour the wet ingredients, slowly into the dry ingredients. Mix well until there are no more clumps. The batter should thick but wet.
6. Transfer to a measuring jug for a neat pour
7. Pour the batter slowly until 1/2 of the cupcake liner (for a self raising flour batter). If you used a plain flour fill it until 2/3 up.
8. Bake for 20 minutes and make sure that the rack is in the middle of the oven to avoid over cooking.
9. Prepare the frosting: melt the butter. once melted, place it on a mixing bowl and add the cocoa powder and half of the icing sugar.
10. Mix altogether and add the 1 1/2 tbsp of milk. Mix until lesser tugging.
11. Add the other half of the icing sugar and the remaining milk and vanilla extract.
12. The icing mixture should be thick and no clumps.
13. Transfer to a piping bag and refrigerate while waiting for the cupcakes to bake.
14. Once the cupcakes are baked, cool it at room temperature for 15-30 minutes.
15. Once cooled, may put the icing on top– need not to be perfect!
16. Share and enjoy!

I really am not an expert in curating a well crafted icing top. But I find it delectable in it’a messy state so it’s still a win for me 😀 Besides, if it’s chocolate, whatever it looks like I am still going to devour it. And because I’m not feeling lazy, and trying to beat my hormone induced antenatal blues, I made a step by step (messy) video! Check it out:

Time consumed:

15 minutes preparation

20 minutes baking

Serves: 8-18 cups