Brown Bear Cupcakes

It has been a while since I have actually eaten chocolate, 12 days precisely. Therefore I must eat vicariously through my blog. A few weeks ago I wanted to make a cupcake for the Dr Oetker Cupcake competition. I slightly mis-interpreted the aims of the competition but I am still happy with what I achieved, so this is what I achieved using Dr Oetker products only, btw this is not sponsored or anything like that (I wish, right?) but it needed to be mentioned since the parameters were relevant to the process.

Brown Bear Cupcakes

These might better be described as snack-cakes. They are half-way between a cupcake and a brownie and they were inspired by my sweet and wonderful bf who was completely obsessed with the Bears in Berlin (Dr Oetker german connection, get it?!) and you likes chocolate but also likes to be able to have more than one without feeling greedy. Therefore these are smaller than normal cupcakes and lighter than normal brownies. However they do have a little fudge center, kinda - remember the parameters but they turned out more like little fudge chips, that were amazing delicious!!

 

Brown Bear Cupcakes

125g Butter

150g Caster Sugar

50ml yoghurt

1 whole Egg

2 Egg Yolks

200g Plain white cake flour

75g Cocao Powder

1 teaspoon Baking powder

20ml espresso

150g dark chocolate chips

100g mini fudge pieces

Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4. Beat together your butter and Sugar until light and fluffy. In seperate bowls sieve your dry ingredients together, adding the chocolate chips after sieving, and beat together your eggs, yoghurt and coffee. Then add the wet and dry ingredients and mix only enough to combine, the muffin method if you will.

Line your muffin tin with cupcake liners and spoon in your mixture. These cakes are designed to be snack cakes so only spoon in 1 tablespoon of mixture to each. Then place 4-5 fudge pieces into the center of each mixture and cover these with the mixture as shown below.

Bake for15-20 minutes or until a toothpick (NB - placed in the side) comes out clean. Turn them out to cool on a wire wrack. What you now have are delicious little brownie 2 bite cupcakes with a fudgie center and my bf says they are really good just as they are but I'm a perfectionist I need to decorate them.

 

To decorate these I used a range of Dr Oetker products including their easy swirl icing canister, silver simmer spray and golden balls. However to make them my own I also had to include this little wooden looking bear stamp.I made circles from fondant and stamped them with a bear stamp we bought in germany last Christmas. I let them dry and then, using a course brush, painted them with brown food colouring gel and water mixed. They came out quite well I think and added an interesting little touch. I would recommend you try this recipe and decorate whatever way you like. Enjoy.

One has been stolen already, trust me they go fast!