The Engineered Baker: The Recursive Cupcake

Warning: another chocolate recipe is on the way...

These cupcakes were made for my lovely husband on his birthday, a few weeks ago. And, he named them, "the recursive cupcake". Yes, the geek in me loved the name and it stuck! As you all know my husband LOVES chocolate, and then he loves peanut butter (I hadn't tasted it till I met him, now I'm hooked!). Every hiking and snowboarding trip has to have a PB and J :)

The cupcakes are a moist, spongy chocolate cake, as a result of separating the eggs and whipping the eggs whites into a meringue before folding into the batter. This recipe is also oil based, which means its perfect for the day your out of butter or have none at room temperature and want to start baking immediately. I frosted them with a peanut butter cream cheese frosting, you can easily adjust the amount of peanut butter just in case that you are not a HUGE fan.

Now for the recursive part, I topped the cupcakes with mini Reese's peanut butter cups, decorated with cream cheese frosting and sprinkles to look like mini cupcakes. If you have the time, you are welcome to make mini cupcake, I chose to be lazy and took the short cut. It still looked good :) (so blowing my own horn right now!)

Just baked another batch of these over the weekend, decorating them with a girly twist for a friend, Happy Belated Birthday, Mina! Hope you enjoyed them!

The inspiration for the chocolate peanut butter combination came from this cupcake that I had when I went to get my haircut at Gene Juanez.

The recursive cupcake
Ingredients

CUPCAKES
3 eggs, seperated
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup hot water
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence

FROSTING
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 - 1 cup of creamy peanut butter
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

EXTRA TOOLS
2 Icing bag
Small star icing tip
Large round icing tip
Cupcake liners
Chocolate jimmies
Reese's mini peanut butter cups

Yield: 12-18 cupcakes depending on the size of the eggs used.

Method

Cupcake

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and line a muffin tin.
2. Separate eggs, whip eggs whites until stiff using a electric mixer. Set aside.
3. Mix hot water and cocoa powder together, let it cool.
4. Sift flour and baking powder together, set aside.
5. Beat egg yolks and sugar together until the mixture is a pale yellow color.
6. Add oil to egg mixutre and continue beating.
7. Beat in flour and cocoa mixture alternating between the two, until well incorporated.
8. Lastly, fold in egg whites using a spatula(be careful not to over mix)
9. Use a ice cream scoop to fill muffin tins, 2/3 full. Bake for about 20 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Frosting
1. Cream butter until fluffy, scraping bowl frequently to avoid lumps.
2. Add in cream cheese and continue to beat, make sure to keep scraping the bowl.
3. Slowly, add sifted powdered sugar. Once completely incorporated, set about 1/2 cup of frosting aside.
4. Add in the peanut butter to the remainder of the frosting. How much you add depends on your fondness for peanut butter. I used a cup.
5. Once everything is mixed together (i.e. no white streaks left) decorating, your frosting is ready and its time to decorate!

Decorating
1. Fit icing bag with nozzles and fill the one the small tipped bag with the plain cream cheese icing and the larger tipped bag with peanut butter frosting.
2. Unwrap the same number resses mini cups as cupcakes you are planning to ice. Frost them with the plain icing and sprinkle with jimmies.