Cardamom & Orange Chocolate Cupcakes
Here is the first of the promised cupcake recipes. I’d recently indulged in some cardamom chocolate and it was so delicious and worked so well, I was keen to try it out in cake format. I took Nigella’s Cappuccino Cupcakes recipe as a starting point and adapted it somewhat. This is how I did it:
- Creamed 125g unsalted butter with 125g soft brown sugar
- Ground seeds from 8 cardamom pods in a pestle & mortar then beat into butter mixture with grated zest of 1 orange.
- Beat in 2 large eggs (had run out of duck eggs) one after the other.
- Sieved in 125g flour (1/2 wholemeal, 1/2 gluten free) with 2 tsp baking powder and 1 tbsp cocoa powder.
- Mixed in 3 tbsp milk.
- Divided this between 12 cupcake cases and baked at 180C in a preheated oven for 18 mins.
Whilst these were cooking, I made the icing.
- Melted 100g milk chocolate (35%) and allowed to cool slightly.
- Creamed 75g butter with 75g icing sugar.
- Mixed in chocolate and 1 tbsp orange liqueur.
- Iced the cooled cupcakes and decorated with a Minstrel.
As I’d hoped the flavours here worked really well together. The texture was good although not quite as light as the chilli cupcakes. The icing was so good I could have eaten the whole bowl. Luckily for those concerned, I managed to restrain myself.
Chele
25th October 2009
Hmmm – the jury is still out for me on the whole chocolate and cardamom flavour combo. I had a white choc and cardamom cheesecake at one of my fave bars / places to eat and it didn’t rock my world while everything else I have tried from there has. Might have to try these to see if it was just the cheesecake ….
Choclette
25th October 2009
I have to say cardamom in cheesecake doesn’t sound wonderful. The cupcakes proved popular, so might be worth trying it with a darker chocolate? Try the milk chocolate & cardamom 100g bar from M&S – I defy you not to like that!
Chocolate Shavings
27th October 2009
Chocolate, orange and cardamom? Yum!
Kath
29th October 2009
Love this combination, I was thinking about cooking a cardamom, coffee and chocolate cake that I spotted in the October issue of Olive for our Halloween party this weekend, the cupcakes are also tempting. Can you have too much chocolate cake?? What a silly question!
Choclette
29th October 2009
Can you have too much chocolate cake? It depends on how good the chocolate cake is!
cakeboule
16th January 2012
I just came across this one. I just made some cardamon and clementine shortbead which we all really liked but was worried about using cardamon as this is a first for me. As they liked it perhaps it’s cupcakes next then.
Choclette
17th January 2012
Cakeboule – I think with cardamom, it just depends how much you use. It does go very well with orange. It’s the same combination I used in the nonnettes recently. I really like it.
Kate Hackworthy
28th April 2014
These sound absolutely delicious!