April: Brownie Cupcakes

I seem to have a lot of friends born at the end of March and the beginning of April. Luckily the two birthday girls who through parties both wanted chocolate cupcakes or brownies. I compromised and used one recipe for both.

These are basically brownies in cupcake form so you get the brownie edges in each portion. They're delicious with slightly sweetened whipped cream of whipped cream-buttercream frosting.

Brownie Cupcakes
Slightly Adapted from Fergal Connolly's 500 Cupcakes

-9 oz semi sweet choc chips
-1/2 C butter
-1/4 C unsweetened cocoa powder
-2 oz unsweetened choc
-2 eggs
-1 1/2 C superfine sugar (or regular sugar sifted once)
-1 teaspoon vanilla
-1 C flour

1. Preheat the oven to 325. Line cupcake tins with liners.
2. Melt chocolate chips and unsweetened chocolate and butter in a double boiler until melted. once melted, set aside to cool.
3. In a medium bowl, beat eggs, sugar, and vanilla until pale and thick.
4. Fold in chocolate, cocoa powder, and flour until well combined.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out mostly clean.

Whipped cream:
-1 C heavy cream
-1 tsp vanilla
-3 T powdered sugar, or more to taste

1. Beat cream until thick enough to spread but not butter, beat in sugar and vanilla.

Whipped Cream Buttercream
(I made this up!)
-1 C whipping cream, whipped until almost soft peaks
-1 tsp vanilla
-1/3 C butter (or half a stick), softened
-2 T milk or more as needed
-2-3 C powdered sugar, or more to taste

1. Whip the cream and set aside
2. Make the buttercream: beat butter and about 1/2 C powdered sugar to combine, add in milk as needed, keep adding in sugar a little at a time until you reach a smooth consistency and it doesn't taste like butter anymore.
3. Add in the whipped cream and mix until well combined. The frosting should be thinner than regular butter cream but smoother and heavier than whipped cream.
*Note: the frosting doesn't really harden ever