Rich, Luscious Chocolate Glazed Cupcakes

America’s Test Kitchen brings us their tested recipe for super-chocolaty cupcakes, made with cocoa powder and crowned with a delicious chocolate glaze.

The recipe doesn’t actually call for any chocolate in the cupcake batter, just cocoa powder. Cocoa comes from the seeds of cacao plants. The seeds are fermented, dried, roasted, ground up, and separated from cocoa butter to make cocoa powder. And while cocoa powder has tons of concentrated chocolate flavor, it has none of the sweetness of chocolate. On its own, cocoa powder is really bitter.

Quick tip: We highly recommend using Dutch-processed cocoa powder in this recipe. If you use natural cocoa powder, the cupcakes will be drier in texture and lighter in color. You can use bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips here, but we do not recommend milk chocolate chips.

And did you know … dark chocolate offers research-based benefits!

Chocolate Glazed Cupcakes

Makes 12 cupcakes

• 1 cup (5 ounces) all-purpose flour
• 1 cup (7 ounces) sugar
• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (8 ounces) milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup (3 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 3 pieces

Directions:

1. Adjust oven rack to the middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with 12 paper liners.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
3. In a large bowl, whisk milk, oil, egg and vanilla until well combined.
4. Add flour mixture to wet mixture and whisk until just combined and no dry flour is visible. Pour batter into a large liquid measuring cup. Divide batter evenly among muffin tin cups (each cup should be filled almost to the top).
5. Bake cupcakes until a toothpick inserted in center of 1 cupcake comes out clean, 20 to 22 minutes. Let cupcakes cool completely in muffin tin on a cooling rack, about 1 hour.

In a small bowl, combine chocolate chips and butter. Heat in microwave at 50 percent power for 2 minutes. Stir with a rubber spatula until smooth.

Remove cooled cupcakes from muffin tin. Turn each cupcake upside down and dip top in chocolate glaze. Turn cupcake right side up and let glaze set and harden, about 20 minutes.

Individual flourless chocolate cakes – no sharing required

These flourless chocolate cookies are made with egg whites, for a meringue-like consistency

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