Kara’s Cupcakes are my absolute favorite—I’ve never found cupcakes that come close. These rich, chocolatey cupcakes with their silky frosting are straight from their shop in San Francisco. So you can imagine how excited I was when I stumbled across their actual recipe online. Now I can make them at home and bring a little piece of San Francisco to friends and family who don’t live nearby. It’s such a treat!
Ingredients:
Cupcakes:- 260 g cake flour
- 180 g coco powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 4 eggs, room temperature
- 220 g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
- 400 g of sugar
- 1 cup hot coffee
- 170 g chocolate chips
- 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 130 g sugar
- Water to cover the sugar in the sauce pan
- 4 egg whites
- 570 g unsalted butter
- 170 g melted chocolate
Instructions:
Making the cupcakes:
Heat oven to 350°F. Prepare a 12 muffin pan with liners. Measure everything and get all ingredients to room temperature.
Whisk to sift flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in large bowl.
In a stand mixer, whisk butter and slowly add sugar to come together for a yellow, fluffy batter (about 2 – 3 minutes).
Slowly add an egg at a time to incorporate them well into the butter mixture.
In a separate bowl, pour hot coffee over the chocolate chips to get them to melt. Whisk and set aside. Mix buttermilk with vanilla extract in another bowl.
Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture in the stand mixer, add 1/3 of the coffee/chocolate mixture, then 1/3 of the buttermilk/vanilla mixture while Kitchenaid is running. Repeat until everything is incorporated.
Scope the batter into the cupcake pan using an ice cream scope and fill a bit more then 3/4 full.
Bake for about 20 minutes.
Making the frosting:
Cover sugar with water to create a simple syrup. Heat it to 220 degree. While simple syrup gets hot, whisk egg whites in a clean mixing bowl. Gradually pour hot simple syrup into egg whites to create the meringue. Whisk for about 5 minutes.
Add butter to egg whites, then the melted chocolate to the buttercream base.