Hurricane Cupcakes | Egg-less Mocha Cream Chocolate Cupcakes

Did you know a woman named her child Tsunami because he was born when the natural disaster occurred? Well, I know its personal taste, but, really?! I thought it was bordering on absurd. I mean tsunamis are dangerous, to say the least. 

But when hurricane Irene decided to spend the weekend with us not too long ago, I was thinking of things more than dangerous. With hurricane warnings all over town, packed grocery stores, no bottled/packaged water and no flashlights available anywhere, Ms. Irene sure had pressed the run-for-your-life button in all of us along the East Coast.

Now, where was I? Yes, the woman who named her child Tsunami. Well, I did something sorta similar. But, before you get ideas and think I renamed my son 'Irene' and categorize me as a maniac...listen up!

I decided to celebrate that we survived Irene. No power outage, no flooding, no evacuation orders, no broken homes around our area and to top the list we were still alive! Oh yes, go ahead and call me a chicken all you want, but, I was freaked out.

But, we really lucked it out don't you think? And, yes, the oven was still working. So why not bake? I mean you could not go out, no traffic allowed on roads, trees ripped apart, heavy winds, flood warnings and you certainly don't want to see more of the graphic hurricane representation but you do want to eat good food. That's when I whipped up these egg-less mocha cream chocolate cuppies with my friend, DS. We had a great time baking, frosting and eating 'em up.

Need more inspiration than a hurricane to bake these? Try these cupcakes and top them off with Chocolate Ganache (Recipe here), fresh cut strawberries and mint.

Before I proceed to the recipe, I'd like to let you know that this recipe originally belongs to my friend Madhuri Kumar. It's an egg-less, butterless 5 minute chocolate cake made in the microwave. I have lost count of the number of times I've made it.  Need I say more to have you enter your kitchen?




I tried this cake earlier, as an experiement the first time around, with Chocolate Syrup instead of Cocoa powder. The results with this change were good and yielded a very rich, super-moist cake. But, I like this version better.

Here, I've followed the exact same recipe as the original, but baked it in the conventional oven instead of a microwave. Why? Two reasons. One, I have a non-stick metal muffin pan which cannot be put in the microwave and we badly wanted to eat cupcakes and cupcakes ALONE. And, reason number two is to have the sinful smell of chocolate baking into something heavenly in your oven. This is something I'd not mind - Anytime!

Ingredients for the cupcakes
1 1/4 Cups All purpose flour/Maida
1/3 Cup Cocoa Powder
1 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar, firmly packed
3/4th tsp Baking Powder
1/3rd tsp Baking Soda
1.5 tsp Vanilla essence
3 tsp Flax seed powder mixed in 3/4 cup warm water (substituting 3 eggs)
1/3 Cup Milk(I used whole milk)
1/3 Cup Cooking Oil (I used Corn Oil)
A pinch of salt

Method
- Preheat oven to 350F and line muffin tray with baking cups
- Sift the flour into a large preparation bowl
- Add the brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, salt and mix until homogenous
- Slowly stir in the milk, oil and vanilla essence to make a smooth batter making sure there are no lumps
- Pour the flax seed powder mixed in warm water and mix well to make a silky textured cake batter
- Spoon the batter into baking cups
- Bake for about 20 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean from the center for your cupcakes
- Once ready, immediately remove cupcakes from the muffin pan and cool completely on a cooling rack. Allowing cupcakes to cool in the hot muffin pan will get them over-baked, dry and crusty.


Ingredients for Mocha Cream Frosting
1 Cup Heavy Cream
1/2 Cup Confectioner's sugar
1.5 tbsp Instant Coffee powder (I used Nescafe)
1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence


Method
(Chill mixer blades and mixing bowl prior to whipping for better results)
- Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl
- Whip on a medium-low speed until cream forms soft peaks
- Chill for about 30 minutes
- Fill whipped mocha cream into piping bags fitted with open star tip
- Pipe onto cupcakes using circular motion, starting from the center


I used a small cupcake liner and this made about 12-15 petite cupcakes, just perfect to fix that 3 o'clock chocolate craving.