Mocha Cupcakes

Mocha Cupcakes
I was never a very big coffee fan. Tea was my thing. But then I came to taste specialty blend coffees one day at a small cafe near our place in Kolkata. Mind you its not your everyday instant coffee. Rather it is the freshly ground and filtered from exotic beans variety that made me a fan of my after office cuppa.

So the coffee dates became like a ritual for us. More than the coffee, the overall experience act as a soothing balm for my frayed nerves.

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing lockdown our much revered coffee dates came to a halting stop. This really made me very sad and it began to feel like life is gradually losing all meaning. 🙄 I know that sounds crazy but being cooped up indoors day in and day out can play the worst kind of tricks on ones mind!

Living through these bleak days, I noticed that social media is flooded with posts about a new type of coffee called “Dalgona coffee”. It is claimed to be a type of Korean coffee and looked very tempting. But sadly we did not have any coffee at home. So unfortunately there was no way I could try to make it. Then the wait began for coffee. And finally that day came when my trusted online delivery service came to the rescue and provided us with a jar of coffee.

Then I finally made Dalgona coffee and was left with quite a good amount of whipped coffee cream which I had to use up in something. So voila! I came up with the idea for Mocha Cupcakes which are eggless (because of my egg allergy).
These cupcakes tasted great with coffee as well as Darjeeling Tea.

Ingredients

• Instant coffee ¼ cup
• Brown sugar ¼ cup
• Water ¼ cup
• All Purpose Flour 1 ½ cup
• Wholewheat Flour ½ cup
• Cocoa Powder 2 tbsp
• Baking Powder 1 ½ tsp
• Baking Soda ½ tsp
• Brown Sugar ¾ to 1 cup
• Melted Butter 80gm
• Yoghurt 1 cup (100gm)
• Milk 3 to 4 tbsp
• Roasted Almonds 8 to 10
• Dark Chocolate ( cut into chunks)
• Silicon Muffin Moulds/ Muffin Tray with cupcake liners.

Method

1. Start by taking ¼ cup coffee and ¼ cup sugar in a bowl and mixing together. Add 1 tsp of water from the ¼ cup water into the coffee sugar mixture and mix with a hand held beater. Keep adding the water and mixing with the beater till you get a smooth and whipped cream like texture. You will know your coffee mix is ready when the colour changes from dark to light.
2. To this add the yoghurt and sugar. Keep mixing till the mixture is homogenous.
3. Add in ¾ th of the melted butter and vanilla essence and mix it in.
4. In a separate bowl sieve together the all purpose flour, wholewheat flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and soda.
5. Now add in the dry ingredients slowly into the wet ingredients and mix in with a spatula gently(don’t use the beater).
6. Pre heat the oven at 180° C. Line the muffin moulds with paper liners.
7. Mix the batter till smooth. If batter is too thick add in milk 1 tsp at a time and mix.
8. Add in the dark chocolate chunks.
9. Spoon in the batter into the muffin moulds. Be sure that you leave some space at the top for the muffins to rise.
10. Top each muffin with an almond each and put into the pre-heated oven.
11. Bake the muffins for 20 to 25 minutes or till a toothpick comes out clean.
    Your delicious mocha cupcakes are ready!

You can try my other cupcake recipes like this Blueberry White chocolate Muffin