Bitter Chocolate Cupcakes

These bad-boys are not for the feint hearted. They are a rich, dense, chocolate lover's heaven.

But they are intense.

If you like the sound of these, but think that all that dark chocolate may be a bit too much for you, simply use half dark chocolate, and half milk chocolate. You could even add a little more sugar to taste if you wish.

Just as a word of advice, you will need the sweetened mascarpone topping for these otherwise even the greatest chocolate lovers may not cope...

Ingredients:

Makes 12 med sized cupcakes

For the cakes:

100g dark eating chocolate (or 50g dark & 50g milk chocolate if you prefer a less intense experience)

160ml water

90g butter (softened)

220g brown sugar

2 large eggs

100g self raising flour

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

40g ground almonds

For the Topping:

250g mascarpone cheese

2 generous tablespoons icing sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 desert spoon cocoa powder and 1 desert spoon icing suger combined - for dusting

Optional raspberries if you have some

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade or gas mark 3

Line 2 x 6 hole muffin tins with decorative cupcake cases

Break up 80g of your 100g of chocolate (reserve the remaining 20g for later). Put the chocolate and water in a saucepan and put over the lowest heat possible on your hob. Heat very slowly, stirring continuously, until completely smooth. Remove from the heat.

Beat the soft butter and sugar together with electric beaters until really pale and fluffy. This will obviously not go as pale as when using caster sugar, but it will turn paler than when you first start. Add the eggs in one at a time, beating thoroughly between each addition, ensuring that all mixture is combined.

Add in your ground almonds and melted chocolate and mix with electric beaters until fully combined. The mixture will now be an amazingly dark chocolately heaven...

Sieve in the flour and cocoa powder. Try to get a reasonable gap between your sieve and bowl to get lots of air through the flour. Before mixing this in, finely chop up your remaining 20g of chocolate (you can grate this if is it easier) and add to the mixture. Stir your mixture until the flour and cocoa powder are just combined - don't over mix!

Divide the mixture between your 12 cupcake cases, trying to distribute as evenly as possible. Smooth the surface of the mixture with the back of a spoon, but try not to push all of the air out of them.

Place your chocolate sensations into the oven. They will take around half an hour to cook but check them after about 20-25 mins to see how they are doing. These are the kind of cakes which are actually nicer if they are only just cooked as the centres will be slightly gooey.....

Turn the tins around in the oven if the ones at the back are cooking faster than the ones at the front.

Once cooked, take the tins out of the oven and leave to cool while the cakes are still in the tins, for 20 mins. Remove the cakes from the tins and put them to cool completely on a wire rack. Your entire house will now smell better than Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

For the Topping:

To calm down these intense chocolate bad-boys, mix 250g mascarpone with 2 generous tablespoons of icing sugar and one teaspoon of vanilla essence. Beat with electric mixers until fully mixed and slightly fluffy. Use a spatula/palette knife/non-serrated edge of a knife to smooth the mixture on top of the cakes. There will be quite a lot of topping for each cake but try to use as much as possible on each one, to use it all up.

Lightly sieve over the combined cocoa powder and icing sugar as a final dusting.

A lovely addition at this point would be s few raspberries on the top of each one, but alas, I did not have any.

Enjoy!