Heavenly Devil's Food Chocolatey Goodness

Tonight my son is having his buddies over to celebrate his birthday.  I'm not sure if 15 year old boys officially call it a birthday party, but there is a room full of teen age boys playing video games and eating tons of food in my house.  I didn't make a huge shaped or a really fancy cake this time since I made the baseball cake last weekend.  My son and I decided to go with devil's food chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  Devil's food chocolate cake just happen to be one of my favourite types of cake.  I have tested this recipe with different ratios of butter and oil for maximum tastiness and moistness.  Ultimately this family favourite has been adapted from Martha Stewart.  As usual this recipe has been doubled to produce maximum chocolatey goodness.  These little bundles of chocolatey goodness just happened to be served at my friend's wedding with rave reviews.  I have also made them for the wedding of a friend's son, also to rave reviews.

Devil’s food cupcakes

Shopping and prep list

Yield: Approximately 60 cupcakes

Printable recipe

• 1 ½ cups Cocoa powder
• 1 ½ cups Hot water
• 6 cups Flour
• 2 tsp Baking soda
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 2 ½ Salt
• 2 cups Butter
• ¾ cup Canola oil
• 4 ½ cups Sugar
• 2 tbsp plus 2 tsp Vanilla
• 8 Eggs
• 2 cups Sour cream, full fat

Devil’s food cupcakes

this mixture will be smooth like chocolate but won't taste like chocolate!

In a bowl whisk together until smooth:

• 1 ½ cups cocoa powder
• 1 ½ cups hot water

Mix in another bowl: 

• 6 cups flour 
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder  
• 2 ½ tsp salt

·         

Melt together:

• 2 cups butter
• ¾ cup canola oil
• 4 ½ cups sugar

Beat the sugar/butter/oil mixture in the bowl of stand mixer until cooled (about 5 minutes).  When you first start mixing the sugar, oil, butter mixture it will look like this:

The start of mixing

After a good 5 minutes of mixing, it will turn a nice, pale yellow colour and will look more like this:

After 5 minutes of mixing

Adding the chocolate mixture after the eggs and 

vannilla

Add to the bowl of the stand mixer:

• 8 eggs, one at a time until blended
• 2 tbsp plus 2 tsp vanilla 
• Chocolate and water mixture you made before

·   Beat until well blended then alternate the additions of:

• 2 cups sour cream, full fat

the last of the flour

with additions of:

• the flour mixture until both are gone (about 3 additions of each)

Scoop into lined cupcake pans and bake at 35o degrees F for about 20 minutes.

Once the cupcakes are cool it is time to ice them.  We just can't have plain ol' chocolate cupcakes now can we? I  have been looking for a recipe for cream cheese frosting for a while. Some research dug up many different ratios of cream cheese to butter and icing sugar.  I browsed for a while before adapting what I found to suit my needs. (each set of underlined words leads to a cream cheese frosting recipe)

Cream cheese frosting

In the bowl of your mixer, blend together until smooth:

• 1 brick cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup butter, softened

Once the cream cheese and the butter are well mixed and smooth, add and continue to mix:

• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla

When the milk and vanilla are will mixed in, add 1 cup at a time, mixing thouroghly after each addition

• 4 1/2 cups icing sugar

Frost your cupcakes as you please!  I like to use a piping bag with a large star tip on it for nice swirls of icing!