Chocolate and walnut cupcakes

Chocolate and walnut cupcakes

In Delhi, the two parents are dealing with two daughters and two grandchildren (yup, the sons-in-law are off at work). Not to mention two cantankerous maids. What a vacation this is turning out to be. One baby has five dedicated helpers. The moment she cries, she has 5 options to pick and she goes with the vertical. Who ever picks her up,wins!

Her favourite is the Nani (grandma) who takes her to do “Jai, Jai” to the little temple so that she can get a tiny bit of mishri-small bit of crystallised sugar into her tiny mouth. She dances and wiggles her tiny waist in happiness. Such small things bring us so much happiness.

We also realised that she loves chocolate and chocolate cake. So chocolate cake it had to be- I’ve been scouring the markets for a mini muffin tin....to my disappointment, have not been able to find any.

So this was simple muffins and one extra small cake.

Been trying to get little Sanskriti to say give me instead of dede.... (Hindi for give me) but she ended up screeching GIB! GIB! GIB! A little in her mouth, a lot on the floor. But after the GIB! She was happy.

So try this happiness, you can frost them, if you want to. But this much mess was enough to clean. If you don’t have a toddler who loves to crumble and then eat the cake, feel free to frost!

For the

Chocolate and Walnut cupcakes...

You need

½ cup /50 Gms cocoa powder

240 mils hot water (I used half milk and half water)

1 1/3 cup /175 Gms plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ cup /115 Gms butter

2 eggs

1 cup /200 Gms sugar

¼ cup or more chopped walnuts

2 tsp vanilla essence-which I forgot to add to the batter...

Pre heat the oven to 190C/375F.

In a bowl, add the sugar to the butter. The butter was hard as ice, so I nuked them for 30 seconds and whipped them up with a blender.

One at a time, blend the eggs into the sugar and butter mix.

Sift the cocoa powder, the flour and the baking powder once. I don’t have my measuring cups or spoons here, so used a Borosil glass which measures 240 mils.

Put the half milk, half water to heat. You don’t need to boil the mix, just heat it up.

Place the paper cups in the muffin tray, and the jelly moulds and one small tart tin. So that makes approx 16 cup cakes. We had 12 muffin cups and the extra went into the small tart tin.

OK, now the batter again. The flour mix and the hot liquid alternately, don’t blend too much.

In the end just fold in the walnuts. You can add up to a cup of walnuts. Me, I made a concession for mum as she loves them.

Right, all of it into the oven.

In 15 minutes the muffins are ready.

For the extra large size...about 6-9 more minutes.

while the Cup Cakes were baking , madam decided to raid the refrigerator...and she chose Tabasco!

Then the only thing left, just pop them out. The PAM spray worked well on the pie tin. I’d had my doubts...but PAM didn’t disappoint.

The kids were not ...disappointed, I mean. Neither were the moms nor were the grandparents!

Yes, we took advantage of the fact that the hubbies were nowhere in the see....face pack anyone!

Imagination! What do you see?I see a BIG happy Smile,crying for frosting-but we believe in restraint. Who has the time to burn off the calories these days...

So what are you baking today???

Ps, we’ve been making tons of stuff...like Kadam, Rogan Josh, Almond Soup-Baby Food, breads, vegan Noodles and Chilly Chicken...all coming up...

Cheers!