Merry Christmas everyone! I just want to say a quick thank you for making 2013 a great year for Cooking Classy! It wouldn’t be what it is without all of you reading and following along, pinning, and sharing with your friends, so thank you! :) I truly hope you’ve thoroughly enjoyed the recipes! And hopefully we can make some delicious food together come 2014.
Seeing as it’s Christmas Eve, we better be having something fancy in order. For me elegant food often means some sort of decadent cupcake or chocolate (of course) so I’ve put the two together to make these irresistible Chocolate Angel Food Cupcakes with the most amazing Chocolate Cream Cheese Whipped Cream Frosting. I could sit around and eat these things, all day, every day. I’d definitely label these as one of my new favorite cupcakes! They are so light and fluffy, yet so decadent, and simply deluxe. These are far from those sponge-like, dry angel food cakes you get at the grocery store. Try these and you’ll probably never go back to those. Besides, cupcakes are prettier than a slice of cake. Even if you’re not a cupcake or sweets lover (does that exist?), I have the feeling you’ll love these! They’re aren’t overly sweet and they have the perfect balance of chocolate and tang (thanks to the cream cheese in the topping), along with a fresh, natural sweetness and zip from the berries. If you want to go all out in chocolate, then dip the berries in chocolate before adding to the tops. I think I’ll have to do that next time. Nothing like chocolate indulgence. Enjoy!
If you’d like, you can make the frosting into both flavors, the plain and chocolate (I think I might try doing a twist with both flavors on each cupcake next time) . I simply divided the mixture in half then folded the cocoa into one half and left the other half plain. I prefer not to add vanilla to this topping because with a whipped cream I don’t like to mask that sweet cream flavor, but if you’d like you can always add in a 1/4 – 1/2 tsp.
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Chocolate Angel Food Cupcakes with Chocolate Cream Cheese Whipped Cream
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp (182g) granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup + 3 Tbsp (56g) cake flour
- 2 Tbsp (11g) cocoa powder
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 6 large egg whites (212g), at room temperature*
- 2 1/2 Tbsp (37ml) warm water
- 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 tsp cream of tartar
- 1 1/2 cups (12 oz, 360ml) heavy whipping cream
- 6 oz (170g) cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup (58g) powdered sugar
- 2 Tbsp (11g) cocoa powder, plus more for dusting (optional)**
- Fresh strawberries, raspberries or blueberries, or chocolate covered berries
Topping
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, pulse sugar until super fine, about 2 minutes (if you don't have a food processor caster sugar should also work). In a mixing bowl, sift together half of the sugar, the cake flour, cocoa powder and the salt.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together egg whites, water, vanilla extract and cream of tartar until well combined, about 2 minutes. Switch to a hand mixer and whip mixture on medium speed while slowly adding remaining sugar to mixture, until medium peaks form (see linkhere for what medium peaks are). Sift just enough of the flour mixture in to evenly dust the top of the egg white mixture and using a spatula gently fold flour layer into egg white mixture and continue this process until all of the flour mixture has been incorporated (I did this in probably 12 batches).
- Divide batter among paper lined muffin cups, filling each cup nearly full. Bake in preheated oven 18 - 20 minutes, until toothpick inserted into center of cupcake comes out clean. Cool completely then spread Chocolate Cream Cheese Whipped Cream over cupcakes just before serving, dust with cocoa if desired and top with fresh fruit.
- For the Cream Cheese Whipped Cream Topping:
- In a mixing bowl whip heavy cream until soft peaks form. In a separate mixing bowl, whip cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add cream cheese to whipped cream along with powdered sugar and cocoa powder and whip until stiff peaks form. Store in refrigerator.
- *I'd recommend working with one egg in a bowl at a time to separate the yolk and white, then pour that separated white into the mixing bowl and continue that process with remaining eggs. I do this simply in case one of the yolks breaks and gets into the whites then you'll only have to toss out 1 egg and not all of them if you can't get the yolk out. You don't want even 1 drop of egg yolk in the cake mixture or it can prevent the whites from whipping to stiff peaks.
- **I've listed cocoa powder as optional because you can simply leave it plain if desired. If using the cocoa powder, you can also add in an additional tbsp or two of powdered sugar if desired to make it a little sweeter (just whatever you prefer).
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- Recipe Source: cake adapted slightly from Alton Brown's Angel Food Cake, via Food Network. Topping -Cooking Classy.
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