Brownie Cupcakes Recipe With Picture

Everyone loves cupcakes and what could be more appealing than a brownie cupcake topped with lovely swirls of shiny chocolate frosting. These brownies are rich and chocolately and the batter is easily made in one bowl. We are using unsweetened chocolate in this recipe which is also known as baking, plain or bitter chocolate. This is chocolate in its rawest form and is known by professionals as 'chocolate liquor'.

What this means is that unsweetened chocolate is just ground cocoa nibs that have been refined and contain between 50-55% cocoa butter (cocao fat). It contains no sugar so it has a strong, bitter taste that is used in cooking and baking but is never eaten out of hand. When choosing any chocolate, always look for one that has a lovely shiny finish (a sign that the chocolate was cooked at the right temperature for the right amount of time) and one that has that wonderful 'snap' when you break it into pieces. It should also have a pleasant 'chocolately' smell. Scharffen Berger has a very good unsweetened chocolate that contains 99% cacao that you can find it in most specialty food stores. But the unsweetened chocolate that is sold in small squares at your local grocery store will do just fine.

There are so many excellent chocolate frosting recipes that sometimes it is hard to decide what frosting to use. I decided to try a new recipe that I found on Shuna Fish Lydon's interesting food blog 'eggbeater.typepad.com'. It is absolutely delicious; rich, creamy, and so chocolately that you will want to use this frosting on all your cakes. You may think that adding sour cream to a chocolate frosting is odd, but it really adds a wonderful depth of flavor. Shuna Fish Lydon recommends using a 62 - 70% dark chocolate and be sure that it is one that you enjoy eating out of hand. If you find the frosting a little to thin for piping after it is made, simply place it in the refrigerator until firm.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (170 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven. Line 12 muffin tins with paper or foil baking cups.

Melt the chopped chocolate and butter in a stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Once the chocolate is melted and smooth, remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes. Then stir (can also use a hand mixer) in the sugar. Add the vanilla and then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the flour and salt until well blended.

Evenly divide the batter between the muffin cups. Place in the preheated oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcake has moist crumbs. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack.

To make Chocolate Frosting: Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla and corn syrup. Whisk in the sugar, a little at a time (at this point the frosting will be quite thick). Place the frosting in the bowl of your food processor and, with the processor running, gradually add the sour cream and hot water. Process until the frosting is nice and shiny. At this point you can simply spread some frosting on the top of each cupcake. However, if you want to pipe the frosting on top of the cupcakes you may have to place the frosting in the fridge for it to firm up. Periodically check and stir the frosting until it is of the desired piping consistency.

Makes 12 cupcakes.

Adapted from Judy Rosenberg's "All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar- Packed No-Holds-Barred Baking Book"

Brownie Cupcakes:

4 ounces (120 grams) unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 1/4 cup (250 grams) granulated white sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 large eggs

3/4 cup (105 grams) all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Chocolate Frosting:

4 ounces (120 grams) semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) (84 grams) unsalted butter, cut in pieces

3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 teaspoons light corn syrup

1 1/3 cups (155 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted

1/2 cup sour cream, room temperature

1 teaspoon hot water

Top 25 Recipes of 2008*

*Top 25 Recipes based on actual site traffic from January 1 to December 31, 2008.


1. Chocolate Chip Cookies	2. Apple Crisp	3. Red Velvet Cake	4. Shortbread Cookies	4. Royal Icing

6. Sugar Cookies	7. Carrot Cake	8. Gingerbread Men	9. New York Cheesecake	10. Vanilla Cupcakes

11. Pumpkin Cheesecake	12. Pumpkin Pie	13. Pound Cake	14. Chocolate Truffles	15. Oatmeal Cookies

16. Rum Balls	17. Pavlova	18. Lemon Bars	19. Mexican Wedding Cakes	20. Ganache

21. Fruit Tart	22. Cream Scones	23. Butter Tarts	24. Yellow Butter Cake	25. Apple Pie

Machine Site Translations

Arabic Chinese Dutch French German Hindu Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Norwegian Portuguese Russian Spanish Greek Swedish Finnish

Machine Translations are provided by an automated service and the accuracy of the translations are not up to the standards of human translation. Machine translations are provided for use by people with little or no English skills. We recommend that people proficient in English use the English pages rather then the machine translated pages.

Use of materials on Joyofbaking.com is entirely at the risk of the user and Joyofbaking.com, Stephanie Jaworski or Rick Jaworski will not be responsible for any damages directly or indirectly resulting from the use.

This website and the contents are not endorsed or sponsored by the owner of the "Joy of Cooking" series of books or its publisher Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Content in any form may not be copied or used without written permission of Stephanie Jaworski, Joyofbaking.com. Students and non profit educators may use content without permission with proper credit.

A baking resource on the Internet since 1997