Cappucino cupcakes

The cups I chose are a little kitsch I know. My husband, an avid sailor, unfailingly receives a slew of sailing cards every birthday and incredibly there has never been a double up. I had never noticed card shops catering for the sailing genre until I met him, certainly I don't seem to see any "cricket" or "netball" themed cards. I secretly suspect that his birthday is one that is propping up the sailing card industry such is the amount of sailing themed cards that he receives. Accordingly I felt the need to buy these cute little sailing cups for him although I will confess they rarely get used. I also made tiny espresso cup ones in a more respectable colour. Strange pattern or not, you'll need to find cups that roughly match the size of your cupcake liners.

The cake itself is one of the nicest, softest chocolate cake recipes I've come across. And when you read the method, you'll also see that its one of the easiest, no creaming or beaters necessary, just place all ingredients bar the dry ones in a small saucepan and heat on low heat and then whisk in the flour and egg. The resultant crust has an almost caramel toffee like texture and the cake is rich, soft and fluffy with a delicate crumb. When it cools, it becomes a moist, dense mocha mud cake.

Cappucino cupcakes

For the cupcake

• 165g butter (doesn't matter if it's at room temp or not in this recipe)

• 120g dark eating chocolate broken up into pieces

• 1 1/3 cups light brown sugar

• 2/3 cup water

• 1/4 cup Kahlua

• 2 tablespoons instant coffee powder

• 1 cup plain flour

• 1/4 cup cornflour

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder

• 1 egg

Decorations

• 300ml whipped cream

• 1/2 cup Chocolate topping

• 1 tablespoon fine chocolate powder

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 150c fan forced or 170c non fan forced.

Step 2 - Place butter, chocolate, sugar, the water, liquer and coffee in small saucepan over low heat until melted and combined. Cool for 15 minutes.

Step 3 - Using a whisk, add flour, cocoa and then egg (at this stage it will look like liquidey dark chocolate ganache). Spoon into patty tins.

Step 4 - Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool in tin. Waiting until it is cool is important, the cake is less delicate and of course you'll be sandwiching them with cream so you don't want it to melt.

Step 5 - Carefully take cupcake liners off cupcakes. Fit them into the cups. I found that my cups were quite a bit bigger than the cupcakes so I sliced extra ones up and "padded out" the base and sides with these pieces as I didn't want a huge amount of cream in the side gaps. Add cream around cake and a thick layer on top.

Step 6 - fashion a disposable piping bag from baking paper (or use a bought disposable one or regular piping bag) and pipe a spiral over cream. Using a skewer do the feathering technique by draggint the skewer from inside to out the spiral. Sift fine chocolate powder over cupcakes.

Step 7 - Sit back and relax with magazine!