Cupcakes and Rain

It was my good friend Christian's birthday a few weeks ago and to celebrate the occasion we decided to have a BBQ. Our plans were promptly squashed when it started pouring with rain so we decided to have the BBQ at my place instead. I cooked about a dozen chocolate cupcakes the night before and got up early on the day and cooked a chocolate cake. The recipe I used was Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake, I didn't have Hershey's coco so I just used dutch coco instead. The icing I made is the same one on the video (link down the bottom).  I wasn't happy with the cupcakes as I had baked them for twenty minutes and the consistency wasn't as moist as I have made in the past. I decided to make a cake the next day to make up for the cupcakes. I also put aside some batter for a few extra cupcakes to experiment with the cooking time. So in the end I baked the cake for thirty minutes and it ended up sinking in the middle so next time I'll bake it for  forty to forty five minutes and the cupcakes only needed twelve minutes. Also the second small batch of cupcakes had a mild taste of bicarb soda so I think I'll only add one teaspoon of bicarb soda instead of one and a half. Despite all of this we had a very relaxing afternoon eating and relaxing with good friends.

Here's the link to the recipe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuuPdhhh1UY

Note: Also in the video she uses Crisco shortening which we don't seem to have in Canberra or Australia for that matter but we do have Copha which is the same thing but comes in a hard block.

You'll need to melt it down to liquid form first then leave it to set. Once set, just spoon it into the mixing bowl. You'll find Copha above the butter in the supermarket, it has a cute picture of a smiling cupcake on the side.