Blue Bear Wood: A Little Bit Of Chocolate Goes A long Way

So Appliances Online has it's own blog and has set a bloggers challenge to bake some cakes using the following ingredients with a little bit of help from the kiddies.

Dry ingredients required ...

65g caster sugar (I used GOLDEN CASTER SUGAR)

60g Light soft brown sugar

125g self raising flour

25g Chocolate chips (I used MILK CHOCCY CHIPS)

Wet ingredients ...

1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

2 medium eggs (LARGE WORKS)

125g butter or margarine, softened at room temperature (GOATS BUTTER int this house)

2 tbsp milk, to loosen

We went down the traditional route of butter and sugar first, eggs, vanilla, flour, chocolate chips and then milk. Bake in the oven on approx 160°C (adjust oven to suit) for approx 10-15 mins.

Getting the girls involved in cupcake making can be rather stressful ... only one machine and six pairs of hands (not including mine) is scary. I've tried letting them take it in turns to add the ingredients but that ends up with grumpiness (it would appear that egg breaking is the bestest thing to do!). So unless we're making oodles of cakes, or for some bizarre reason one or more of them has a better option, I tend do all the mixing and give them the most important job of all ... putting cake mix in the cases.

We made two different types of cupcake using exactly the same ingredients.

First we made Strawberry & Chocolate Cupcakes. The choccy chips were melted gently iin a bowl over water and then stirred into the mixture last, making a chocolate flavoured cupcake. After baking in the oven add some sliced strawberry's and a sprinkling of vanilla sugar powder and you have yourself one simple yet fancy cupcake.

The desire to be dainty and lady like was there but not for long!

Then we made Chocolate Treasure Cupcakes.

Rather than mixing the choccy chips through the cake mix we hid 5 little chips in the middle of each cake. Then we carefully covered the chips. The girls loved doing this and took great care counting out and placing the chocolate.