Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes for Wilton Course 1 - Class 3

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 4/ Day 6
Theme: Miscellaneous - Wilton Decorating Course 1 - Class 3
Dish - Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes

For Class 3, we were asked to bring 6 cupcakes and butter-cream icing ready to use in piping bags. So by 3rd week, I realized that this decorating course definitely needs quite a bit of prior preparation. It took me  about 3-4 hours spaced out in 2 days to prepare the cupcakes, make the icing, fill the bags and get everything else ready. So if you want to take the course make sure that you have some free time to prepare for the class. We started out with 3 students in the first class, we were 2 in second class and I was the only one in the last 2 classes. It was good in a way that I got 100% attention from the instructor, but I would have liked to see how others did in the class as well.

Week 3 is about decorating cupcakes, using various tips to make flowers, leaves, scrolls etc. What I learnt was different consistency icings are used to make different shapes, for example medium consistency icing is used to make the flowers and swirls (pink & blue icing in the pics below) and thin consistency icing for leaves.

I made Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes from Pavithra's blog. She calls them the "Best Ever Chocolate Cupcakes" and I have to agree with her. They are super moist and chocolaty.

Just as a side note, it was my choosing to make eggless bakes for the course, you can make any of your favorite recipe or store-bought mix. Also Wilton's butter-cream recipe has meringue powder in it, which is nothing but pasteurized powdered egg whites, so if you want to make this completely egg-free, then you might want to not use it in the recipe.

Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes:
Ingredients:
Cake Flour - 1½cups**
Sugar - 1cup
Unsweetened Cocoa powder - 5tbsp
Baking Soda - 1tsp
Salt - ½tsp
Milk - 1 cup (I used Vanilla Soymilk, you can use water instead of milk)
Oil - ½cup
Apple cider vinegar or any other vinegar - 2tbsp
Vanilla - 2tsp
Espresso powder - 1tsp (optional)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cupcake pan with liners.
• In a medium bowl, combine all the dry ingredients.
• In another bowl, combine all the wet ingredients along with the espresso powder (if using).
• Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Try not to over mix.
• Pour the batter into the prepared pan about 2/3rds full. 
• Bake for 15-17 minutes or until a cake tester/ toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean, a few crumbs is fine.
• Cool in the pan for 5 minutes before removing on to a wire rack to cool completely.

I smashed the top if this cupcake. It should not be flat on the top :-)

** If you don't have Cake flour, you can make it at home using all-purpose flour (maida) by adding corn starch. Here's a detailed post @ Good life eats on how to make ½cup/ 1 cup and even 2cups cake flour.

Here are my previous posts on Wilton Decorating Course1:

• Class 1: Chocolate Cookies 
• Class 2: Eggless Vanilla Cake & Wilton Butter-Cream Icing

I can't believe there's only 1 day left in April and I have been blogging non-stop for the past 29 days.. I big shout-out to all my fellow bloggers who have made BM# 27 a huge success.