Orange Chocolate Cupcake ~ Eggless,Butterless & Healthy

I have a special liking towards the citrus flavor. With gorgeous oranges in season, I was looking for an orange cupcake recipe and I stumbled upon the chocolate orange cake at Baking Bites and an orange muffins at Verstaile Kitchen. Both the recipes were eggless and  I needn't have to make it eggless to suit my taste.  I have adapted the baking bites' recipe  taking few hints from Versatile Kitchen. Orange and chocolate complement each other so well and you will experience the combo flavor with the first bite.



You need

•  Wheat flour - 1 1/2 cup
• Coco powder - 1/2 cup
• Sugar - 3/4 cup
• Baking powder - 1 tspn
• Cooking soda -1/2 tspn
• Salt - 1/4 tspn
• Fresh Orange juice - 3/4 cup
• Vegetable oil - 1/3 cup
• Vanilla essence - 1 tspn
• Orange zest - 1 tblspn (I used candied orange peel)

Method

Sieve dry ingredients - wheat flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, cooking soda and salt. I always measure the dry ingredients to a plastic container which has a tight lid. I shake the container vigorously with the lid on and proceed. A bit lazy to take out the sieve and the cleaning that comes after.

Mix orange juice, sugar, oil and vanilla essence. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet mix and finally stir in the orange zest.

Grease the muffin mould and fill to 2/3 in each hole.  Bake in a preheated oven at 170 C for 25 minutes.

This will yield 12 medium sized muffins. My muffin tray can hold only 9 and I baked the remaining batter in microwave.

For the frosting

• Butter - 2 tblspn
• Powdered sugar - 1 1/2 cups
• Orange Juice - 1 tblspn

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy and add the orange juice. Adjust the juice quantity to suit the consistency required. Pipe it on the cooled muffins and enjoy the orange flavored chocolate delight. I know my frosting has not come out well. The cupcake on its own is not very sweet. Hence the frosting did enhance the taste. I have baked it twice and both times, the cakes have vanished pretty fast.

To bake in the microwave

Scoop a heaped tablespoon of the batter into greased MW cups and bake for a minute. Leave it for 3 minutes and enjoy your cake.

If your baking a single cake, do add a teaspoon of milk  or orange juice to thin the batter. This will ensure a

moist cake. I tried baking in individual cups and haven't baked a single cake.

While the cup cakes were getting baked in the OTG, I could enjoy a quick treat with the MW cake.

Update: I am sending the healthy cake to Priya's Fast  Food Not Fat Food event

Announcing the winner of the giveaway & Red Velvet Cupcake ~ an e-treat for all participants -

After running a promotional giveaway for 10 days and now its time to announce the lucky winner. Thank you readers for your wishes and comments on that post. And Lady Luck has cast her smile on

Shoba of Anubhavati, Tastes from my kitchen. I am sure the gift will delight your daughter who loves waffles. Please mail me your address to claim your gift. Thank you CSN team at counter stools for the opportunity.

For all those who participated., here is a virtual treat for you. Hope you enjoy it. The recipe I follow is from Vcuisine(private blog). I have tried it twice following the recipe to T but have skipped the frosting both the times. This time I have made some changes like substituting part All purpose flour with multi grain, butter with oil etc. Beets puree is used as the coloring agent.

Ingredients

All purpose flour - 1 cup
Multigrain flour - 1/2 cup
Cocoa powder  - 1 1/2 tblspn
Baking powder - 1 tspn
Vanilla essence - 1 tspn
Salt - 1/4 tspn

Sugar -1 cup
Oil - 1/3 cup

Buttermilk - 1 cup
Beetroot puree - 1 cup (I used only 1/2 cup)

Cooking soda - 1/2 tspn

Lime juice - 1/2 tspn

Method

Steam cook beets and grate it finely. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Mix oil and sugar and whisk till sugar is fully dissolved. Mix grated beet and buttermilk in a separate bowl. Add flour mix and buttermilk alternatively to the oil-sugar combo. Finally add vanilla essence, cooking soda and lime juice. Mix well.

Grease muffin pan and fill 2/3 full. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 35 minutes.

Frosting
Maida - 2 tblspn
Sugar - 4 tblspn
Butter - 1 tblspn
Milk - 20ml
Vanilla essence - 2 drops

Mix flour in milk without forming lumps and cook till they form a pouring consistency. Cream sugar, butter and vanilla till fluffy. Add the cooked maida mix to the cream and frost the cake. The maida mix turned very thick for me and added few drops of milk to it. But the end mixture turned to be slightly runny and when I piped the frosting it started spreading. It didnot affect the taste though.

Eggless Plain Vanilla Cupcakes

About an year back,I had bookmarked the recipe for Basic Yellow Cupcakes at Wilton's. I was new to baking then and tried only eggless recipes. Things have changed much now that I have adapted many recipes to make it eggless, thanks to blogging that I know about various egg substitutes and a special thanks to Madhuram and her many eggless events. I thought of increasing the milk quantity in the above said recipe to make it eggless. But as I said, I wasn't very sure of the outcome. At the same time around, Aparna, posted an eggless version of the same recipe. Her post gave me the confidence to go ahead and I followed her recipe to T. It was absolutely delicious and very easy to put together. As the recipe says, its a basic version. You can jazz it up to any kind of flavor you wish to. I have baked it many times with chocolate and coffee flavors.  Its a keeper recipe.

Ingredients

All purpose flour/maida - 3 cups

Cornflour - 3 tspn (I used arrowroot powder)

Salt - 1/2 tspn

Baking powder - 2 1/2 tspn

Butter - 1/2 cup

Sugar - 1 1/2 cups

Milk - 1 1/2 cups

Vanilla essence - 11/2 tspn

Mini chocolate chips for topping.



Method

Cream together sugar and butter till fluffy and light. Sift both flour, baking powder and salt. Add vanilla essence to milk.

Add milk and flour mix alternatively to the creamed butter-sugar combo. Beat well after each addition. Once you have done with both milk and flour, beat well for over a minute.

Grease the muffin tray and spoon the batter to 2/3 of the depressions. Add the topping.  Sliced cherries or tuty fruity can also be used as topping. Bake at 180 C for 30 minutes.

I got 18 muffins when I made the first time. Later on I  make only half the recipe. Last time when I made, I filled the muffin pan to half and had some batter left. I baked it in a jelly mould. Here is it

Here is the picture of  coffee flavored cupcakes. I used 1 1/4 cup milk and 1/4 cup of coffee decotion in place of 1 1/2 cups of milk in the orginal recipe.

 

Mango Mania from other blogs

During the last mango season, I had bookmarked few mango recipes. As with most of the bookmarked list, this also did not make its way into my kitchen. This year, I did not want to give it a miss and had decided to try them, as soon as the season began.

1. Lata's Mango cake


I followed her recipe with some changes. I used half and half of All purpose flour and wheat
flour. No nuts in the cake since I did not have any. And I used fresh mango pulp. I was making the cake for my guests. So I decided to bake in the muffin try for easier serving. The cake batter was less for two batches, so I reduced the muffin size and saved the batter for a small cake in a tube pan.
Ingredients
All purpose flour - 1 cup
Whole wheat flour - 1 cup (Aashirvad Atta)
Baking powder - 1 tspn
Baking soda - 1 tspn
Fresh mango pulp - 1 cup
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Milk powder - 1/2 cup
Yogurt - 1/2 cup
Vegetable oil - 1/2 cup
Hot water - 1/4 cup

Preheat oven to 180 C. Sift together the All purpose flour,wheat flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a bowl.Blend together mango pulp, water, sugar, milk powder, yogurt, and oil in a blender, until smooth. Mix in the blended puree into flour mixture and mix well. Transfer the mixture to a baking pan and bake for 35 minutes or until done. The cake was very moist, with a slight flavor of mango. The mango flavor is not very intense. I might try the same recipe with some other fruit puree.

2. Ice cream from Bharathy's kitchen laboratory

You need:

Mango pulp - 1 cup

Thick creamy milk - 1 cup

Arrowroot flour/maida - 1 tbspn

Sugar - 3/4 cup

Fresh cream - 1 tblpsn

Keep 4 tablespoons of milk aside to dissolve the arrowroot powder. Boil half litre of milk and simmer for few minutes so that it reduces in volume and gets thick. Stir in sugar and boil till
it is fully dissolved. Add the arrowroot mix with constant stirring to avoid lumps. The milk will get thicker now. Cool and min in the mango pulp. Blend the mix until smooth in a blender. Transfer the mix to a plastic tub and freeze. when it starts to freeze, whip again in a blender with the fresh cream added. Freeze the mixture again till it hardens.

Scoop into cups and enjoy homemade ice cream.

I am sending these to Srivalli's Mango Mela

Banana dates muffin

I have baked banana bread twice with two different recipes. I did like them but never wanted to make them again. When I had some bananas, which either had to be used up or will find their way to bin stage, idea of bread did not seem to be interesting. So I decided to look for muffin recipe and finally found banana crumb recipe at Allrecipes. I tweaked it and I was amazed with the results. We both loved the muffins very much. And had some guests the next day I baked. They gave a big thumbs up tasting my muffins. Definitely I will be making this again. I forgot to add the crumb toppings. Seeing the reviews at Allrecipes, decided to add them during the last five minutes of baking. But with a phone call, half the way through the baking, I completely forgot about the topping. I am sure that will make it more delicious. That's reserved for the next bake.

Now to my version of the recipe

Ingredients
1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 tspn baking soda

1 tspn baking powder

1/2 tspn salt

1 cup mashed banana

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup chopped dates

Method

Sift the two flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt together. Whisk together sugar, oil, mashed banana and milk.Fold in the banana mix into the dry ingredients and mix just enough to moist. Stir in the chopped dates. Scoop the batter into the greased muffin pan
Bake in a preheated oven at 200 C for 25 minutes or till top is browned. Adjust the timing according to your oven.
Muffin was very soft and moist. It goes very well for breakfast with a glass of milk. It keeps well for for 3 days with out refrigeration. I got 9 medium sized one and 5 mini muffins.

I am sending these breakfast muffins to Lakshmi's SWC-Meals on Wheels

and to Recipes for rest of us:Picnic Eats hosted by Trupti, an event started by Ramki.