Being permanently in search of the perfect chocolate cake recipe, I had to try this one. "Made with cocoa powder, melted bittersweet chocolate, sour cream, and brown sugar, this cake is rich, moist, and a treat for the hungry school kid in you."  It also uses no butter, which is an advantage when one hasn't been to the shops in over a week!  (Yes, I have bittersweet chocolate and sour cream readily to hand, but no butter to spare.  Such is my life...)

My large cake tins have all gone walkabout (what did you do with my tin-base, people-next-door?) but luckily the recipe specifies that it can be used to make 24 cupcakes instead of one large cake.  I only have one cupcake tin and no patience to do two batches in a row, so I halved the recipe... and then had to make a few more adjustments: demerara instead of brown sugar, an extra egg because the mix seemed too dry.  Still, they came out ok: light and spongy, tender, dark and moist.  Another bonus feature of these cakes is that unlike most cupcakes, they come out with nice flat tops, which can be an advantage for certain sorts of decorating.

Finally, I had no Cocoa Puffs (do they even sell Cocoa Puffs here in the UK?) so regular buttercream frosting had to do instead.  And here they are, boxed up and ready!

Chocolate Cupcakes
1 cup minus 2 tbs flour
1/2 cup cocoa
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda (next time I think I'd use 1/2 tsp each)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup creme fraiche (ok, I lied about having sour cream)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
100ml boiling water
1 tsp coffee powder
100g dark chocolate, melted

Preheat oven to 185C.  Sift dry ingredients together into a large bowl.  In a separate bowl, mix creme fraiche, oil and eggs until combined.  Add to dry ingredients and mix to form a fairly stiff batter.  Dissolve coffee powder in hot water and mix in.  Stir in dark chocolate.

Spoon mixture into cupcake cases.  I filled mine to about 1cm from the top and they rose over the tops of the tins and puffed out a bit; if you want them contained in their cases don't put too much in!  I got 15 cakes out of this quantity -- three had to be baked without the benefit of a tin and became somewhat deformed as a result (but still tasted good)!