Chocolate

Ok, you found my weak spot. Yep, you're looking at it.

 Chocolate cupcakes.

I made this recipe for the first time on Saturday for our evening with the Hartmans. I knew I wanted a deeply dark, gluten-free (and hopefully dairy-free too!) chocolate cupcake. I wanted it to be fluffy, not too dense, sweet, with a slight crumble. Oh boy. I found the perfect recipe.

Who better to get this recipe from than Amy, at simplysguarandglutenfree.com (I love that name)? I made quite a few changes and substitutions, but I still want to respect Amy's genius at creating recipes, so I will send you to her site for the full recipe.

My substitutions to the recipe...

I used:

-  Silvana's flour mix (includes white rice flour, brown rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and guar gum) - you should buy her book, by the way...it's my favorite gluten-free cookbook!
- A little more than 1/2 tsp ground chia seeds instead of flax seeds...because that's what I had on hand.
- Organic sugar instead of coconut sugar
- 90 grams oil, and 26 grams butter substitute (Vive bio spread, for those in Czech)
- I didn't use the German chocolate cake frosting.
- Buttercream frosting- this is the recipe I used. It is explained in good detail, and has beautiful pictures too. Just be sure to use softened butter, and sifted powdered sugar!

Oh, one more thing...

 I loved these so much the first time, that I made them again the next day for a birthday party in Poland. To make some of them more special, I baked a whole pan of mini cupcakes, flavoring each row differently. I added spices and extracts to create surprise cupcakes- little ones for people to try and figure out. Here were the flavors:

- Lavender- ground up lavender (make sure it's the edible kind, not straight from the flower)
- Coffee- instant coffee grounds
- Peanut butter- peanut butter + water, swirled into the cupcake
- Cinnamon- sprinkle of cinnamon
- Chai tea- emptied a chai tea bag :)
- Mint- peppermint extract
- Lemon- lemon zest

It was really fun watching people figure out which cupcake was which. We definitely made memories!

Have fun making them! Let me know how they turn out for you!