The finished product!
I really wanted these chocolate hazelnut cupcakes, and the easiest way to get such cupcakes was modify these cupcakes. It was super super easy and I fully recommend it.
Basically, I omitted a couple tablespoons of flour, bringing it down to just 1 cup of flour, and added a quarter cup of cocoa powder.
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup hazelnut meal or hazelnut flour (I used my coffee grinder to make hazelnut meal)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 rice or nut milk (I used soy and they turned out well anyways)
1 tablespoon ground flaxseeds (they do eggy things, I think, and help make the texture nice)
1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup maple syrup (this doesn’t have to be Grade A; for cupcake purposes, B is just fine and definitely more affordable)
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed (packing the brown sugar is ++important
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon hazelnut liquor
Line the cupcake tin and preheat the oven to 350.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the rice/soy milk and ground flaxseed. In a larger bowl, sift together the flour, hazelnut/almond meal, cocoa powder, baking powder and soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
Add the maple syrup, sugar, canola oil, vanilla and hazelnut liquor to the soy milk/flaxseed mixture. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mixing until mostly smooth (the meal means it’ll have a slightly rougher texture than most cupcakes, and it isn’t something to worry about).
Pour into the liners (2/3-3/4 full), and bake 22-24 minutes or until a toothpick/pointy object inserted into the middle comes out clean. The outside limit on these I think works better. Anyways, I then made a ganache :
3 tablespoons soy milk
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
I heat the soy milk in a small saucepan until almost simmering. I removed it from heat, and added the chocolate chips until they’re all melted down and evenly mixed. Let it cool for 10 minutes. Then I dumped it in a ziplock bag, nipped off a corner, and drizzled on the cupcakes, and put chopped hazelnuts on top for prettiness purposes.
Yay cupcakes!
