Drunken Devil’s Food Espresso Cupcakes With Nutella Filling

This cupcake recipe came from msadventuresinitaly.com who adapted it from David Lebovitz’ Devil’s Food Cake. I modified it by adding some coffee grounds to the batter, and filling them with Nutella. Yummy. These cupcakes were a big hit everywhere I gave them out.

9 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1½ cups flour½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
½ cup Borghetti espresso liquor, or other coffee liquor
½ cup whole or low-fat milk
1 tbsp ground coffee.
1 jar Nutella hazelnut chocolate spread

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all dry ingredients well with a spoon in a bowl. In a measuring cup mix the milk and liquor together, set aside.

In a separate mixing bowl, beat the sugar and the softened butter together. If it’s too hard, put the butter in the microwave for 10 seconds to soften it. Mix in an egg at a time until well-blended.

Add half of the dry ingredients, mix well and then add the milk/liquor mixture and mix. Add the coffee grounds. Add the rest of the dry ingredients. If you were hand-mixing before it is recommended to use the electric mixer to do the final mix as it gets really fluffy.

Pour into (lined) cupcake pans, about 3/4 of the way full, or a little more. Bake for 20 minutes, and pull out to test with a toothpick. Because of the alcohol, they take less time to bake as the alcohol evaporates pretty quickly. Make sure not to overcook!

Once baked and cooled, cut off tops of each cupcake in a cone shape and fill with Nutella. Replace the tops and frost with buttercream frosting, and finally dust with finely ground coffee.

Buttercream Frosting
1 stick (4oz/125g) butter, softened
1 lb. (450g) powdered sugar
Fresh milk
1 t. Vanilla extract

Cream the butter with 1/4 of the powdered sugar with a hand mixer. Add more sugar, alternating between the milk and the powdered sugar to get the desired consistency (I use very little milk, like 1/4 cup). Towards the end, add the vanilla, and spread on your cupcakes.

Brinjal and spice with cream cheese frosting dusted with nutmeg.

We were driving along a country road behind a truck going to market with lots of different fruits and vegetables. He must have been in a real hurry, because the driver swung out of his lane to pass several vehicles and he lost a case of Brinjal! We decided to stop and see if any of it was salvagable, and we ended up with about 15 beautiful fruits! We shared our bounty with friends and family, and then we baked up a ton of eggplant parmesan which we ate for about a week on a sailing trip. It was wonderful. With the last fruit I made Brinjal cupcakes. This is the only recipe I could find, which is actually for a bundt cake. The only change I made is the fact that I made cupcakes instead of a cake, and I used some sourwood honey I had gotten in Georgia a while back. In retrospect I would not use that honey again because the sour taste did come through in a slight aftertaste, but all in all this was a very good cupcake with a firm but moist consistency and excellent flavor.

1/2 c. butter

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. honey

2 eggs

2 c. grated eggplant

1 c. white flour

1/2 c. whole wheat flour

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cloves

1/2 c. chopped walnuts

3 oz. cream cheese, softened

1 c. confectioners' sugar

Ground nutmeg (for garnish)

Cream butter. Add sugar and honey. Beat in egg, then stir in grated eggplant, the white flour, the whole wheat flour, the salt, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and chopped nuts. Pour into 12 cup cupcake pan with papers. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

Cream softened cream cheese until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the confectioners' sugar. Drizzle on cooled cake, sprinkle frosting with nutmeg.