Sweet Melissa Sundays: Chocolate Malted Layer Cake (Cupcakes)

I heart Melissa Murhpy! She is a chocolate cake genius. Chocolate cake is one of my most favorite desserts of all time. It brings back memories of childhood, my grandmother and birthday cakes. Often after dinner I crave something sweet and I tell Hubby I want a piece of chocolate cake. Rarely does that request come true (my jeans are thankful for that!). I have made various chocolate cake recipes over the years from box cake mixes to homemade and have never found a cake that made me say, "Wow!"....Until now. Wow, wow, wow!

As many of the other SMS bakers, I opted for cupcakes rather than the layer cake. Cupcakes are easier to transport and pawn off on my co-workers. One of these days I'll invest in a cake carrier. I halved the recipe and it made 15 full size cupcakes. I did make a few minor modifications to the recipe. The recipe calls for hot coffee. I don't do coffee in any way, shape or form so I subbed out hot coffee for hot water with 1 teaspoon of cocoa powder (I halved the recipe so if you use this sub on the full recipe use 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder). Another minor modification was I used 90% cocoa chocolate (Lindt) in the cake part of the recipe instead of unsweetened. And the cocoa powder I used was not dutch processed. The cake was perfectly moist and light with the right amount of chocolate. I may have gone a little overboard on the photos....but I am so excited about the outcome I wanted to share all the steps I photographed along the way.

It all starts by melting the chocolate.


Then adding in vegetable oil to the melted chocolate.


In goes all the dry ingredients.


Then in go the wet ingredients. The batter is nice and fudgy.


And it loosened up a bit after adding the hot water/cocoa powder concoction.



On to the frosting. I also halved the frosting recipe and it yielded the perfect amount to generously frost all 15 cupcakes with none left over. I used Ritter brand chocolate in the frosting (30% cocoa instead of 38% suggested in the recipe).


Nearly boiled heavy cream with malt whisked in covers the milk chocolate for 5 minutes to melt it.


Once the chocolate mixture is cooled it gets whipped together with butter. The frosting is a bit on the loose side.


The sweet malted frosting pairs perfectly with the deep dark chocolate cake. Soooooooo good! I did chill the frosting for about an hour before piping it on the cupcakes (with my ziploc bag with the corner snipped off).


Look how moist it is...I scarfed down this cupcake in no time!



Thank you Nicole of Sweet Tooth for selecting the recipe for this week. This is delicious cake and will go in my recipe keepers file and this will be my new go to base chocolate cake recipe! I look forward to trying it with different frostings... including my childhood favorite Orange Buttercream. All you chocolate lovers out there need to try out this recipe!