Angel Food Cupcakes with Devil Frosting

There have been a lot of muffins up in here. Time to mix it up! My coworker returned from maternity leave last week and we're super excited to have her back so decorated her office and wanted to bring in her favorite treats. So naturally, none of us were certain what her favorite treat was so we asked her husband (because yes, we have his number too).

The choices given were angel food cake with dark chocolate frosting, strawberry shortcake or creme brulee. Needless to say, angel food cake was the winner. Especially since I don't own a torch nor do I think I should try to improvise that. Although I did find some strawberry shortcake cookie recipes. But alas, fluffy cupcakes it is!

I tried making angel food cake once before and while it tasted great, the consistency was a little dense. This was in part due to the difficulty I had getting the cake out of the ungreased pan. But since that was the main pitfall, I decided cupcakes would be safe in their individually wrapped-ness.

Otherwise, I followed the instructions to a t. Lots of egg whites? Check. Process my refined sugar? No problem. Cake flour? Okay, I did some Googling to see if I actually needed cake flour. Yes, you need cake flour to make this a light texture. Somethin' somethin' about the protein content.

Egg whites are beaten before mixing the sugar in and forming medium peaks. I prefer to call these mild peaks because what is medium? Mild just means we're part-way there. Medium speed. As the dry ingredients are slowly added, the batter is growing. Like actually expanding. Ultimately, you want it to hold its own shape so if you drag a spoon through it, you are parting the batter sea and it's not filling up the divet you just made.

I used an ice cream scoop to spoon the batter into the cupcake tin. The batter keeps its shape in the bowl and I filled the liners up almost to the top so I had some space for the frosting later. These cupcakes will get fluffy but don't expand much. In fact, the wrappers actually shrink to the cake so they're super easy to get out of the pan.

I made the cupcakes ahead of time, saved them for a day and then frosted them with a dark chocolate ganache just before serving. The ganache is straight up cream and dark chocolate, melted together to perfection. Yes, you can also eat it straight.

So with the fluffiness of angel food and the decadence of the dark chocolate, I think these two elements cancel each other out. Does that make them Earth cupcakes? Let's just stick with delicious.

Recipe
Cupcakes

• 3/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup cake flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 egg whites, at room temperature 
• 2 1/2 Tablespoons warm water
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and line a cupcake pan with liners.
2. In a food processor, pulse the sugar until very fine.
3. In a small bowl, combine half of the sugar with all of the cake flour and salt.
4. In a large bowl, combine the egg whites, water, vanilla extract and cream of tartar. Whisk together until combined.
5. Switching to a hand mixer, beat the egg mixture while adding the reserved half of the sugar. Continue mixing until medium (mild) peaks form.
6. Set aside the hand mixer and dust the egg mixture with the flour mix, folding in with a rubber spatula. Repeat until all of the flour mixture has been incorporated. 
7. Scoop the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.
8. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 3/4 cup dark chocolate chips

1. In heat proof bowl or double boiler, combine the cream and chocolate set over a pan of water.
2. Heat the water and stir the cream and chocolate until it begins to melt together
3. If your mix comes out too liquidy, add more chocolate. If it's too thick, add more cream. 
4. Once the mixture is completely combined, remove from heat.
5. Allow to cool before frosting the cupcakes.