The Cooking Chemist: Chocolate chip cupcakes with avocado chocolate frosting

Recently I have been getting into "healthier" and gluten-free cooking. The reasons I love these types of cooking is that it opens up a whole new world of ingredients. As you no longer have gluten in your mixture, you need to compensate so that your cakes, biscuits, slices etc. come out just as delicious, light and fluffy as their gluten-full counterparts. I find it very fun and exciting getting to play around with all of these new ingredients some of which I never knew existed.

I should also explain why I call these "healthier" cupcakes. Well, I don't feel right calling them healthy cupcakes as I would worry that people would think that's license to go ahead and eat them all the time. They still have sugar and fat in them (albeit healthier fats) but they aren't as good for you as eating fresh fruit and veggies but they are still a nice treat with less guilt after you have eaten them.

This recipe is being published with permission of their inventor Eat Nourish Glow Paleo. Eat Nourish Glow Paleo is a great facebook page that offers recipes and tips for people who want to learn about looking after their health and wellness. Visit their page if you are interested in learning more about the paleo lifestyle and finding recipes that are delicious as well as healthful. Big thanks for letting me share your recipe.

Now, to the cupcakes... This is the best recipe, by far, that I have found for healthier style cupcakes, they contain no grains, no dairy, the sugar in them is not processed and most of all..... the recipe WORKS!! Oh my gosh! Is it that much to ask for people to post recipes that actually work? I have tried several recipes for gluten-free or paleo cakes where the mixture has turned out like a rock or the cakes just don't work out so when these worked first time, it was such a relief. The annoying thing is, when you are trying these types of recipes out you are quite often using quite pricey ingredients so when they don't work, you are wasting food and money neither of which I particularly enjoy wasting. These cupcakes turn out really well, they are spongey, light and super chocolatey. The cacao nibs (that turn out as chocolate chips) are a really great addition and add a great texture to the cakes. Oh and the frosting! Yum! I know avocado and chocolate might sound daunting but give it a try- you will not regret it. It is so chocolatey and fudgy and has a really great texture, mmmm!

So here we go: the recipe

Ingredients

For the cupcakes

1/4 cup coconut flour

1/4 cup raw cacao powder

1/4 tsp Himalayan salt (I just use sea salt)

1/4 tsp gluten free baking powder (Wards baking powder is Gluten free)

4 pastured eggs at room temperature

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/3 cup raw honey or maple syrup

1/3 cup raw cacao nibs

The ingredients

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius and line a muffin pan with patty pans. Or place your baking cups on a baking tray.

2. Place coconut flour, cacao powder, salt and baking powder, into a food processor and pulse until combined.

3. Add eggs, honey and coconut oil and pulse again until combined.

4. Fold through the cacao nibs.

5. Spoon mixture into cupcake pans to about 3/4 full. Normal patty pans will make 9 cakes as pictured above. Large baking cups will make 6. You could give mini ones a try as well (you will probably need to shorten the baking time). Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Let cupcakes cool before icing.

For the icing

1 Avocado

1/4 cup raw honey or maple syrup (icing will turn out thinner with maple syrup)

1/4 cup raw cacao

6. Place all icing ingredients into a food processor and process until smooth.

Resulting icing (this can be eaten alone as a deliciously fudgy chocolate mousse).

7. Pipe or spread the icing on top of the cupcakes.

Voila!! Chocolate chip cupcakes

Just a few notes on the recipe. Make sure you use gluten free baking powder if you are cooking these for a person with gluten intolerance. Wards baking powder is made with potato starch and as such is gluten free. You can swap the honey for maple syrup and the result will be just as delicious although the icing will be a bit thinner as maple syrup is generally a bit thinner than honey. Taking out the raw honey also will take out the great properties that raw honey gives to these cupcakes but if you are vegan or just don't have honey feel free to substitute. These cupcakes last about 5 days in the fridge (don't keep them on the bench), they will lose their moisture after this amount of time. This recipe can easily be doubled, tripled or quadrupled (we have tripled this when Mr T wanted to take some for morning tea at work).

A note on raw cacao.... a lot of people think cacao and cocoa are the same thing (don't worry I used to think this too) but it is really not. Cacao is raw cocoa bean powder whereas cocoa has been roasted at high temperatures. You can taste the difference between the two; cacao begins bitter but has a rich chocolatey flavour, cocoa just tastes like a whole lot of bitter- blech! If you decide to try this recipe, I encourage you to taste the cacao (not much, just a small pinch) and compare it to cocoa, I'm sure you will taste the difference. This, to me, is what settled the debate as to whether they were the same thing. Another difference is that they are a different colour; cocoa is light brown and cacao is darker in colour. Now, to complicate things; dutched cocoa is something completely different where the cocoa has been treated with an alkalysing agent to give it a neutral pH rather than an acidic pH (like natural cocoa), it has a darker colour again and has a higher solubility. So the chemically treated and heat treated versions of cocoa are purported to have less nutritional value as the nutrients are broken down during the treatment processes but raw cacao keeps its value as it is not treated in any way other than grinding. If you want to learn more about these differences, I hope you do a bit of research into it so that you can make up your own mind on where you sit.

For all the good people out there who want to copy and paste the recipe, here it is:

Chocolate chip cupcakes