Melted Bento Cupcakes

Hi Guys,

Over the time that I have been interested in cooking, I've acquired quite a large collection of cookery books, a great number of them focusing solely on cupcakes! One of my favourite books contained a recipe called "Melted Bento Cupcakes."

Bento means a single portioned meal in Japan and the authors of this book claim that this word perfectly sums up this cake, "too good to share!"

The main cake is chocolate and the icing is white chocolate. As well as this the main cake includes chopped pieces of chocolate and a caramel filled chocolate in the centre. The recipe said to use milk chocolate pieces within the cake and the caramels, but due to a lack of these ingredients, I used dark chocolate instead and a  mini creme egg in the centre for a bit more festivity as you can see in the photo below!

The inside of the cupcake was stuffed with extra chocolate pieces and the creme egg had seemed to crystallize and turned into a delicious gooey mess inside it! Also on top of the cakes, for extra decoration, you had to place some fragments of mikado (a chocolate covered biscuit stick!) which completed it! 

Melted Bento Cupcakes - From "Making Cupcakes with LOLA"

Making Time - 40mins 

Baking Time - 30mins

Ingredients -

• 95g Self-raising Flour
• 60g Cocoa Powder
• A Pinch of Salt
• 125g Butter, melted
• 225g Caster Sugar
• 1tsp Vanilla Essence
• 2 Eggs, beaten
• 175g Milk Chocolate, chopped (Or dark chocolate)
• 12 Caramel-Filled Chocolates (Or mini creme eggs as an alternative)
• Chocolate Sticks, to decorate (Mikados)

White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

• 50ml Double Cream
• 150g White Chocolate, chopped
• 60g Butter, cubed
• 250g Icing Sugar
• 125g Cream Cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Centigrade/350 degrees Fahrenheit/Gas mark 4. Prepare a tray of 12 cupcake cases.

2. Sift together the flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl. Then, put the melted butter, sugar, vanilla essence and eggs and beat together until well mixed.

3. Mix the dry ingredients into the sugar mixture and combine the chopped chocolate. Distribute the half the mixture into the cases and then place a caramel filled chocolate into the centre of each. Fill the cases with the remainder of the mixture, so that the chocolates are covered. Place them in the oven for 30mins.

4. Whilst the cupcakes cool start to make the icing. Firstly, put the cream in a saucepan and heat until it begins to bubble around the edges, then remove from the heat and stir in the white chocolate to get a glossy ganache and allow it to cool to room temperature.

5. As the ganache cools, put the butter in a mixing bowl and beat with a hand whisker until light and fluffy. Add the cream cheese and the icing sugar and beat for 2-3mins. Beat in the ganache, once cooled, then place in the fridge to allow to firm so that it can be piped.

6. After an hour or until the icing is stiffened, take the ganache from the fridge and place in a piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe onto the cooled cupcakes. Decorate with the chocolate sticks, broken into lengths.

Please Enjoy!!!