I Baked a Giant Cupcake (Kinda) + chocolate cake and buttercream recipe

Hey folks, so even though I have a readathon going on, I also had a good old time baking a cake and hoping that it would go right. It doesn’t look as great as I wanted it to but then again I haven’t been baking long and was basing all of my ideas from Pinterest, cause, of course, that always goes well.

Anyway, with cakes like these I can never figure out how to cook something in a pan this deep whilst making sure that it cooks all the way through and doesn’t burn, so it was a bit frustrating that I had to cut off about a fifth of both halves to as they were burnt, and the inside wasn’t entirely cooked…

But I managed it! It was a little smaller than I expected, so I think if I make it again (and I will) I need to make some more mixture to make it larger, and also get the timings/temp right.

The buttercream was, IMHO, pretty delish, and I added some chocolate chips onto the top – I’m really glad I did that, because not only did it make it look better, but it added some nice variation to the buttercream which was a tinsy bit sickly as I put quite a lot on.

So, here’s the recipe I used, I kind of winged it and hoped for the best. If I were you, though, and you have the same tin I do (which is one from Tiger, and the base is about as big as a Cadbury chocolate finger for some perspective (about as big as your ring finger)) I would do the measurements in brackets, as that’s what I’m going to be doing next time, but I thought I would share the measurements I actually did as well. Make it bigger or smaller if you want a bigger or smaller giant cupcake.

Ingredients for Cake

• 5 (6) eggs
• 250g (300g) butter
• 250g (300g) caster sugar
• 230g (270g) self-raising flour
• 20g (30g) cocoa powder
• Pinch of salt

Simply mix all of the ingredients together. I usually do the all-in-one method but for this cake I creamed the butter & sugar, then whisked in the eggs, before adding the flour and cocoa powder bit by bit. For a cake with a lot of ingredients, this makes it far easier to combine. Although, if I’d had an electric whisk, I probably would’ve done it all-in-one. Now as I said my baking was a bit skew-iff, but I put it in the oven for about 20-30 minutes at 200C with fan. I did have to cut off some burnt bits, but although the inside looked gooey, it firmed up pretty well on the cooling rack. I took out the top of the cupcake first, and then cooked the bottom bit for about 4 minutes longer. If you’re baking, I’d put it in for 20 minutes, and then just keep checking every 5 minutes or so.

Ingredients for Buttercream

• 200g butter
• 400g icing sugar
• 30g (ish?) cocoa powder

Now for this one, you need to whisk the butter first and then fold in the icing sugar little bit by little bit. I probably added in about 20 – 30g at a time. Otherwise, you will get an icing sugar explosion. Now, I put “ish” for the cocoa powder because I just put it in until it tasted chocolately enough so I don’t really know how I did it. Soz! Anyway, this covered the middle & the top of the cake, and I even had a mugful left over afterwards.

So there you go: my baking adventures, and a recipe! Don’t say I don’t spoil you.

I hope that you might find this blog post helpful / just enjoyed looking at my pictures. It wasn’t the most beautiful cake in the world, but it tasted good (I have a flat to attest to that) and it was an experiment. I know what to change for next time, but will be doing some research into the time scale first!

Hope you’re well! Until the next time; Hx