As you can probably tell baking is not my best skill 🙂 But it doesn’t bother me, as long as the final effect is tasty. I passionately can spend hours in the kitchen trying to make something pretty, usually inspired by sweet creations made by others – and most often it comes out like this. But as soon as I make a first bite and I can taste chocolate fluffiness, and creamy texture of mascarpone mixed with juicy raspberries it doesn’t matter how it looks like. For sugar eaters it might not be sweet enough, as I didn’t add any sugar or sugar replacement to mascarpone. But for me it’s sweet enough. I prefer to be able to taste slight bitterness of chocolate and gentle sweetness of fruits. I think cherries would be also delicious. Chocolate and cherries and chocolate and raspberries are my favourite combinations.
I used a muffin tray and baking paper cut in squares instead of proper cupcake liners. You can do the same or use fancy, colourful cupcake liners – they will look much prettier that’s for sure. I don’t bake often enough to have them on hand, that’s why I always use bits of baking paper.
It’s a perfect recipe for all of you who cannot tolerate gluten as these cupcakes are free from flour. They are made only with 4 ingredients: eggs, dark chocolate, butter and sugar replacement. With simple mix of mascarpone and fruits on top. These cupcakes are very light and that’s their downside – you won’t even notice when you eat them all, and you will need to make a new batch.
flourless chocolate and raspberry cupcakes
NOTES: my measuring cup is regular 250ml glass
INGREDIENTS for 12 cupcakes:
- 100g dark chocolate (I’ve used Lindt 90% cocoa)
- 100g butter
- 5 large eggs
- 1/3 cup xylitol (or any other kind of sugar replacement or regular sugar, if you don’t mind)
- 250 g mascarpone cheese
- 1 cup raspberries
DIRECTIONS
Break the chocolate in smaller pieces and place in a large glass bowl and melt over a double-boiler (pot with some boiling water, glass bowl placed inside, the bowl theoretically should not touch the surface of water but my usually touches and I didn’t manage to burn the chocolate yet). Add butter and stir until fully melted. Remove the bowl from the pot and let cool down to room temperature.
Now whip the egg whites. Separate the egg yolks and set them aside, we will use them later. In a bowl or a pot start whipping the egg whites, first on the slower program, after a minute or so you can use faster one (it will make you sure that all the whites are whipped and nothing stays on the bottom). Start adding sugar replacement and mix until you get soft peaks. I don’t like very sweet sweets, but if you feel like it’s not sweet enough for you, add more.
Heat the oven to about 160ºC.
Now go back to melted chocolate, if it’s room temperature add egg yolks and stir to combine. You can first add one spoon of chocolate to the egg yolks to warm them up, then pour them to the rest of chocolate.
Now slowly spoon by spoon start adding egg whites to chocolate, and stir gently using folding motion. You can easily do it using spatula or a big spoon. Always add egg whites to chocolate not the opposite, because whipped whites will deflate. You should get quite fluffy consistency.
Now fill up each cupcake liner, bake for about 25 minutes. After baking let it cool down completely.
Set aside couple raspberries and smash the rest with a fork. Whip mascarpone cheese with mashed raspberries. I used my icing kit to “decorate” cupcakes but mascarpone mixed with raspberries is not thick enough to keep the shape of icing tip, although still looks nicer than if I would use a spoon. Decorate each cupcake with couple raspberries and enjoy.
Eat Better Feel Happy 