Adventures in . . . Chocolate "Friands"

My new cookbook obsession is "Tartine," from the unbelievable bakery of same name in San Francisco. In the past few days I've made apple-pear galettes and chocolate croissants from it, but by far the best--and easiest--thing I've made has been these mini chocolate cupcakes. They are as easy to make as vegan cupcakes--it's amazing how much time you save when you don't have to cream butter and eggs--and they are as rich and intense as a flourless chocolate cake. I made them in very mini size, and I don't think that one could handle much more than that.


Here's the recipe for the mini cake:

Tartine Chocolate Friands (makes 24 very mini muffins--this is 1/2 of their recipe, which they claimed made 24, but those must be 24 medium-sized muffins)

Preheat oven to 350. Line 24 mini-muffin-cup tins, or butter and flour baking sheets.

Chop 3 oz bittersweet chocolate, and place in medium mixing bowl. (I put it in a giant measuring cup, so that I could pour straight from the cup. If you do this, they become pretty much one-bowl cupcakes, which is sort of fantastic.)

In a small saucepan, melt 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter over medium heat.

While it's melting, combine in a medium bowl:
3/4 C + 1 1/2 t sugar
1/4 C + 1/8 C flour
1 T cornstarch
1/8 t salt

Pour butter over chocolate, and whisk until smooth. Add the flour mixture to the chocolate mixture in 3 batches, whisking well after each addition. Add 1 egg and whisk until combined. Then add 1 more egg and whisk just until incorporated.

Fill cups 3/4 full. Bake until cakes start to crack on top--I baked them about 12-13 minutes.


Now, for half of the cupcakes, I just left them as they were and sifted some powdered sugar on top, and they were terrific. I highly recommend this option.

For the other half, I tried to make them look like the ones in the book, and topped them with a chocolate ganache. Then I REALLY tried to make them look like the ones in the book, which had a light brown stripe on them.

I was very annoyed that the book didn't explain what was used to make that stripe, but I experimented by pouring some boiling cream over some heath-bar chunks, and then sticking them in the microwave to melt some more. This didn't really melt the heath bar, but it melted it enough that I could put it in a makeshift pastry bag and squeeze enough out to make the pretty decoration. Anyway, I think this was overkill, and that the plain ones with powdered sugar were perfect as they were. But here's the recipe for that:

Place 2 oz bittersweet chocolate in one bowl, and 2 oz heath bar chunks in another. Bring a little more than a 1/3 C of heavy cream almost to a boil, and pour most of it over the bittersweet chocolate, and some over the heath bar. Whisk the chocolate to form a ganache. Then put the heath bar in the microwave for 30-second increments, stirring or whisking at each interval. Scoop it into a ziplock and trim a teeny hole in one corner, and pipe it in a thin line on the side of a cupcake. Honestly, I don't think it's worth it, but I'm just letting you all know how I did it.