Mississippi Mud Cupcakes with Fudge Frosting

It is finally the 20th of the last month of 2012!! I have been waiting for this day for so long because our designated cake for this month's Cake Slice Bakers is Mississippi Mud Cupcakes :) Sounds awesome isn't it? I was pretty excited when I first heard about it.

Have you heard of the Mississippi Mud Pie before? If you have, you might not have known how it was derived from. From my part of the world, we would have heard of it every now and then but definitely no history class on this before ;) Well, this chocolate dessert is said to be indigenous in South America as it not only contains of simple and accessible ingredients but it also said to resemble the dense, nutrient-rich mud which lines the banks of the river that gives it this name.

Having said that, the two common versions would be the Mississippi mud pie where it is made into a pie (obviously) where the filling is rich, dense and very gooey and when this is sliced open, the filling oozes out like a 'raft' of chocolate cake that floats on top of the dessert. The other version is the form of a simple chocolate cake with rich dark chocolate icing and it may also be frosted with a pudding like frosting where it closely resembles the famous muddy river banks of Mississippi.

Source: http://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/mississippi-mud-cakes.htm

In Julie Richardson's "Vintage Cakes", she cleverly designed it in the form of a cupcake. I've decided not to do any different variation from Julie's version this time :) But I'm going to use fudge frosting instead of her marshmallow frosting version for a few reasons - 1) I haven't gotten a candy thermometer :( and 2) fudge frosting will probably contribute to the Mississippi mud effect I'm trying to show on the cupcakes. This whole recipe will give you 24 cupcakes and I just halved everything off this recipe to make a dozen cupcakes.

**For those who are interested in a 'little' baking science, the main reason why wet ingredients should be added to dry instead of the other way round is because dry ingredients are lighter, less dense and less viscous than the wet ones where this means that the dry ingredients have a tendency to float on top of the wet ones. This will hence, form sort of a 'skin' which prevents the wet from distributing well throughout the dry ones. Hence, you will tend to end up with clumps of dry, unmixed and uncooked dry ingredients. Pouring the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients forces agitation and a more uniform distribution.

This is a perfect gift for Sabrina which is delightfully preggie with her 3rd kid. Awesome!! I hope she loves it as much as I do :):)

See the excerpt of her message to me "Kids enjoyed the cupcakes! Elisha lick the fudge first!" That immediately brought a smile to my face :) What could be a better affirmation than to have people loving  your bakes that were baked with love in the first place?

Further, I made it once before even before I could post it up here. Here it is. Another Christmas gift!!

Featured on AFC Fan Submission December 2012!!

I am also going to submit this to Tea Time Treats which is hosted by both Lavender and Loveage and What Kate Baked.  December's challenge is hosted by What Kate Baked.