21 cupcakes

I love Birthdays and parties. I am the unofficial party planner in my group of friends and also the unofficial baker. A friend of mine recently turned 21 and we celebrate all 21st's as surprises.

I surprised her with 21 cupcakes!

I know I am pretty awesome :p.

I decided to bake marble cupcakes for her using this recipe.

I love the swirly pattern that you can make with this cake.

Usually a marble cake is used as a tea cake and can be quite dry. You can use brown sugar instead of white sugar to add more moistness or just add some tablespoons of maple syrup to the batter to make it soft and moist.

The cake is covered with a chocolate ganache icing.

I find ganache very easy to make. I heated 600 ml of Amul Fresh cream on low heat till it started bubbling on the edges and turned off the heat. Then I added about 400 grams of chopped dark chocolate. I used a mixture of Cadbury Bournville (which is pretty decent) and Trader Joe's dark chocolate. You can vary the proportion of the cream to the chocolate depending on your resources.

the 21 cupcakes

There is also a picture of me with the cupcakes on my About Me Page.

What have you done for your friends on their birthdays?