Happy girlfriends day! Wine chocolate cupcakes anyone?

Today is a International Friendship Day (which I would like to call girlfriends day). For this occasion I have decided to bake wine chocolate cupcakes for my friend Vickie. Why? I will try to tell you in this short (as much as I can) story.

Basically, few months ago I have been given a pack of “After Eights” (mint chocolate) to pass it to Vickie (people seem to think that we are one body even if we live far away from each other). Everyone who knows me should know that I should not be entrusted with chocolate as before I knew it the need to eat something sweet has hit me so I turned my need to Vickie’s “After Eights”. Although Vickie was forgiving I still felt like I should replace what was hers. So today (Friendship Day)  have given me a perfect occasion to do just that!

So there you go, back to the cupcakes. My decision on baking wine chocolate cupcakes was purely based on the ingredients Vickie likes. These include not only wine and chocolate, but also healthy ingredients such as wholemeal flour and brown sugar. Also the cupcakes are vegan and low in fat! Yey!

WINE CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES

(makes 12)

• 180g cups whole wheat flour
• 40g unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 150g brown sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 75g olive oil
• 85g black current jam
• 240ml red wine
• 150g dark chocolate
• 12 red grapes

1. Combine all the ingredients in one bowl.

2. Divide the mixture into 12 lined muffin tins

3. Bake in the preheated oven (170C) for about 20 min or until toothpick comes out clean when inserted in one of the cupcakes.

4. Let the cupcakes cool before the decorating

6. Melt the chocolate over the pot of boiling water (make sure the bowl you melting the chocolate in doesn’t touch the water) and spoon it on top of each cupcake.

7. Top each cupcake with the grape and let it cool once again.

Before serving sprinkle some coco powder just to make it extra elegant ;)

Rasa xox