Zest Up the Chocolate

So first I want to just apologize for not blogging in awhile. College and real life got in the way! But no worries to all my amazing readers because after a twenty-minute driving slash contemplative session, I decided to put a twist on a classic! So it has been a pretty slow Tuesday; just one of those days. But I figured since I had so much free time, why not and bake something? It has been awhile too so why not right? Now I'm not sure if I've mentioned it yet, but I'm a hardcore chocaholic. But ironically, I actually don't like eating chocolate cake that much because in my opinion, it's not smooth enough! But I will eat a chocolate cake if the frosting and toppings are crazy good. So this is exactly what I decided to bake. How about some orange-infused dark chocolate cupcakes with whipped cream topping and a generous sprinkle of chocolate wafer bits and orange zest? Yup, we're putting the zest in chocolate!


Ingredients

• A box of chocolate cake mix (or you could do it from scratch; I used cake mix to save time and for my mother's kitchen's sake)
• Three eggs
• 1/2 cup of oil
• 1/3 cup of milk
• 1/3 cup of freshly squeezed orange juice (or bought with no pulp)
• Whipped cream (I used store bought but you can certainly make it yourself by whipping together heavy cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract)
• One full ripe orange
• Chocolate wafers

Procedures

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and make sure your cupcake wrappers are prepared in advance inside the cupcake pan.
2. Wet ingredients: crack and beat three eggs then add the oil, milk, and orange juice. Blend everything together well. The orange juice is what's going to add that zesty flavor to the chocolate mix.
3. Next, add in your dry ingredients slowly. In my case, I just slowly added the cake mix in and kept on mixing until everything was blended in nice and thoroughly.
4. Poor the mixture into eat cupcake cup about 2/3 of the way up so that when you bake them, they do not overflow too excessively. Bake for about 22-25 minutes!
5. While you wait for your cupcakes to finish baking, you can prepare your toppings!
• For the chocolate wafer bits, just put chocolate wafers into a plastic bag and smash them until everything is course and fine.
• For the orange zest, just zest up one full orange (Tip: Before you squeeze your orange juice, zest the same orange first in advance to save oranges and money!)
• Put the whipped cream into a plastic-lock bag and squeeze all of the contents into one corner. When you're ready to frost the cupcakes, just snip the end of the bag and you have yourself a quick and easy pastry bag!
6. After your cupcakes are finished baking, pull them out and let them cool. 
7. Now the fun part can commence: whip those cupcakes and sprinkle a healthy dose of chocolate wafer bits and orange zest for a colorful and crunchy dessert!

I actually didn't frost all of my cupcakes because I left one or two of them for me to taste. When I was younger, I never really liked the idea of something fruity mixed into my chocolate. I only liked pure chocolate and nothing else. But as I grew older, I somehow developed a palette for fruit and chocolate whether it is fruity-infused chocolate cakes, chocolate covered dried fruits, or even simple Raisinets. So this orange-infused cake was actually quite delicious! There wasn't a powerful orangey burst in your mouth of course, but the hint of orange was just enough to give the classic chocolate cake something out of the ordinary. The whipped cream was light, the wafers added a crunch all together and the orange zest was definitely a great way to add some zest overall. The cooking time wasn't very long at all. For something that only took about half an hour at the most, it looks good enough to EAT!

I definitely went a bit out of my zone for this time around. I'm not the most skilled baker in the world, but I do like to try making food visually appealing and tastefully amazing the best that I can. I actually had my first orange-chocolate twist at a candy shop here in Boston called Truffles and yes, it is one of the few fruit-and-chocolate blends I loved! 

What is your favorite fruit-and-chocolate goodie?