Eggless Chocolatey Cucumber - Walnut Cupcakes

Each month, Kalyani keeps throwing an interesting combination of two ingredients for Magic Mingle, which seem to not at all work together in any recipe. I guess that's what makes this event more challenging. I don't wrack my brain over our personal issues as much as I do for blogging events, my husband notes amused. A salad was out of question as I had already posted it. This time as usual when I was going bonkers over cucumber - walnut combination, my husband decided to put me out of my misery and suggested to core the cucumber and fill it with walnut stuffing. I wasn't sure whether he was serious or joking. I therefore decided to leave it for another time. :)

I took the hint of walnuts and decided to settle with a baking recipe since I like the crunch, the nut offers. And also I wanted it to be chocolatey to mask the flavor of cucumber, if any present. I  prepared these cupcakes inspired by these zucchini ones from here.

I didn't cream the sugar and butter since I was using a smaller proportion of ingredients. I just combined all the ingredients as in case of muffins. I used the chocolate frosting and sprinkled with walnuts. The resulting cupcakes had a perfect fluffy, moist texture with current amount of sweetness. Even the kids couldn't guess the presence of cucumber.

Ingredients: (yield 7 cupcakes)
3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
6 Tbsp sugar
3/4 baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk + 1 Tbsp vinegar
2 Tbsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup peeled and shredded cucumber without seeds
1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts (Save 2 Tbsp for sprinkling on the tops.)

Method:
1. Add vinegar to milk in a cup and leave aside for five minutes for the mixture to curdle.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 deg F. Line the muffin cups with paper liners or grease them.
3. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder.
4. Add the curdled milk mixture, butter, sugar, vanilla, cucumber and walnuts to the dry ingredients. Stir until just combined.
5. Fill the muffin cups up to about 2/3rds with the batter and bake for 15 - 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted at the center comes out clean. Mine were done in 16 minutes.
6. Cool them on a wire rack. Remove them from the muffin tin and frost them when they are completely cool. Frost and sprinkle the remaining walnuts.

Note:
If not frosting, increase the sugar quantity in the recipe by 2 -3 Tbsp. They will be bland otherwise.

 

This goes to BM#24 under the theme of "Cooking with Appliances". Check here to find out what others are cooking during the marathon.

Comments