Chinese takeaway Chocolate Cupcakes

I had a friend visiting this week (a teacher on summer holidays) so we decided to tackle one of Delia's recipes during her stay. Laura leafed through Delia's Cakes and came up with her Chocolate 'Surprise' Cupcakes on page 92. And surprising they were.

Now, I make chocolate cupcakes pretty much every week at work, but I have never made them like this. Surprise number one was that the cupcakes contained mashed potato. Weird. However, not the strangest thing we would put in the mix. Not by a long shot.

The recipe itself wasn't too tricky. Boiling and mashing a potato was a bit of a hassle, but we coped (by sunbathing in the garden while the water boiled). We had to melt some of the ingredients together and then mix them together with the dry ones. So far so good.

Having long ago given up nearly all of my baking equipment to my business, I found that all I had at home were a couple of pretty old fairy cake trays, and a bit of a random selection of cases to fit them. We picked out some blue ones, since Laura planned to take the cupcakes home to London for her (Man City loving) other half Chris to taste.

So, on to the second 'surprise' - and this one makes mashed potato seem perfectly normal. Delia's recipe calls for a level teaspoon of Chinese five spice... what??! She says you could leave it out for children, but as two fully grown adults we thought we'd give it a try - trusting in Delia's wisdom. What a mistake.

While they were baking, a strange smell which somehow merged together two lovely smells (one a Chinese takeaway, and one a batch of chocolate cupcakes) into one very strange one. They were a bit smaller than cupcakes, so we made around 18 rather than 12 and they took a bit less time to bake than suggested (just under 15 minutes).

The icing was pretty straightforward to make - we melted together some chocolate and some condensed milk then popped it in the fridge to cool. It took far longer than Delia's 5 minutes to firm up enough to spread (in fact, it was still pretty runny when we came to use it) but spread we did. We tasted one before the icing and it really was an odd taste. Not unpleasant, but not exactly a joy for the taste-buds either. We thought the super-sweet icing might help, and it did. As did the addition of chocolate buttons. But they still tasted just a little bit wrong. The potato did make them soft and moist, but the spice I would definitely call an experiment that didn't work (sorry Delia).

You might be wondering what Chris made of the cupcakes once they had made their journey back to London. I think it is best represented in question and answer form...

L: What is your initial response?
C: I need water
L: Now you've had some water, what is your initial response to either flavour or texture?
C: Gingery
L: What do they make you think of?
C: Ed Sheeran (in reference to the ginger taste I assume!)
L: What do you think are in them?
C: Ginger and chocolate
L: What is your response to the information they contain mashed potato and Chinese five spice?
C: I can't taste mashed potato
L: You're not supposed to - it's for texture
C: They're alright actually.

I think Chris sums it up correctly (and ever so eloquently)... "they're alright actually". Thanks to Chris and Laura for their help with this one! And thanks to Delia for getting me to buy Chinese five spice, as it made a very tasty chicken stir fry the following night!