Oh be quiet. Didn't your mum ever teach you that it's poor form to make fun of the sorrowful? Besides, looks aren't everything you know, these cupcakes happen to taste very good. I am fairly certain brownies started out as a mistake.
What follows is an object lesson to benefit all mankind. It tells the story in pictures of a sequence of unfortunate choices.
It started out with a bad banana and the idea of making use of it in cupcakes with 50% oatmeal in place of flour. So far so good.
The milled oatmeal, regular AP flour, sugar, and cocoa, with a touch of salt ↑.
Let's take a moment to appreciate ARTS because it's downhill from here.
The liquid portion is one regular egg and 1/2 cup vegetable oil, and the banana whisked in a cup using an immersion blender.
A cup of very strong espresso is prepared using the AeroPress. The liquid portion is adjusted with the strong coffee. This is probably where things started to go wrong. Too much coffee, too thin a batter.
I wanted to use both baking soda and baking powder for a triple quadruple whammy of lift, but the batter was insufficiently acidic for the baking soda to react. Lacking any fruity acid besides oranges, and unwilling to use cream of tartar, I decided to use rice vinegar instead. I like rice vinegar and I thought it would be an interesting change. It's a weak vinegar, too weak. I had to keep adding more and more until it became ridiculous and even more wet. Still, the batter tasted good.
Once the baking soda is added and the reaction progresses, then the solution is brought into balance. Theoretically. So it would be possible then to include baking powder, which is already balanced, for backup lift that is activated by heat and therefore staged. Time-released, as it were. That was probably the second mistake.
I was going for lava-cupcakes. I poked a few chocolate chips onto each cupcake and left them there on top for them to sink on their own, counting on the batter to fill up around them and for the chips to stop sinking before they hit the bottom. That was probably the third mistake. Apparently chips just do what chips do, which is melt. So this would be a third mistake.
This is a bit depressing. Let's pause for more ARTS!
I knew better than to fill the cups to the top, but I was imagining the cupcakes holding together and becoming tall. That was not possible with such thin batter so they poured over the edges and dripped all over onto a pizza stone, there to burn and stinking up the whole place. I suppose it would be possible to ring the cups with parchment strips to contain the batter within paper cylinders as it lifted beyond the rims of the cups, but as it was this went down as a fourth mistake. It drained the cupcakes of their volume.
Conclusion: Fail
1) A thicker sturdy batter is better than a thin wet batter. Error on the side of thick batters, if error one must.
2) Consider instant espresso instead of liquid.
3) Don't worry about using both baking soda and baking powder. If the batter is neutral then use baking powder and leave it at that. If the batter is acidic then use baking soda, but get it into the cups immediately because it reacts quickly.
4) If you're going for lava cupcakes, then dust the chips with flour and press them into the center of the liquid batter. The flour coating should help the chips hold their place. They will not find their proper place in the center on their own. Or maybe just forget about all that.
5) The banana cannot be tasted at all. Use more banana and less chocolate.
6) Don't fill the cups all the way.
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