Flourless Chocolate Cupcakes

A couple of months ago I volunteered to make a grain free cupcake birthday dessert for a friend's son's 6th birthday. They are on the Paleo or Primal lifestyle diet and do not eat any grains and usually do not eat sugar either. Obviously there is some sugar in chocolate but they do eat dark chocolate so I had two ideas for them: flour-less chocolate cake and chocolate mousse. They opted for the flour-less cake and I decided to try it out as cupcakes. I was delighted to find that it worked out very well.

This is such a great recipe because it only uses four ingredients! 

16 ounces of dark chocolate

1 stick(half a cup) and 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter

5 eggs separated

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I would like to try this will very strong coffee too at some point)

First preheat an oven to 375 degrees. Line cupcake pan with the wrappers. 

Next chop the chocolate (or I just used good quality 80% dark chocolate chips). 

In a double broiler (or like I do a heat proof bowl over a pan of about 2 inches of boiling water( place the chocolate, butter, and vanilla. Stir to keep it all moving and melting evenly so the chocolate does not burn. Once this is all melted together remove from the heat. 

Next whip the egg whites until they produce stiff peaks but do not over whip them. Move the egg whites to a new bowl. Then beat the egg yokes together.

Combine the egg yokes with the chocolate stiring constantly, you don't want to end up with scrambled eggs in the chocolate!

Fold in about 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate and then follow with the rest of the egg whites. Fold them in until you can not see any of the whites.

Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3-3/4 of the way full. You should be able to get 12 out of this recipe.

Bake for 15 minutes and check for doneness with a toothpick it should still have a bit of cake come off and should look shiny on top like a brownie. You may still need to cook them for up to 10 minutes more. I started checking them at 15 and then ended up taking them out at about 20 minutes. Just try not to over cook them.

I served them with raspberry sauce made with raspberries, about 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, and 1/2 tablespoon local raw honey. I cooked  this until the raspberries were totally soft and then used the immersion blender to make them a sauce. I then added in a dollop of whipped cream for "frosting" at the time of serving the cupcakes.

These are actually not very difficult and pretty quick to make. AND oh so delicious!

I am using this recipe again next weekend for my daughter's third birthday, yay!

Later Addition: I did make these again for my daughter's birthday except as a full cake. I decided to use 1/4 of an avocado mixed in with the egg yoke to try and retain some moisture. It worked out really well. I highly recommend it. Here is what you do, when mixing the yoke in the blender add in 1/4 of an avocado and make sure to mix it until the avocado is very well mixed in and smooth. Then just add according to the recipe.