Red Wine and Brown Butter Chocolate Cake

This happens when you take a great recipe and make it even better:
Red wine in a cake already sounded fantastic. However, I made this cake for my flatmates birthday, and she really loves chocolatey chocolate cakes. And the red wine chocolate cake I found over at smittenkitchen struck my fancy, but really did not contain enough chocolate.

There are not many things I consider to be true without exception, but more chocolate is always better. So I added chocolate chips to the batter. Then I made a chocolate ganache to top the cake. More chocolate. After that, I really did not know how to add more chocolate.
I cant help but make easy recipe more complicated. Where the original recipe used regular butter, I decided to brown mine. I couldn't really taste the brown butter after the cake was baked, but I want to believe that it added another layer of flavour to the already amazing cake.

Well, the birthday cake was eaten way too quickly, and I was looking through my facebook friends to find someone who lives close I could bake this cake for. We're invited to a party tomorrow, and since I could not find someone to bake for, I decided to make the cake again to bring with me. Only this time I changed it up again and made cupcakes out of the cake. I also changed a few things up again, since the batter for the cake was rather liquid and I thought that this might make it difficult to fill the cupcake liners. I think this recipe should also work in cake form, since I did not change that much.

Red Wine and Brown Butter Chocolate Cupcakes
Adapted from the Red Wine Chocolate Cake from smitten kitchen

Ingredients:
100g Butter
230g brown sugar, or a mix of white and brown sugar
1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
1 dl red wine
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
130g flour
40g Dutch processed chocolate powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 package of chocolate chips, mine was 160g
1 egg white

140g chocolate
2 tablespoons red wine
3-4 tablespoons heavy cream
slivered almonds (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350°C. Butter 12 muffin cups, or line them with cupcake liners.

Heat the butter in a small pan over medium-high heat. It will start to crackle, just let it on the heat, stir from time to time, but watch it carefully. Once brown little spots appear on the bottom of the pan, take it off the heat and pour it in mixing bowl. (It's best not to use a pan with a dark bottom for this, or you wont see the browning of the butter. Measure the sugar and add it to the butter. Whisk well. Then add the egg and the egg yolk, reserving the egg white. Add the red wine and the vanilla extract. Sift the flour, he chocolate powder, the baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon into the wet ingredients. Incorporate well. Add the chocolate chips. Beat the egg white until stiff and mix it into the batter until barely incorporated. Don't overmix.

With the help of two spoons fill the batter into the muffin cups. They wont rise that much so fill them at least 2/3 up. Put them in the oven and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until a tester inserted comes out clean. Take them out of the oven and let them rest in the cups for a few minutes, then remove them to cool completely.

When the cupcakes are cool, prepare the ganache. Heat the chocolate and the cream on medium heat in a small pan. Stir often and add more cream if the ganache seems to be too thick. It should be spreadable but not runny.
I wanted to sprinkle my cupcakes with almonds, so I crush the almonds slivers between my fingers, I used about 3 tablespoons of almonds.
Put your cupcakes, the ganache and the almonds in front of you. Spoon some of the ganache on top of one cupcake, and spread it evenly with a knife. Sprinkle with the almonds if you want to. Set aside and frost all cupcakes in the same manner. Set aside until the ganache has hardened, I put mine in the fridge.