We started by making cupcakes using our favorite chocolate cake recipe. Tasters liked the real chocolate flavor, but their crumbly texture made them impossible to eat without a fork. To strengthen the batter we cut back on both kinds of chocolate, then we found two ways to enhance the chocolate flavor without disrupting the batter’s structure: we mixed the cocoa with hot coffee, and we replaced the butter with more neutral-flavored vegetable oil. Still, we wanted more chocolate flavor. Could we enhance the structure of the cupcake so that we could then add back extra chocolate without overtenderizing? Substituting bread flour for all-purpose flour did the trick. Specifically engineered for gluten development, bread flour turned out a cupcake that was markedly less crumble-prone, but not tough.