Delicious Double Chocolate Cupcakes

These cupcakes are awfully good – Use a good quality cocoa for the cake, the darker the better.

Makes about 20 cupcakes.

Ingredients

Cupcakes

• 
225g butter, at room temperature, cubed
• 1 ½ cups caster sugar
• 3 free-range eggs, at room temperature
• 1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla essence or paste
• 2 cups standard/plain flour
• ¾ cup dark cocoa
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 1 cup milk

Real chocolate icing

• 125ml (1/2 cup) cream
• 200g good-quality dark chocolate, chopped
• 125g butter, at room temperature, cubed
• 4 ½ – 5 cups icing sugar

Method

Cupcakes
Preheat oven to 180°c conventional bake. Line 2 x standard 12 pan muffin tins with cupcake liners (24 total – just do them in two batches if you only have one muffin tray).

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda into a bowl, and stir with a whisk to combine evenly. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar until very pale and very light and fluffy. Scrape the sides half way through.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating very well after each addition and scraping down the sides with a spatula each time. Beat in the vanilla essence.

In three parts each, alternate adding thirds of the dry ingredients and the milk. With each addition, mix gently (don’t beat) until the ingredients are just incorporated – but at the end, the mixture should be smooth. Again, scrape down the sides as you go.

Fill the cupcake liners just over ¾ full, and bake in middle of the oven for about 16 minutes, or when no longer wobbly on top.

Cool the cupcakes in the tin for 10 minutes, then remove and let cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

Melt the chocolate and whip it together with the soft butter until pale. Whip the cream and fold together then sift in the icing sugar.

Put into a piping back with a large nozzle and pipe over the cool cupcakes.

Add sprinkles if desired and try to not eat them all in on go. It’s s hard as these are delicious!