Chocolate cupcakes

After spending most of last Friday dipping Strawberry's into chocolate and stuffing them into cupcakes I decided to go back to something a bit simpler. Well sort off, Something simple actually ended up with me playing about with ice cream cones and slicing up chocolate wafers - I just couldn't help try something different.

There's a charity cake sale in my work this week so of course I volunteered to contribute (any excuse to bake and if it's for charity all the better!)

I thought I'd start with a favourite - chocolate cupcakes, some with Vanilla Icing and some with chocolate! I thought I'd mix it up a bit with the decorations for variation and I even found tiny cupcake cases for little bite-size cakes. (Not sure these will make it to work once boyfriend spots them)

Here they are :

Tiny cakes,

Vanilla icing  - you can really see how tiny the little ones are here

You may have noticed the Ice cream cone in the middle of the plate in the pictures, well I had a little experiment and filled the cone about 3/4 full with the cupcake batter and baked for about 25 mins then I used Vanilla Icing to look like ice cream and a chocolate wafer sticking out. Here they are

and all together

And here's how to make chocolate cupcakes

Makes 12
100g Plain flour
20g Cocoa Powder
140g Caster Sugar
1 1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
40g Butter
120ml Milk
1 egg
1/4 tsp Vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180C, Gas 3

Put flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder and butter in a bowl and mix either with an electric whisk or  rub together with your fingertips until you have a sandy consistency and everything is combined.

Whisk the milk, eggs and vanilla together and add slowly to the mixture beating out any lumps. Mix for a couple of minutes till everything is well combined but don't overmix.

Spoon the mix into paper cases till about 2/3 full and bake for 20 - 25 mins or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

For the frosting:

Chocolate: Ices 12 cakes
300g Icing Sugar
100g Butter
40g Cocoa powder
40ml Milk

Mix together sugar, butter and cocoa till well blended then add the milk slowly mixing until you get the right consistency. Be careful not to overmix.

Vanilla: ices 12 cakes
250g icing sugar
80g butter
25ml milk

Follow the same method as with the chocolate frosting (just without the cocoa)

And that's It! Simple, tasty, traditional Chocolate cupcakes.

Bye for now

Cupcake Kris