Who doesn't love a chocolate cupcake? And if you're new to baking, cupcakes are a great thing to start with.
You dont need a fancy mixer to make these, in fact most of the time I use my hand mixer to make cupcakes and save my stand mixer for bigger bakes.
This makes 10-12 cupcakes depending on the size of your cupcake cases. I use 50mm cupcake cases and get 10 cupcakes from this recipe
Ingredients
Cupcakes
100g Baking Spread (ie stork)
100g Caster Sugar
100g Self Raising Flour
25g Cocoa Powder
2 medium eggs
Buttercream
100g Unsalted Butter
300g Icing Sugar
40g Cocoa Powder
Some milk or cooled boiled water, I normally use around 40mls (2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons)
Cupcakes
- Turn the oven on - 160°C fan (180°C non fan)
- Lay out your cupcake tray (or baking tray) and your cupcakes cases
- I always weigh out all my ingredients before I start
- Put your sugar and baking spread into one bowl, flour and cocoa powder into a second bowl, crack your eggs into a glass, if you find this messy try a small bowl instead
- Mix your sugar and baking spread together, you want to keep mixing until it starts to get paler, it should go from light yellow to cream
- Add in your eggs and mix for 30 seconds to a minute
- Add in your flour and cocoa powder then mix until everything is combined, you shouldn't be able to see any flour
- Using an ice cream scoop or a spoon put your mixture in the cupcake cases, you don't want to overfill the cases, you should have at least a finger sized gap at the top
- Bake for 25 minutes - they are ready when they spring back if you press gently on the top. If they arent ready after the first bake pop them back in the oven for 5 minutes at a time until they spring back
Buttercream
- Start with soft unsalted butter in a bowl
- Add half of the icing sugar and cocoa powder and mix for 30 seconds
- Add the second half of the icing sugar and cocoa powder and mix until it resembles sand
- Add a drop of milk or cooled boiled water, and mix well. Only add small amounts at a time until you get the consistency you want.
- You want the buttercream to be a similar consistency to toothpaste so it's easy to pipe.
My favourite piping tips are a 1M or a 2D, they are quite similar and give a rose like affect
If you're not a fan of piping then try my buttecream trick on instagram using greaseproof paper!
Happy Baking
Tracey x