We've been baking a lot this month and this recipe for Chocolate Cupcake Day on Monday 18th October, feels truly decadent with its rich Blood Orange chocolate buttercream icing!
Easy to make at home, and you can add whatever you like on the top to garnish - we used some sweet candied blood orange pieces, but another idea was half a Jaffa Cake on each, ( thats if you can stop yourself eating them all beforehand!).
Ingredients for the cupcakes:
125g softened butter
125g caster sugar
50g milk chocolate*
15ml Blood Orange Perfetto
2 large eggs
100g self raising flour
25g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
Zest of 1 orange
For the icing:
175g butter 320g sifted icing sugar 100g dark chocolate* (at least 70% cocoa) 1-2 tsp Cointreau or orange gin liqueur
*melted in the microwave or a Bain Marie
Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line your cake tin with cupcake cases or folded parchment.
Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs a little at a time, beating well.
Now gently fold in the Perfetto Blood Orange gin, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and orange zest.
Finally, stir in the melted milk chocolate.
Into each case, spoon enough mixture to come up just over half way.
Place your cake tin in the centre of the oven and bake for 20 minutes, they should have risen and be springy to the touch. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.
While the cakes are cooking, make your butter icing by mixing together all the ingredients until smooth. Wait until the cakes have completely cooled before decorating them with the icing - you can either pipe it from a bag or use the back of a flat knife to spread the icing over the cupcakes.
Top with anything orangey, we used candied blood orange to give it that extra sweet tang!