in store) and a Spider cupcake holder (£1.50 in store), we decided to dedicate this week’s Cupcake Sunday to Halloween..
I’ve been wanting to make some chocolate orange cupcakes for a while and the idea of bright orange icing seemed to fit with Halloween so we went with that – that and the fact that I was given a bar of dark chocolate with orange pieces in it earlier in the week and every time I go in the kitchen it shouts me and begs me to eat it all 😉
Chocolate Orange Cupcakes
80g plain flour
20g cocoa
175g caster sugar
1 tsp baking power
50g butter / margarine
50g chocolate – I used a bar of 100g bar of Morrisons chocolate orange chocolate with orange rind pieces in it so used 100g rather than 50g – if you’re just using a normal chocolate orange bar or even something like chocolate orange segments you only need 50g.
1 large egg
125ml/4fl oz milk
Preheat the oven to 170 c.
Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder together. Add the butter and mix until it’s combined – an electric whisk or food processor is ideal here or your arm will hurt. A lot!
Keep mixing until it looks a bit like breadcrumbs.
Melt the chocolate and mix with the egg and milk in a separate bowl.
Mix the chocolate mixture with the flour mixture.
Spoon the mixture into the 12 cupcakes cases and bake for around 15-20 minutes.
For the Orange Buttercream
100g butter or margarine
250g icing sugar (very approximate)
1 orange
Orange food colouring if you want your icing to be extra orange coloured.
In a bowl mix the icing sugar with the butter and add the zest of 1 orange and the juice from half of it.
My orange was really, really juicy so I had to add lots more icing sugar on top of the 250g! I like to keep adding extra icing sugar so the icing is really stiff – it holds it’s shape better when you’re icing.
Mmmmmmmmm!
