Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes with Gooey Nutella Frosting
This morning, on a bucketing rainy cold day, I went into the kitchen and said "Right. I am going to bake something."
Gazing into the pantry, the back of the cocoa box caught my eye with a recipe for chocolate cupcakes. "Brilliant," I thought. "Cupcakes are just the thing."
My problem was I didn't have butter. I didn't have caster sugar. I didn't have vanilla essence. I had just under a cup of flour. And the recipe was for twelve large cupcakes made in a muffin pan.
So I substituted a little. I used Dairysoft spreadable butter stuff (not margarine, but not entirely butter, I think it is blended with vegetable oil or something), brown sugar (which would, I reasoned, make the cupcakes fudgy rather than fluffy), a splash of Tia Maria (coffee liqueur) and all the flour I had. I divided the mixture into 36 small cupcakes rather than 12 muffins, and decreased the cooking time.
The cupcakes are beautiful. So soft and fudgy and delicious. I had to figure out a frosting worthy to pair with them. I browsed the pantry once more. Peanut butter, perhaps? I checked the jar, and there was barely a tablespoonn left. I put it aside and instead eyed the big jar of Nutella. Oh yes.
Since I just kind of made the frosting up, it turned out very gooey and no matter how much icing sugar I added, it seemed to stay the same consistency. So I plopped it on the cupcakes anyway.
They are an orgasm of fudgy chocolate deliciousness.
I'll give you the recipe, but it's kind of a mess and I measured everything really badly and didn't measure other things at all. But maybe you will have a happy messy muck-up like I did.
Chocolate Cupcakes
100g butter
1/3 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon-ish coffee liqueur
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup-ish SR flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
1/2 cup milk
Preheat oven to 180C, or fan-forced to 160C.
Cream butter and sugar until pale and creamy, add eggs and mix until combined.
Stir in flour, cocoa and bicarb, and add the milk and liqueur. Stir until all combined.
Spoon into around 30-36 cupcake pans or 12 muffin tins and bake for 12 (for cupcakes) or 15 (for muffins) minutes, baking times vary but I took mine out just before they bounced back, to keep them soft and fudgy.
Gooey Nutella Frosting
100g Nutella
50-70g Smooth Peanut Butter
dash of milk and tia maria
3 cups icing sugar
Mix all together. Add more icing sugar if it is way too gooey for you.
Try not to eat it all before it goes on the cupcakes. You'll probably have way too much, but just in case.