Chocolate Orange Cupcake Recipe

The kids have been busy again in the kitchen making some yummy treats… Joys of School Holidays! These Chocolate Orange Cupcakes are really easy for the kids to make and taste as good as they look so we thought we would share the recipe with you

Ingredients for the cupcakes

125g (4oz) lightly salted softened butter
125g (4oz) caster sugar
2 eggs
125g (4oz) self-raising flour
25g (1oz) cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking powder
Finely grated rid of 2 oranges
Sprinkles or whatever you fancy to decorate

Ingredients for the icing

100g (3 ½ oz) plain chopped chocolate
100g (3 ½ oz) unsalted softened butter
125g (4oz) icing sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Method

Put the lightly salted butter, caster sugar, eggs, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and orange rind into a mixing bowl and mix together using an electric hand-held whisk for a minute or so until you have a light and creamy mixture.
Place your cupcake cases onto a baking tray and then evenly scoop the cake mixture into the cupcake cases. This mixture should make at least 12 cupcakes.
Bake the cupcakes in a preheated oven at 180 °C / Gas Mark 4 for 20 minutes. Make sure they have risen and are firm to touch then place on a wire rack to cool
To make the icing to go on top of the cupcakes melt the chocolate and leave to cool. Mix together the butter and icing sugar and cocoa powder in a separate bowl until its smooth and creamy. Stir the cooled melted chocolate into the butter sugar and cocoa powder mixture.
Once the cupcakes are cool enough pipe the icing in swirls onto the top of the cupcakes and add your decorations. If you don’t have a pipe bag set, then you can use what we did on these cupcakes – A freezer bag. Yup a freezer bag simply fill the freezer bag full of the icing and twirl it so into a cone shape and cut the bottom corner off.