Chocolate Overload Cupcakes

In celebration of National Chocolate Cake Day, we are bringing you these delicious, chocolate overloaded cupcakes! They are so chocolatey and delicious, we hope everyone else enjoys them as much as we do!

Equipment:

Cupcake tray

Cupcake cases

Mixing bowl

Spatula

Tala 3 Star Nozzle with Icing Bag 

Cupcake corer

Ingredients:

Cupcakes

• 95g plain flour
• 40g cocoa powder
• pinch of salt
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda
• 2 large eggs
• 100g caster sugar
• 100g light brown sugar
• 80ml vegetable (neutral) oil
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 120ml buttermilk (room temperature)

Chocolate ganache centre

• 120g dark chocolate (chopped)
• 120ml double cream
• Pinch of salt

Buttercream

• 340g butter
• 240g icing sugar
• 60g cocoa powder
• 150g dark chocolate

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C and line a 12 hole cupcake tin with cases.
2. Sift and whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl: flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate soda and salt.
3. With a hand-held or stand mixer, mix the eggs, sugars, oil and vanilla together until combined. Then pour in half of the dry ingredients along with half of the buttermilk and mix together.
4. Repeat with the remaining dry ingredients and buttermilk, stir until just combined.
5. Fill each cupcake case up to halfway and bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes.
6. While the cupcakes bake, make the chocolate ganache centre. Place the chocolate, cream and salt in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave until the mixture is warm, between 30 seconds to a minute. Then whisk until smooth and all the chocolate has melted, and put in the fridge until just chilled (no more than 30 minutes), whisk every 10 minutes.
7. Then make your buttercream. Beat the butter with a hand-held or stand mixer for 3-5 minutes, until pale and fluffy.
8. Gradually add the icing sugar, and beat for a further 5 minutes. Then add the cocoa powder and salt, and beat until evenly distributed. Finally, add in the melted (and cooled) dark chocolate, and beat again until evenly distributed.
9. To assemble, once the cupcakes have cooled, use the Tala cupcake corer to remove the centre of the cake and fill with chocolate ganache, recovering with the core piece you extracted. Then, using an open star piping nozzle (or any nozzle of your choice) pipe on the buttercream and sprinkle with chocolate flakes.
   
   Enjoy!