Hot Chocolate Cupcakes

Last weekend, it was particularly foggy. The kind of weather that calls for comfort food. Most people would agree that a mug of hot chocolate definitely belongs to the category of comfort food. And so I thought, hot chocolate cupcakes would do the trick. And they really do taste like a cup of sweet hot chocolate - wonderful!

Recipe

(from one of my absolute favourites: Cake Days by The Hummingbird Bakery)

For the dough:

240ml milk
25g chocolate powder (the kind you use for hot chocolate like Banago or M-Quick from Migros)
80g soft butter
280g sugar
240g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a 12-mould muffin pan with paper cases. With the recipes from this book, I usually end up with about 15 cupcakes.

In a small saucepan, warm up the milk and dissolve the chocolate powder. Set aside and let cool.

In a bowl, mix butter, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt with an electric hand mixer on low speed until you have a fine crumbly batter.

Mix chocolate milk and eggs and add to the cake batter in three additions while constantly mixing. Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula from time to time. Mix until you have a smooth batter.

Fill your batter into the prepared cases. Don't overfill them or they will spill while baking! Two thirds is fine. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes. Check with a wooden skewer whether they are done. Let cool completely after baking.

For the frosting:

60ml milk
30g chocolate powder
500g icing sugar
160g very soft butter

Warm up the milk and mix with the chocolate powder. Let cool In a bowl, mix butter and icing sugar with an electric mixer on low speed until you have a powdery batter. Slowly add the chocolate milk while constantly mixing. On high speed, mix until you have a fluffy batter.

Spread the frosting on your cupcakes with a palette knife and decorate with sugar pearls… whatever you feel like or fits for the occasion.