Birthday Cupcakes

I know, I know... I am all about chocolate lately. But I just can't get away from it :-) So, for my friend Luzia's birthday party, it had to be something with chocolate. What I liked most about these cupcakes is the decadent frosting... I think I ate about half of it while decorating the cupcakes... highly addictive...

Recipe:
(from: Leila Lindholm - Piece of Cake)

3 eggs
200g sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
50g butter
100ml cream
2 tablespoons cold coffee
200g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 pinch of salt
100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Prepare a muffin tray and fill it with 12 paper cases.

Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar until light and fluffy. Melt butter, mix with cream and coffee and add to you egg-mixture. Mix flour, baking powder, cocoa and salt and fold into the egg-mixture. Melt chocolate over a hot water bath and fold into your dough.

Fill dough into the muffin forms and bake for about 15 minutes. (I had to bake them for about 25 minutes...) Let cool.

For the frosting:

60g soft butter
300g icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
20g cocoa powder
100g cream cheese
1 tablespoon hot coffee

Mix butter, icing sugar, vanilla sugar, cocoa and cream cheese, then add the coffee. Do this with a hand mixer and don't worry if your batter is crumbly at first, it will blend in and get creamy as soon as you add the hot coffee. To make sure the ingredients blend well, take the butter and the cream cheese out of the fridge well in advance.

Spread the icing over the cupcakes and decorate with sugar sprinkles, marzipan flowers, chopped nuts or whatever you like... enjoy...