The Best Chocolate Cupcake Recipe

Out of all the years of my life that I have been baking, I have not found one chocolate cupcake recipe that tasted good to me. They all tasted the same. Lacking in chocolate flavour, un-moist, and dense. Then I found this recipe. I was reluctant to try it, because I was afraid it would turn out like every other cupcake recipe I had found. But no! It was really good. Here it is.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temp
2-1/2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, room temp
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (**Edit!! be sure to use natural cocoa powder and not dutch processed/alkalized cocoa powder.)
1 cup 2% or whole milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Beat the butter until it’s softened. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, that should take about 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until well combined. Measure out the flour, baking powder, soda, salt and cocoa powder into a small sized bowl and whisk it to combine. Measure out the milk and vanilla and stir to combine. Add about one third of the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture and beat to combine. Add about half of the milk/vanilla mixture and beat to combine. Continue adding, alternating between the wet and dry and finishing with the dry. Scoop the batter into cupcake cups about 2/3’s full. Bake the cupcakes for about 22-25 minutes, until the cake tester comes out clean.

Just for fun, I wanted to turn these cupcakes into german chocolate cupcakes. So what I did was coat the sides of the cupcakes with a ganache and rolled it in toasted coconut and finely chopped pecans. For the icing on top, I used a dulce de leche frosting, which I made by combining the dulce de leche with a bit of a good buttercream frosting. I piped that on top in a swirl and on top of that, I drizzled some of the extra ganache in a thin strand. Oh my god they were delicious! Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of these awesome cupcakes, only the chocolate cupcakes by themselves. Enjoy!

♥ Tara