Chocolate Easter Cupcakes
The little people in your life are going to fall in love with these floral Easter Bunny cupcakes. And they’re just stylish enough to impress the larger people in your life too.Decorated with russian piping tips using american buttercream and topped with chocolate bunny ears.
Equipment
- russian piping tips
- muffin tin
- Cupcake Liners
- piping bags
- electric mixer (either hand held or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment)
- Easter Bunny Ear Template (see blog for printable template)
Ingredients
Chocolate Cupcakes
- 110 ml Milk (just under 1/2 a cup)
- 5 ml White Wine Vinegar (1 teaspoon)
- 110 grams All Purpose Flour (1 cup)
- 30 grams Cocoa Powder (1/3 cups)
- 1 teaspoons Baking Soda
- 1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 175 grams Caster Sugar (fine granulated sugar) (3/4 cups)
- 60 ml Vegetable Oil (1/4 cup)
- 1 whole Egg
- 1 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
- 120 ml Hot Instant Coffee (1 teaspoon of instant coffee dissolved in 1/2 a cup of boiling water)
Candy Melt Easter Bunny Ears
- 200 grams wilton candy melts
American Buttercream
- 200 grams softened unsalted butter (1 cup)
- 600 grams icing sugar (4 cups)
- 2 tablespoon milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Chocolate Easter Cupcakes
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius) and line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake liners
- Combine milk and white wine vinegar in a jug and set aside to thicken.
- Next, sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, sugar & salt into a bowl and stir with a whisk to combine.
- In a second bowl, add oil, eggs, thickened milk & vanilla extract. Mix together using either a whisk, an electric handheld mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir together, then add the coffee and mix until all combined.
- Scoop the batter into your prepared cupcake liners and bake in the oven for 15-18 minutes or until cooked through (see notes).
- Once baked, allow the cupcakes to cool in the muffin tin for about 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Candy Melt Bunny Ears
- Put your candy melts into bowl and melt as per directions on packet
- Pour the melted candy melts into a zip-lock bag, snip off the very tip.
- Place the printed template onto a baking tray and cover it with parchment paper. Use a dab of candy melts in each corner of both the template and the baking paper to hold both sheets in place.
- Use the template as a guide to pipe the candy melts onto the baking paper. Pipe an outline of each ear.
- When you've piped enough ears, place the whole baking tray in fridge until completely set.
Buttercream Flowers
- Place butter in a bowl and use an electric mixer to beat until light and fluffy.
- Sift icing mixture into the bowl of butter, then add the salt, vanilla extract.
- Now, mix everything together - first use a spoon to mix it all in, and then use your electric mixer to incorporate everything properly (using the spoon first will minimise the amount of icing sugar that fluffs up when you start using the electric mixer).
- At this strange the icing will look very dry, to bring it together add a milk, one teaspoon at a time, mixing well using the electric mixer after each addition, until the icing comes to the right consistency. You may need more or less milk then stated in this recipe depending on the temperature of your kitchen and your butter, so be careful to add milk gradually.
- If the mixture becomes too runny, you may have added too much milk. You can stiffen the frosting by adding more icing sugar. If you seem to be adding more and more sugar to the frosting, but its just not thickening up enough, its probably because your buttercream is too warm. Stop everything, and put the buttercream in the fridge for 10mins. Then take it out of the fridge and re-whip with your electric mixer.
- Once you have made your buttercream, prepare your piping bag, by placing a piping tip into the bag (narrow end facing towards the tip) and snip off the end of the piping bag. These are wide piping tips, so snip the bag so that only the very end of the piping tip is exposed at the bottom of the bag.
- It's now time to test the consistency of the buttercream. It's easiest to do this step before adding food colour, so you only need to test and adjust one batch of buttercream (instead having to check of 4 or 5 individual batches).To test the consistency, transfer some of the buttercream into the prepared piping bag. Hold the piping bag straight over a sheet of baking paper with the tip positioned about a centimeter above the paper. Squeeze the bag so the frosting comes out and attaches to the baking sheet, then release pressure and lift the piping bag away. You should (hopefully) be left with something that resembles a flower. If not, see the notes below for troubleshooting tips.
- Once the frosting is at the ideal consistency divide it into 3-5 bowls and use gel food coloring to tint to preferred color. For the green leaves I have colored the buttercream with Matcha powder.
- Transfer colored buttercream to piping bags. To achieve a multi colored look spread a thin layer of buttercream around the bag, then add a different color into the middle of the bag.
- To pipe onto cupcakes, hold the piping bag so the nozzle is about a quarter of an inch above the cupcake, squeeze the buttercream out, then release the pressure and lift the bag. Start by piping one flower in the center of the cupcake, then pipe a circle of flowers around the center flower.
- Fill in any gaps around the flowers using a green buttercream in a piping bag fitted with a leaf nozzle.
- Place chocolate bunny ears atop of the buttercream flowers.
Notes
Troubleshooting
- Baking Times: all ovens are different. To guarantee your cupcakes come out just as perfect as mine, I always recommend using baking temperatures and timings as a guide only. For best results rotate the muffin tins halfway through baking and test the cupcakes using a toothpick at the 15 minute mark. To test how cooked the cupcakes are insert a toothpick into the center of a cupcake. The cupcakes are cooked if the skewer appears clean when it is removed from the cupcake. Adjust the baking time accordingly based on how cooked the cupcakes appear at this point.
- Buttercream Flowers If the buttercream is too soft the flowers will pipe out as blobs. To address this either add more icing sugar, or place buttercream in the fridge to help to firm up. If the buttercream is too stiff, the petals will break or the buttercream will not stick properly to cupcake. To fix this problem add a little more water to the buttercream.
Tried this recipe?Mention @Kylies_cakes_ or tag #theniftybaker!