Chocolate Cupcakes

My daughter is back from University for the Easter holidays tomorrow so I have made her favourite chocolate cake. Normally I do this as one large cake but I decided to do it as individual cupcakes today.

It's not really a cupcake recipe, its just a Victoria Sponge recipe with some cocoa powder added to it. This is my basic recipe, and I always use imperial measures so my recipes are in lbs and oz!!:

6 oz butter
6 oz caster sugar
3 large eggs
5 oz self raising flour
1 oz cocoa powder
2 large tblsp

I use the creaming method to make all my cakes and I never use a food processor, just a little hand held mixer to help me cream the ingrdients together.

I used some left over bright red cupcake cases I had from the Queens Jubilee last year, they are lovely and bright!

 

I bake them for about 15-20 minutes on Gas mark 5

 

 

Once they have cooled completely on a wire tray I decorate them with a simple butter cream icing, I don't really follow a recipe for this as I've made it so many times I just guess the proportions, but its about

1 oz butter
8 oz icing sugar
1 oz cocoa powder
2 tblsp milk

I decorated them with a simple swirl pattern using a piping bag

 



I find it is better to make them the day before you plan to eat them, as the next day the chocolate cake seems moister.

Yummy!