Triple Chocolate Cupcakes

I'm starting the New Year off with a bang here with these decadent, indulgent triple chocolate cupcakes. These have two types of chocolate chips in a chocolate sponge, topped off with a dark chocolate buttercream icing. I made these when I went to visit some friends before Christmas and they were very gratefully received. I still think I need to work on my piping skills, I purposefully selected the prettiest cake here for the close up picture, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it. I think I need to get one of the Wilton nozzles in order to do the proper cupcake swirls. I added some silver sugar sprinkles which I bought from Lakeland to give the cakes a little bit of festive bling and used some pretty pink cupcake cases. I'm a bit disappointed with the cases though as the colour seems to fade after baking. I used the Hummingbird Bakery method of using a lot of milk in the cake batter in order to keep these cakes nice and moist.

Ingredients - makes 12 cupcakes

For the cakes:
125g unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
125ml milk
2 eggs
75g self raising flour
pinch of salt
50g cocoa powder
50g dark chocolate chips
50g white chocolate chips

For the icing: (from Harry Eastwood's recipe in 'Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache')
100g unsalted butter, cubed
100g icing sugar
2 tbsp boiling water
50g cocoa powder
silver sprinkles to decorate (optional)

• Preheat the oven to 180C and line a 12 hole bun tin with cupcake cases. 
• In a mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then beat in the eggs on at a time followed by the milk until you have a smooth batter. Fold through the flour, salt and cocoa powder and then gently stir through the chocolate chips until evenly distributed. Divide the mixture between the cake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes until risen and a the top bounces back when lightly pressed. Cool on a wire rack.
• For the icing beat the butter using a hand held electric mixer until it is light and fluffy and then gradually beat in the icing sugar and water until you get a smooth icing. Begin adding the cocoa powder a little at a time making sure it is all fully incorporated. 
• When the cakes are cold, spoon the icing into a large piping bag fitted with a star nozzle and pipe swirls on top of each cake and scatter silver sprinkles on top. 

The original buttercream recipe states it is enough for 10 cakes but I made it stretch to 12 as even though I love icing, I think that sometimes cupcakes can have too much buttercream on them which makes them sickly. I bought pretty pink cupcake boxes from Lakeland to transport the cakes in, I wanted something a bit more festive but I didn't have time to shop around. 

Credit for these photos goes to my friend Holly (incidentally if you're interested in musical theatre check out her blog where she reviews musicals). I took some at home before I went to visit but she decided that she wanted to take some pictures as well and hers turned out a lot better than mine. I know my photos aren't brilliant, maybe that's something else I should add to my resolutions for the year. I blame the crappy lighting in my kitchen, there's no window as it's open plan to the lounge and at this time of year it doesn't seem to get any light coming through from the lounge. But then again the aim of my blog isn't wonderful photos it's all about tasty food!