Chocolate chocolate cupcakes with a twist

It feels like it has been a while since I have done some weekend baking, although it was on a Saturday this time around. I made some cupcakes for a birthday celebration. I realised I haven't actually made a chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting; instead I have done a vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting and vice versa. Of course I had to be adventurous with my frosting, but I did choose the chocolate cupcake recipe from here. I only made twelve cupcakes, which may have been because I overfilled them a little bit. I was really impressed with how flat they came out and not because I had messed anything up with the process. I have to confess I was a little bit wasteful because I have found lately that my cupcakes have been fanning out a bit at the bottom, which means they haven't been sitting nicely in my cupcake carrier. Therefore, I used two liners per cupcake to help give them some more structure and it worked nicely. The twist with these cupcakes is that after they had cooled down, I used a teaspoon to carve out a nice little hole in each of them, which gave me an opportunity to taste the baked cake. However, this wasn't why I made the holes, instead I put a teaspoon of delicious dulce de leche sauce in each of them. I, of course, had to lick the spoon once I was done and it was so good.

For the chocolate frosting I did underestimate all of my measurements and came up one cupcake short. This worked out well though because it meant I had an excuse to lather on the last remnants of frosting on cupcake number twelve before cutting it open. As a result, I got the photo I needed and I got to devour a yummy cupcake, which of course I shared. My frosting ingredients were:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 & 1/2 cups icing sugar
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder, heaped
• 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

I chopped up the butter and whipped it on low speed for approximately thirty seconds before adding the icing sugar slowly until combined. I melted the chocolate chips in a metal bowl placed on top of a small water-filled saucepan that was on low heat. Once the chocolate was melted I added it to the butter and icing sugar mixture until combined. The frosting was a bit too stiff so I added the milk. Lastly, the cocoa powder was mixed in with the hopes of darkening the frosting to give it a richer colour, but I wasn't quite successful. The frosting was whipped for about thirty seconds. I predictably used my Wilton 1M decorating tip to put the chocolate frosting on top of the cupcakes and finished them off with some chocolate jimmies and white nonpareils. I didn't want to detract too much from the surprise inside, hence the lack of colour besides the cupcake liners.

I hope this isn't the first or last time I say this, but I had a lot of fun making these cupcakes and was really happy with the result!