Chocolate cupcakes topped with vanilla buttercream and decorated with a chocolate "grill" and Jelly Baby "kebabs"! Cocktail umbrella optional but encouraged ;)
- 175 g plain flour
- 40 g cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 150 g caster sugar
- 90 ml vegetable oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 250 ml whole milk
- 1 large egg white
- 100 g soft butter
- 200 g icing sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 20 ml recently boiled water
- 1/4 tsp each of yellow and red food colouring gels
- 50 g dark chocolate chips
- 5-6 Jelly Babies (or similar colourful jelly sweets)
- 12 cocktail sticks
- 1 star shaped nozzle
- 2 disposable piping bagg
- Sheet of baking parchment
- Chilled baking tray
-
Start by lining a muffin pan with cupcake cases or muffin papers like I've used. Preheat oven to 180C. Pop a baking tray in the fridge to chill to pipe your chocolate grills on later.
-
Whisk the flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt and sugar together in a large bowl.
-
Whisk the remaining wet ingredients in a large jug then combine the two - don't over stir. Divide between the cupcake cases/muffin papers and bake for 18-20minutes until well risen and bounces back when lightly pressed in the middle. Cool in the tin for 5 mins then transfer to a rack to cool fully.
-
Draw 12 circles about 3 inches in diameter on some parchment paper. I used a Sharpie marker pen and a cookie cutter as my guide, then flipped it over - the pen shows through so it's easy to see. Pop it on your chilled baking tray
-
Melt the chocolate, pour into a disposable piping bag then snip off the tip about 2-3mm across. Pipe out circles first (I go over them twice for strength) then pipe lines across like the grill on a BBQ. Allow to set in the fridge for about 30 minutes before using.
-
To make the kebabs, snip up little pieces of Jelly Baby (I know, it feels so wrong!) with clean kitchen scissors and thread 5 or 6 little bits onto each cocktail stick.
-
To make the buttercream, beat the butter and icing sugar together until lighter and starting to get fluffy. Turn down the speed on your stand/hand mixer and beat in the vanilla then enough of the boiled water to loosen the texture and make it extra creamy and smooth. Just be sure to go very slowly with the water.
-
Divide the buttercream in two and colour one yellow and one red - note I prefer not to add tons of food colouring so I made do with pink. If you want red you'll need approx 1/4-1/2 tsp Extra Red Sugarflair Food Colouring Gel.
-
Pop your nozzle in the second piping bag and spoon in the two colours of buttercream, one on either side and give it a little squeeze to get both colours coming through before piping swirls on each cupcake.
-
Pop a chocolate grill and a kebab on each and serve! Do warn your guests the cocktail sticks aren't edible!!