Recipe: Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

Baking is a great interest of mine and eating cake even more so. I tend to use other peoples' recipes most of the time but back in the summer I gorged on a chocolate orange cupcake at a country fair and I've been itching to find a way to recreate it ever since. I had a bit of bad news at the beginning of this week so baking seemed like a very favourable option to cheer me up yesterday (plus I wanted an excuse to use my Kitchen Aid again - look at it, isn't it pretty).

As far as recipe experiments go I'd say this one was fairly successful, especially for a first attempt! I based it off of the Hummingbird Bakery cupcake recipe with a few extras for the citrus twist. I think it could have done with some orange extract to give it a bit more flavour, so that's another option, and I wanted to try and make the sponge look orange in colour as well but I'm a bit wary of using too must artificial colouring. The few drops I added didn't seem to make a difference so I've not included them here but feel free to try!

*Side note: can you believe that Waitrose tried to charge me £2.75 for a chocolate orange?! No no, said I, I'm not having that, and off I toddled to Sainsbury's where they were on offer for a quid. Much better.*

Ingredients
(Makes 9 muffin sized cakes)

For the cakes:

120 g plain flour (sieved)      
140 g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
Pinch of salt
40 g butter
120 ml milk
Zest of one orange

For the frosting:

150 g icing sugar (sieved)
2 tbsp cocoa powder
50 g butter
20 ml fresh orange juice (from the zest-ed orange)
PLUS one Terry's Chocolate Orange

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C.
2. Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter and orange zest slowly with either a hand mixer, the paddle attachment of a stand mixer or a good old fashioned wooden spoon. Mix until it becomes a sandy texture then gradually add half of the milk until it's fully incorporated.
3. Whisk the egg and remaining milk together in a separate bowl then pour into the rest of the ingredients and combine. Mix for a few more minutes until it looks super smooth. (If the mixture starts to split or look too grainy add an extra spoonful of flour at a time and slowly fold in with a spoon).
4. Spoon the mix into individual cases in a muffin tin - they should be about two thirds full - then bake for 20-25 minutes. Make sure they pass the skewer test and are looking nice and golden, then allow to cool completely.
5. For the frosting, best together the icing sugar, butter and cocoa on a medium speed until well mixed. It will take a little while but don't give up faith - they will combine eventually! (You will need a mixer of some kind for this though or else your arm might fall off).
6. Turn to a slow speed and add the orange juice a little at a time. Once it's all in, turn to a high speed and beat for 3-5 minutes until you're happy with the consistency.
7. Scoop the frosting into a piping bag with an open star nozzle and pipe evenly onto the cakes. If you're not too skilled with a piping bag (trust me, I'm not either) you could just spread the frosting on with a palette knife. Top each cake with a segment of chocolate orange and ENJOY.