Chocolate Cupcakes with Matcha + Chocolate Icing

Chocolate Cupcakes with Matcha + Chocolate Icing

• September 29, 2016

Instagram is just the place to go when looking for cake inspiration, but I wasn't originally going to make cupcakes with piped icing like this photo.

Instead, I came across this incredibly cute cactus cupcake and I couldn't wait to give it a go. How cute does it look?!

However, I obviously under estimated just how skilled you need to be, even though the tutorial made it look dead easy. This is what I ended up with:

Oh my god, I almost died laughing at the result! My sister couldn't breathe from laughing so hard once she saw my attempt compared with the original cactus cupcake.

Sometimes, you just have way more fun when things go wrong hahaha. 

So laughing aside, I had all this icing and cupcakes waiting to be decorated, but there was no way I was going to attempt cute cactus no.2.

Luckily, the piping tips from the Tala range at Debenhams were so versatile that I ended up these piped cupcakes after a bit of playing around. I'm not great at piping at all, so it was just about having some fun free-styling it. Not bad I say, what do you guys think?

Onto the cupcakes itself, this chocolate sponge is so delicious and easy to make. It's not a rich and decadent type of chocolate cake, more like a fluffy and light chocolate sponge. It tastes so good paired with matcha (green tea powder) icing, but for those who just like chocolate, I made some with chocolate icing too.

Dry ingredients in one bowl, wet ingredients in another.

Incorporate the 2 together.

Easy chocolate cake mix.

As the cupcakes go into the oven, time to make the icing.

Matcha icing.

Chocolate icing.

In the piping bags with tips attached.

Adapted from the original recipe by BBC Good Food.

The Cupcakes

Ingredients:
100g plain flour
20g cocoa powder (Cadbury bourneville is great)
120g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter at room temperature
120ml whole milk
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 170C
2. Put the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl and mix well. Add in the butter and mix until it resembles a fine sand and everything is combined
3. Whisk the milk, egg and vanilla extract together in a jug then slowly pour about half into the flour mixture. Mix with a wooden spoon or spatula until combined, and then pour in the remaining half of wet mixture. Do not overmix
4. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until two-thirds full and bake in a preheated oven for 15-17 minutes. An inserted skewer into the center of the cupcake should come out clean. Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly in the tray before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely
5. When the cupcakes are cooled, pipe icing on top


The Icing

Ingredients:
200g icing sugar
200g butter
50g matcha powder
30g cocoa powder

Directions:
1. Beat 100g of icing sugar with 100g of butter for 5 minutes using an electric whisk. Add in the matcha powder and beat for another 5 minutes. Transfer to a piping bag, this will be your matcha icing
2. Beat 100g of icing sugar with 100g of butter for 5 minutes using an electric whisk. Add in the cocoa powder and beat for another 5 minutes. Transfer to a piping bag, this will be your chocolate icing

And if it couldn't get any funnier, my sister thought she could do a better job than me at the cactus cupcake... hahaha. Her rose piping is pretty cool though.

*I was gifted with a range of Tala baking equipment from Debenhams