Blackberry & Chocolate Cupcakes

October 19, 2015

Blackberry & Chocolate Cupcakes

When it gets to colder month I like to do more cooking and baking, I don’t really know why but it’s something that happens every year at this time. But I thought about and decided I’m fed up of making the same old brownies, same old cupcakes and same old cookies. I need to challenge myself more, experiment with different ingredients and flavours. Mum had been going on about the blackberry’s in the garden were going to waste, so I did a little searching online for blackberry cupcakes, picked the blackberries (although we didn’t have enough for the cupcakes and icing sugar) and got to work on them last Saturday. I tried to keep to a recipe but a few things I changed to fit to work for me.

Here’s what you need:

· 150g Blackberries, plus extra to add on top of cupcakes

· 100g Butter

· 100g Milk Chocolate, broken into chunks

· 225g Self Raising Flour

· 175g Sugar

· 2 tbsp Cocoa Powder

· 2 Large Eggs

· Red or Purple Food Colouring

For The Icing Sugar:

· 100g Unsalted Butter

· 400g Icing Sugar, sifted

· 1tsp Vanilla Extract

· 150g Blackberries

You need your oven preheating at 180c or Gas 4, also go stick the kettle on, you’ll see why in a moment. Also get your muffin/cupcake tin out and add the cupcake cases. Then with the first half of your blackberries cut them all in half so the juice is running out but they are still in chunks. Mix your flour, sugar, cocoa powder and a pinch of salt in mixing bowl. Then melt your butter and chocolate pieces in a pan. I was told to melt it first, but I think it helps melting them after you’ve mixed the other ingredients so you can keep an eye on it.

Once that’s melted, add it to the rest of the mixture and add the two beaten eggs, along with the blackberries and 100ml of boiling water. See I had you prepared there! Mix all together until smooth and then comes the fun part of adding the food colour. I poured it into the cap first before pouring it in, and I did that twice. You can see how much you want in it, just do it slowly in little bits, just don’t overdo it.

Now the messy job of pouring equally into each case, I like to get a tbsp to help with this. Also the recipe I used said it makes 12 cupcakes, but as you can see I managed to make a few more out of it. Once that’s done, put them into the oven for 15minutes. When times up, stick a skewer or a clean knife in the middle of the cupcake to make sure it’s cooked, the skewer/knife should come out completely clean. If not, stick them back in for couple more minutes, but keep an eye on them. Once your sure they are done, leave them to cool.

While the cupcakes are baking, that’s when I like to start the icing. Make sure you’ve got a clean mixing bowl, a clean piping bag and a strong mixing arm/ electric whisk. Whizz the next half of the blackberries into a pure, unfortunately as I said at the start, we didn’t have enough blackberries so my icing sugar had to miss out, so I just added another cap of red food colouring. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla together until pale and fluffy. Sieve the blackberry puree and fold into the icing.

Now make sure your cupcakes are cool before you carry on. If not then go have a break and come back for the next step.