Happy new year!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year with your friends and family. We had a quite one in Germany with just the two of us. We have both been really busy with work recently so it suited us quite well!

I have been doing some planning for the blog over the last few weeks, it is the first time I have done it and has made me quite excited for this year! In 2016 I am aiming to post at least one recipe a month as well as a recipe per week in the run up to Christmas! (I had so many ideas this year and just not enough time to make and test them all!) There will also be more from The Food Exchange with the lovely Greta from Made by Greta! As always if you have any challenges for Greta or me please let us know!

I thought I would start this year off with my chocolate cupcake recipe!
I hope you all have a have a fantastic year!

Lucya X

You can find Lucya Bakes on Instagram.

 

Chocolate cupcakes 

Ingredients

Sponges

125g butter, softened

225g caster sugar

3 eggs

170ml buttermilk

200g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

30g cocoa powder

a pinch of salt

Buttercream

200g butter

175g icing sugar

2 tbsp milk

100g melted chocolate

a pinch of salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 170c (fan assisted).

Put 12 large cupcake cases in to a cupcake tin.

In a free standing or using a handheld mixer beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time beating well in between each addition.

Stir in the buttermilk.

Sieve in the dry ingredients and gently fold together until everything is well combined.

Divide the mixture between the cupcakes cases, the cases should be around 2/3 full.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until a knife inserted in to the middle comes out clean.

Allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Next make the buttercream

Melt the chocolate and put to onside to cool.

Using a freestanding mixer or a handheld mixer, beat the butter until pale and fluffy, this should take around 5 minutes.

Sieve the icing sugar in to the butter in two parts, beating well after each addition.

Check your chocolate is not too warm before adding to the butter mixture with the salt, beat again until everything is well combined.

Finally add the milk and beat to loosen the mixture (you may not need all of the milk).

Once your cakes are completely cool decorate with the buttercream.

You can leave the cupcakes as they are or decorate with cocoa powder, grated chocolate, ground hazelnuts or anything you like!