Mocha Flavoured Easter Cupcakes
Happy Easter! Hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend and enjoyed the sunshine. I made some mocha flavoured / Easter themed cupcakes over the weekend, using my new Hummingbird Bakery iPhone App (thank you Jak), it’s one of the more expensive apps on the App Store but well worth it, especially with the how-to videos they’ve included.
To achieve the mocha flavour, I used a mixture of hot chocolate and espresso powder. The recipe calls for more hot chocolate powder than espresso, but since tasting the cupcakes, I personally couldn’t taste any coffee flavour, so I would suggest putting in a little more espresso powder. This could all depend on the type of espresso powder used – perhaps the Nescafe version wasn’t a strong tasting espresso..?
I found the recipe quite simple to follow, firstly combining the dry ingredients and then mixing in the milk/egg mixture slowly until the mixture becomes smooth and thick. I decided to halve the recipe as I didn’t want to make too many cupcakes, but I obviously wasn’t thinking straight because I added the original amount of baking powder instead of the halved amount.. I realised a little too late and had already mixed it in with the flour, so I tried to spoon out as much as I could.. you can see in the picture the cupcakes look a little larger than normal! 
I prefer my cupcakes to sit a little below the top of the case, so I usually fill the cases about 1/3 full. I used my shiny metallic purple cupcake cases (thank you Kylie!), which are brilliant because they are lined with greaseproof paper, meaning that the cases don’t go see-through like the other cases I tend to use. I’ve also recently purchased a muffin baking tin and really noticed the difference – the cupcakes are much ‘straighter’ at the sides and don’t tend to expand on top.
The cupcakes are finished with a hot chocolate flavoured buttercream, but I was suprised that the recipe didn’t add espresso powder into the mix as it might have made the mocha flavour more prominent. I finished the cupcakes with two mini eggs and tada – Easter themed cupcakes!
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