These delightful coffee cupcakes are so perfect and are topped with a yummy chocolate buttercream. That’s why I whipped these up for Valentine’s Day. The buttercream is mixed with chocolate ganache so it adds another layer of richness. These are really yummy cupcakes and are a good way to someone’s heart. This recipe is fairly a labor of love and takes some time and patience so it is perfect for special occasions.
The coffee isn’t really overwhelming but it really adds a unique flavor to these cupcakes. You want to whisk the cupcake batter to get it really light and airy, which is completely opposite to muffins. With muffins, you need the batter to be dense and heavy so you avoid over-mixing. With cupcakes, a sponge-like texture is much better so whisking is your best friend. I usually use a hand mixer to make cupcakes whereas I just whisk everything by hand when I’m baking muffins.
Chocolate ganache consists of hot cream and chocolate chips/chopped chocolate. You get the cream really hot, but it should be boiling. Then you use this to melt the chocolate. Then you whisk it until it gradually goes from lumpy to a smooth chocolate color. This is cooled to thicken up and then whisked with the icing sugar and butter. The last stage is to refrigerate this buttercream in the fridge to thicken up some more for a few minutes. Then you pipe it on the coffee cupcakes. The combination of the coffee with the chocolate is amazing!
Ingredients
Coffee cupcakes
1&1/2 cups all -purpose flour
1&1/2 tablespoons instant coffee
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup melted butter, cooled
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup almond milk or dairy milk, at room temperature
Chocolate ganache buttercream
300g semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup whipping cream
4 cups icing (confectioners') sugar, sifted
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
Instructions
Coffee cupcakes
- Beat the melted butter, sugar and eggs together using a hand or stand mixer and then add in milk.
- mix flour, salt, baking powder and coffee together in a separate bowl.
- Combine the ingredients from step 1 with the ingredients from step 2 until fully mixed.
- Line a muffin tray with cupcake liners, fill 3/4 way with the batter and bake for 20-25 minutes.
- Let the cupcakes cool completely to room temperature before adding the buttercream frosting. In fact, I like to refrigerate my cupcakes prior to frosting them so that the buttercream sets right away and doesn't fall off.
Chocolate ganache buttercream
- Heat the cream in the microwave or in a saucepan on the stove top until it is just about to boil.
- Pour this over the chocolate chips in a bowl.
- Cover the bowl with a kitchen cloth and let it sit for 2 minutes. Whisk it into a smooth mixture with one color. This is your ganache.
- Let the ganache cool completely to room temperature.
- Beat the icing sugar with the bitter using a hand or stand mixer until really smooth.
- Whisk in the cooled ganache next and then refrigerate it for 30 minutes.
- Mix again with a spatula before placing into your piping bags, and pipe on cupcakes as needed.