Chocolate Cupcakes

OK, so everyone has made a cupcake, right? There are so many wacky flavours out there: rose and violet, tequila, custard, tomato (I've seen it, believe me)... you could buy hundreds of books dedicated solely to these tiny teatime treats. These seem like bog-standard chocolate cupcakes: nothing special, just, er, chocolate cupcakes. HOWEVER (you knew it was coming) the icing is DELICOUS. Literally, it's the only icing I can scrape out the bowl, feel queasy and still carry on eating. The original suggests double the amounts I give but trust me, Alice and I worked out that if you follow the original there would be twice as much icing as cake! And that would be a bit OTT. This variation has been carefully tried and perfected on each batch. Now, it is finally ready to present itself to the world. I give you, chocolate cupcake V1.2.... (This recipe is (C) Esme MP. Thank you, Esme!)

Chocolate Cupcakes
Prep time: Same as any other cupcakes: about 20 mins
Serves: Makes 12 cakes
Cooking temp: Gas 3, 160C
Cooking time: 20 mins

Ingredients
100g plain flour
20g cocoa powder
140g caster sugar
1.5 tsp. baking powder
40g unsalted butter, room temp.
120ml whole milk
1 medium egg
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
For the buttercream icing:
300g icing sugar, sifted
100g unsalted butter
40g cocoa powder
40ml whole milk

Method

1. Heat the oven.
2. Sift the flour, cocoa, sugar and baking powder into a bowl. Add the butter and mix to form a sandy consistency: you can mix with your hands to make it really fine, at the end.
3. In a jug, mix together the milk, egg and vanilla essence. Pour half of it into the bowl and fold into the dry mixture. When it is all mixed in, add the rest. Don't over mix: flour doesn't like it and it can make cakes stodgy.
4. Spoon it into 12 cases and cook for 20 mins. It SHOULD be sloppy: don't add more flour. This consistency means the cakes are lovely and light.
5. ...and that's it for the cakes! Whilst they're cooking, move onto the icing.
6. Beat the icing sugar, butter and cocoa powder in a bowl. Add the milk slowly and beat it in, stirring constantly for a few minutes until it is lovely and smooth. The quality should be velvety and fairly hard to mix: this is good, because it means that piping won't be a problem.
7. When the cupcakes are done, take them out to cool. Don't ice before they are stone cold as otherwise the icing will melt on top and soak into the cake.
8. Use a piping bag to ice the cakes. You can spread the icing, too, but this looks very pretty and it holds well.
9. Decorate how you want. I use purple edible glitter and purple flowers, which really adds a suave, professional touch, as the icing is so dark and smooth. Silver balls go well too, I personally wouldn't go for sprinkles but it's up to you! After all, you're the ones who are going to eat them.

Please tell me how any of the recipes went, I would love to hear your variations. I hope you've all found at least one thing you like!

TIP: When spooning out cupcake mix, use a ice-cream scoop: this keeps them nicely uniform and the same size, great for presentation. Display on  a cupcake stand and ta dahh! You could sell them for five pounds a piece.