Chocolate Cupcakes with Little Beauties Boysenberry Buttercream

This recipe is based on my favourite chocolate cake recipe. I made this in a larger version for mothers day, and I’m now sharing it with you to make at home.

I’ve used Little Beauties Boysenberry powder for the buttercream and this gives it a beautiful natural colour along with the Boysenberry flavour.

Yield: 12 cupcakes

Time: 1 hour, plus cooling time

Ingredients

Cupcakes

• 1 cup flour

• ¾ cups cocoa

• ½ cups caster sugar

• ½ cup brown sugar

• 1 tsp baking powder

• ½ tsp baking soda

• ½ cup milk

• ¼ cup vegetable oil*

• 1 large egg

• 1tsp vanilla essence

• ½ cup boiling water

Filling

• 12 tsp Boysenberry Jam

Boysenberry Buttercream

• 2 1/2 Tbsp Little Beauties Boysenberry powder

• 2 1/2 Tbsp Boiling Water

• 100g Unsalted Butter, Softened

• 4 1/2 cups Icing Sugar

Method

Cupcakes

1. Preheat oven to 180°C, bake.

2. Line a cupcake pan with cupcake cases (I don’t do this for all of my recipes, but I do for this one since it’s such a moist and runny batter it makes removal from the cupcake pan far easier and reduces the risk of the cupcakes sticking to the side if your pan is that little bit older)

3. Sift the flour, caster sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, and baking soda together in a bowl.

4. Add milk, vegetable oil, egg, and vanilla and mix until just combined and smooth.

5. Carefully stir in the boiling water. The batter will be runny!

6. Pour the batter into the prepared cupcake pans about 2/3 of the way up the case. Don’t be tempted to fill further than this as when the cupcakes rise they will form a lovely rounded dome on top. If you’ve overfilled them, the batter will pull out to the top edges of the cupcake case and you’ll get a flatter top, and probably mess down the sides of your cupcake cases and on the pan to clean up later.

7. Bake for 20-25mins, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

8. Leave to rest in the pan for 5 minutes before removing and placing on a wire rack to cool.

9. Once cool, scoop out a small amount of cupcake from the centre. Approximately ½ - 1 tsp size. Fill this with boysenberry jam.

Boysenberry Buttercream

1. Combine the boysenberry powder and boiling water in a small heatproof bowl. Mix to combined and set aside for 10mins.

2. Place the softened butter in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Whip on high speed for a couple of minutes.

3. Add the icing sugar and boysenberry mixture to the butter. Whip again, starting slow and increasing the speed to high. Whip for a couple of minutes, and if needed, add more boiling water 1 tsp at a time. Go slow when adding the water and whip in between each addition as you’ll be surprised how the mixture can come together.

4. Once you’ve reached the desired consistency, you can pipe on top of the cooled cupcakes.

5. Sprinkle some shaved chocolate on top and serve.