Chocolate orange cupcakes!

If there's one thing I can garuntee I will receive at Christmas its a Terry's chocolate orange. Don't get me wrong, I love them but with all the other goodies that are around on Christmas, my poor old chocolate oranges seem to get left till last. 

This year I got 2 oranges, one was demolished pretty much in one go (oops!) and the other I decided to make into chocolate orange cupcakes! This one was dark chocolate and I do like dark chocolate but I can't eat a lot of it and especially not on its own. But let me tell you, it tastes gorgeous in a cupcake!

To make these scrummy cupcakes you will need: 

2 eggs 

200g caster sugar

130g plain flower 

50g Cocoa powder 

2 teaspoons baking powder

160ml Milk

Vanilla extract

160g unsalted butter 

1 chocate orange (minus a couple of segments, which you'll probably end up eating) 

Preheat your oven to 170oc before you start and line a cupcake tray with paper cases ready for the batter! 

Mix the eggs and sugar together until well combined in a large mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and a pinch of salt. 

Using another bowl also combine the milk and 1/4 tea spoon of vanilla extract. 

Gradually beat these two mixtures into the egg and sugar mixture. Keep stirring until all the ingredients are well incorporated. It may seem like there's way to much milk at first but keep going! 

Now you need to melt the butter. Melt it on a low heat and stir continuously to avoid burning. If you chop the butter up into smaller chunks, it will melt a bit quicker. I just chucked a whole chunk in mine though! 

Stir the melted butter into your cake mixture. Don't worry if it seems like the butter will never mix, keep going and you'll get there!

Now roughly chop up the chocolate orange and add to the mixture. Stir until the chocolate is evenly dispersed. 

Now spoon the batter into the cupcake cases, only fill the cares about 2/3 full so they will have room to rise. 

Put into the oven for about 30 minutes and relax! These smell absolutely gorgeous when baking! 

To check the cupcakes are done insert a skewer or blunt butter knife into a cake, the skewer/knife should come out clean. If there is mixture left then just pop them back in for a couple more minutes.

And voilà you have some yummy cupcakes! You can expect to make about 12, possibly a couple more. The original recipie I used was for muffins so the mixture goes a little further when you use cupcake cases rather than muffin cases. 

Enjoy! 

Xxx