Homemade: Moist Chocolate Cupcakes

The following recipe is always a hit wherever I take it. It's easy to make and since the icing is white, it's so versatile to decorate with . This was originally a chocolate cake recipe, so feel free to make this into a cake if your desire.

What you need:

Dry Ingredients:

• 2 cups of caster sugar
• 1 3/4 cups of plain flour
• 3/4 cup of cocoa powder
• 1 tsp  salt
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1.5 tsp bicarb soda

Wet Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of milk
• 1/3 cup of canola oil
• 2 tsp of vanilla essence or extract (I prefer extract as it is more potent)

Additional:

• 2 tsp of instant coffee
• 1/2 cup of boiling water

Icing:

• Rich n Smooth Vanilla Icing (pre made)
  - available at Cake Decorating Solutions

Method:

1. Sift all dry ingredients (sugar, flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and bicarb soda) into a mixing bowl.
2. Combine the wet ingredients in a separate mixing bowl and mix.
3. Create a well in the centre of the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients to the mixture.
4. Mix until smooth.
5. Combine the coffee and water together. Slowly pour it into the mixture.
6. Separate the mix into muffin trays. Only fill a third of the muffin case as this recipe rises a great deal!
7. Bake in oven for 25 minutes at 160 degrees fan forced. Poke a clean skewer into the cupcakes, if it comes out clean it's ready, if not, cook for a further 5 minutes until the skewer comes out clean.
8. Leave to cool
9. Spread or pipe icing onto cupcakes.
10. Decorate as desired!

**The Rich n Smooth Icing that I use is pre made. Pour 1 or 2 cups of the icing into a mixing bowl and beat till soft peaks form (as per instructions on the bottle). I added a bit of red food colouring to the icing to get a baby pink colour. ***

Hope you enjoy this one as much as I do!