Easter Cake Bake 2011 - White Chocolate Mud cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream frosting

When I saw that Julia over at A Slice of Cherry Pie had announced her annual Easter Cake Bake, I knew that these rather delicious cupcakes would be the perfect entry! I've been meaning to make a white chocolate mud cake for ages now, in fact, I think I did make this recipe ages and ages ago, but couldn't remember what they tasted like, so now seemed a good time for a repeat.  

The recipe comes from the ever reliable Australian Women's Weekly.

White Chocolate Mud Cakes with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

125g butter, chopped

80g white chocolate, chopped

220g caster sugar

125ml milk (I used semi-skimmed 2% fat)

75g plain flour

75g self raising flour

1 egg

Buttercream frosting

100g butter, softened

220g icing sugar

vanilla extract to taste

To decorate - mini sugar coated chocolate eggs, as desired

Method

- Preheat the oven to Gas 3/170C. Line a 12 hole muffin tray with paper cases.

- Combine butter, chocolate, sugar and milk in a small saucepan.

- Melt over a low heat until smooth. Unfortunately my white chocolate refused to behave and melt properly so I decided that the best thing to do was get my immersion handheld blender and whizz until all the white chocolate had gone. This left the mixture a little frothy, but got rid of the lumps (large!!!) of white chocolate.

- Leave to cool for about 15 minutes (but I didn't).

- Whisk in the sifted flours and egg.

- Divide between the cases. Bake for about 30 minutes.

- Allow to cool.

- Make the buttercream frosting by beating the icing sugar into the softened butter, adding vanilla to taste and a little milk or water if required to get a pipe-able consistency.

- Pipe baskets of buttercream onto your cupcakes, fill with eggs and wait for admiring comments!

Mmmm, luscious, soft buttercream, just ready to dive into! The cake is quite sweet, as is the buttercream, but I think that the celebration of Easter demands a little richness, after all, those with stronger wills than I will be breaking a period of frugality and celebrating the joy that Easter represents. The cake is soft and moist, and the flavour of the white chocolate comes through surprisingly well - creamy and vanilla-y richness. The tops of the cupcakes were a little crisp rather than being very soft, but this actually worked really well with the soft buttercream and soft cakes, so I was a happy (Easter) bunny!

Beware the chocolate eggs if your teeth aren't the best though - one of my colleagues crunched down a bit too enthusiastically on a mini egg and his teeth weren't too happy about it!