Royal Chocolate Cupcakes for Mother's Day

Today is Mothers Day, a special day set aside to celebrate mums everywhere.  Because of lockdown restrictions, many people (myself included) could not be with their mums physically today, and instead had to catch up via technology.

I thought that these Royal Chocolate Cupcakes were a special recipe to post to celebrate  Mothers Day.  The recipe was posted by the Queen's pastry chefs to celebrate her recent birthday, but I think they are adaptable to any occasion.

Here are the cakes unadorned:

I love this recipe - the cupcakes were amazingly light and fluffy, whereas I had expected them to be quite dense.  My preference would have been to leave out the white chocolate chips, which in my case all sank to the bottom of the cakes and didn't add much to the flavour. 

I made the chocolate icing and decorated the cupcakes with sprinkles: 

Here's a close up of a cupcake - look at that luscious chocolate icing:

Nom!

To make these cupcakes, you will need:

15ml vinegar
300ml milk
50ml vegetable oil
60g melted butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
250g self raising flour
75g cocoa powder
300g sugar
10g bicarbonate of soda
100g white chocolate chips

For the icing:

90g dark chocolate
100g butter
125g icing sugar

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius and line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake papers.
Put the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda into a mixing bowl.  

In  jug, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, melted butter, oil, vinegar and milk.

Slowly mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and fold through the chocolate chips (if using).

Using an icecream scoop, scoop the batter into the cupcake cases.

Bake the cupcakes in the oven for 15-18 minutes or until cooked through (they will spring back when you press on the top of them).

Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool slightly in the tin before unmoulding to cool completely on a wire rack.

Once the cupcakes are cool, make the icing by beating the icing sugar and butter together until light and creamy, then folding through the melted chocolate.  Spread the icing on top of the cupcakes with a spatula or knife, and decorate as desired.

Finally, I could not let the day pass without posting a photo of me with my mother:

Happy Mothers Day Mutti!