Chocolate orange cupcakes

My sister's birthday was a perfect opportunity to try out a new cupcake recipe and practice my icing technique.


For the cupcakes:

140g self-raising flour

70g drinking chocolate

1 tsp baking powder

140g caster sugar

3 eggs

175g margarine

1 orange

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Line your muffin tray with 12 muffin cases.

Sieve the flour into the bowl and add the drinking chocolate and mix well with a wooden spoon.

Add baking powder, sugar, eggs, margarine and orange zest and mix well (save the rest of the orange for later). Don't worry if you can't get the mixture completely smooth, that's just the orange zest.

Spoon your mixture into the muffin cases and put in the oven to 20-25 mins. Check the muffins are cooked through by sticking a toothpick in the centre and see if it comes out clean.

Leave to cool before you add the icing.

For the icing:

115g unsalted butter (softened)

orange juice

500g icing sugar

A few drops of orange food colouring

Mix the butter and sugar together using an electric whisk, then squeeze some juice from the orange into the icing. Continue until you have the consistency and flavour you want.

Add a couple of drops of food colouring to get the orange colour. To create a nice contrast only colour half of the icing.