Yummiest Chocolate 'Creme Egg' Cupcakes for Easter

Method:

Claire's Top Tips

1. These light textured, but rich chocolate cupcakes will go down a treat, but consume in small amounts! I've designed the recipe to use a wee bit less sugar than our normal choc cake recipes and the 'creme egg' filling has no added sugar. The buttercream topping, can be swapped for whipped cream - be a good idea if you're not feeling excited at the prospect of hyper kids in a confined space after an Easter day of chocolate egg hunting! In our household, we love to have fun piping the buttercream in pretty, frilly swirls and rosettes, but like my mean mother before me, I scoop most of the buttercream off and smooth it over before serving to the children! Luckily, with this recipe, the rainbow swirls still look super pretty when spread instead of piped, so just have fun and find the best way that works for you!
2. If you're baking with little kids, don't aim too high in terms of aesthetics! Ironically my two have very little interest in baking or decorating - the con being I would have loved to share my passion with them, the pro being they loose interest after 5 seconds, and (mostly) leave me in peace to get on with it! But I've baked with loads of enthusiastic wee ones in the past and for them it's often more about the process than the finished article. Many times over I've seen kids create a beautiful decoration, then joyfully mutilate and squidge it into an unrecognisable blob, or worse-still bite it's head off! So have a glass of wine to hand, get yourself into a giggly mood and let the chaos commence!
3. I've used a combo of milk, yoghurt and lemon juice in this recipe as my favourite alternative to buttermilk. I love Irish and American recipes, but often struggle to find buttermilk here, so this is a great substitute.
4. It's easy to make this recipe dairy-free by using oat milk, soy yoghurt and dairy free marge for the icing.
5. It also works great gluten-free (luckily for me!) - I always use Doves Farm self-raising gluten free flour and it comes out a treat!

For the Cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C and place 12 cupcake wrappers in a cupcake or muffin tin
2. Sieve all the dry ingredients together and mix well with a spoon
3. Whisk all the wet ingredients together, apart from the hot water
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix just until no lumps remain
5. Add the hot water and stir until it is a smooth batter. It will be quite runny - a bit like double cream
6. Pour or spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, don't fill the cases all the way to the top - leave about 2cm for them to rise up in the oven
7. Bake for 18 mins or until a knife blade inserted comes out without mixture on it
8. Remove from the oven, leave for 5 minutes then transfer cakes to a wire rack to cool

For the Filling

1. Place about a third of the creme freche or sour cream in a small bowl, add a few drops of yellow colour and mix until you have a pale egg yolk colour
2. When the cupcakes are completely cool, scoop out a teaspoon of sponge from each cupcake to make a hole
3. Spoon a small dollop of the yellow filling into the hole first then top up with the white filling

For the Buttercream Icing

1. You will need soft butter - room temperature is perfect, but if you're using butter straight from the fridge, weigh out your amount, chop it into small pieces then soften it on defrost in the microwave (take care not to melt it)
2. Place the butter and half of the icing sugar in a food mixer and beat on medium high until pale and fluffy
3. Add the remaining icing sugar, vanilla and splash of milk and mix until well combined
4. Add a further splash of milk and mix again if needed - you are looking for a soft, spreadable and pipeable texture
5. Split the buttercream into 4 bowls and colour pale pink, blue, green and yellow (use 1 drop of blue and 2 drops of yellow to make green if you don't have it)
6. For the piping, I used 3 paper piping bags with 3 different shaped nozzles. To get the dual colour effect, spoon one colour of buttecream into the bag then holding it open, use the back of the spoon to spread it up the inside of the bag. This means, when you scoop in the second colour, it should reach down the the nozzle so both colours will come out together when you squeeze. Avoid mixing opposite colours together as you'll tend to get brown and grey tones. Good combinations are: Blue and pink, Green and Yellow, Pink and Yellow
7. Have fun piping - get creative and feel free to experiment - be adventurous and see what happens!

For the Decorations

1. To make the decorations pictured below, head to our Easter bunny and chick blog for step-by-step instructions
2. Otherwise, pastel sprinkles or a little cluster of mini eggs look gorgeous on top
3. We'd love to see your creations! Feel free to post them on our facebook and instagram and use hashtag liggyscakes so we can marvel and admire :) A big Happy Easter from Claire and the Cake Team! x