Peppermint Crunch Chocolate Cupcakes

The problem with this whole blogging milark is I often have a massive surplus of food and the bigger problem is I sometimes struggle with who I can feed it to. I mean, I don't want to bin perfectly good cake/ cookies/ brownies when they taste perfectly fine. There are starving kids in Africa, you know.

Luckily for me usually I can successfully distribute it to my work colleagues, more colleagues at my other work and my sister's work colleagues. Every man and his dog, basically. I'd distribute it to my neighbours if I could but as we're not the most sociable of people, we barely talk to any of our neighbours. We don't even know their names. So yeah. As you can imagine, writing Christmas cards to them can be quite awkward. I mean, we're waaaay past the number of years where "To all at no.29" will suffice. We now know they're called Jenny and Simon and Isabelle is the daughter but unfortunately for us this is after many years of "To all at no.29" and it's been that long they've already moved from that house and no longer live there anymore.

With Christmas coming up I've been wanting to come up with a few more festive posts and it's not like I don't want to bake things for the blog- I just can't find the time. So when I had a weekend off work I seized the opportunity to bake not one, but three things for the blog, photograph it, put it on the backburner and slowly get round to putting  a few words together and share with you guys the deliciousness that I had created. Unfortunately this has led to overfeeding my faithful guinea pigs and said guinea pigs are erm, dying. Ok so not that extreme but cake is being rejected guys- it's weeks before Christmas; it's too late to start 'watching your figure'. Christmas is all about embracing yummy food- you might as well enjoy it now then think of the consequences in January later!

That's surely what I'm doing.

But as it pans out I've scaled down this recipe down to produced 5/6 cupcakes. Which is brilliant, because a) this amount could be tackled in house and b) sometimes you don't want want a dozen cupcakes... especially if there's only one, two or three of you then for most, 12 would seem a tiiiiny bit excessive (even by my standards...)

So here it is! Give it a bash- festive baking begins now!

PEPPERMINT CRUNCH CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES
Recipe adapted from Sweetapolita
Yields 5-6 cupcakes

Cupcakes

48g plain flour
75g caster sugar
15g cocoa powder
1/3 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/3 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
40g plain yoghurt
30ml espresso, or very strong coffee (I just use instant stuff and make it stronger)
1 1/2 tbsp oil
1/2 large egg (I know this is an awkward amount... whisk one egg up, weigh and divide by two)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Chocolate Frosting

110g salted butter, very soft
110g dark chocolate, melted and slightly cooled
90g icing sugar, sifted
1 tbsp milk
1 tsp peppermint extract/ flavouring (add more or less to taste, if you prefer)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

To Decorate

2 candy canes, crushed (I placed them in a sandwich bag and bashed the life out of them with a rolling pin)
Festive sprinkles

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line 6 holes of your muffin/ cupcake tin with your favourite cases.
2. For the cupcakes, combine all the wet ingredients into a bowl and whisk to combine.
3. Sift the dry ingredients into another bowl and pour the wet ingredients in. Using an electric whisk (or you could do it by hand, if you prefer) mix on medium speed (I use around no.6 on my Kitchenaid mixer) for 2 minutes.
4. Spoon the batter into the prepared cupcake cases, filling no more than 2/3 full (don't worry, the batter is runny)
5. Bake the cupcakes for 15-17 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. A few crumbs is ok.
6. Cool the cupcakes in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
7. For the frosting: in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or again, an electric handwhisk, beat the butter and icing sugar on low speed for about a minute. 
8. Add the peppermint and vanilla extracts and beat on medium until well combined. Add the cooled chocolate and continue to beat the mixture on medium for about 2 minutes until mixture is smooth.
9. Lastly add the milk and beat on medium high for another minute.
10. Spoon the frosting into a piping bag fitted with your favourite nozzle and pipe a lovely swirl on top of the cooled cupcakes. Decorate with the crushed candy canes and festive sprinkles.