Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes with Almond Frosting

Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes with Almond Buttercream

I think my favorite part of these cupcakes is how elegant they look, even though the decorating is really easy! Also, no I will not stop making cupcakes with raspberries. I love raspberries.

Cupcakes:

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

4 oz unsweetened chocolate (I used a Ghirardelli bar)

1 cup buttermilk

2 tsp vanilla

24 large red raspberries

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs, one at a time. Stir in the melted chocolate.

In another bowl, sift together flour and soda. Add alternately with buttermilk; add vanilla. Mix until just combined.

Fill cupcake tins about 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 13 minutes, turn, bake 13 minutes.

Warning: these cupcakes rise out, not up, so be careful not to overfill the baking cups. I ended up having the trim the edges off a bunch of the cupcakes because they were so overflowed. Also, the cupcakes are not very structurally sound when baked, so be gentle with them -- I lost two or three because they just fell apart while I was handling them.

Let cool.

When cool, use a small serrated knife or apple corer to cut a small hole in the center of each cupcake. Place a raspberry inside the hole.

Makes 24.

Icing/Decoration:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, soft

3 cups sifted xxx sugar

1 tbsp almond extract

chocolate syrup

24 red raspberries

24 chocolate chips

Beat butter until creamy. Add sugar and almond extract and beat until smooth. If the frosting is not yet the right consistency to pipe, you can add more sugar to stiffen it or a tablespoon of cream to make it softer.

Using a piping bag, pipe a spiral of frosting on top of each cupcake, covering the cored center.

Place a single chocolate chip inside each raspberry.

Drizzle chocolate syrup over frosted cupcakes so that it kind of runs down and gets in the grooves of the icing.

Place a raspberry on top of each.

This cupcake, like I said, looks fabulous for very little work, and the cupcake itself tastes delicious. However, the cake part is very fragile, and I think I might make a few adjustments to the recipe if I were to try it again. On the other hand, making the batter chocolate by stirring in the melted chocolate bar creates an amazing flavor, so definitely keep that part.

In terms of how many raspberries to buy, 48 of them is about what you'd expect to get out a pint box.

Adapted from The Baking Robot.