Chocolate Cupcakes and Strawberry Marshmallow Frosting

Cupcakes! How I love these little tempting cakes! They can be so versatile and give you so many options: from the cake to the frosting, ways of decorating, different sprinkles...etc.

I recently bought 2 new cookbooks, both about cuppies, and since then I've been in a deep, big 'cupcake mood'. Thank goodness that Xmas is around the corner and I'm gonna have the perfect excuse to bake like there's no tomorrow.

It was my niece's birthday so I went for a cute, kind-of-girly-looking cupcakes but not too much sweet or over-decorated (read kitsch here).

I'm not a big fan of buttercream frosting, they are just too much for my taste, I don't like desserts with a big amount of butter in general. So I was googling for easy marshmallow frostings and came across Mabel's cool blog and her easy strawberry marshmallow frosting. It doesn't taste too sweet and it's a perfect idea for making cupcakes for kids cause this frosting is made with marshmallow strawberries (not the Fluff's strawberry-flavoured mm) that you'll find at almost every candy shop.

My next post will most probably be a recap of old Christmas recipes and as soon as I begin making this year's festive recipes I will share them with you; a few days later after Xmas because even though it'd be cool to publish the recipes before, that would mean making each one twice...and I don't wanna pack on a lot of pounds before the year ends. ;-)

Descárgate aquí la receta en español!

Chocolate cupcakes and strawberry marshmallow frosting

Ingredients
(yield: 6 normal size cupcakes)

55g margarine.
55g granulated sugar.
1 large egg.
85g self-rising flour sifted.
1 tbsp cocoa powder, sifted.
Dark chocolate chips.
For the marshmallow frosting:
300g cream (35% fat).
12 marshmallow strawberry candies.*

*Note: I will add a few more next time to emphasize the strawberry flavor.

Directions

Preheat oven to 190ºC (374 ºF). Line a 6 cupcake tin.

In a large bowl, beat with an electric mixer margarine and sugar. Add in eggs, flour and cocoa powder until a soft paste forms.

Pour in the cupcake tin half the batter and place a small chunk of chocolate in the center (or you can add chocolate chips to the batter). Scoop the rest of the batter. 

Bake the cupcakes for 20-25 minutes, until a wooden stick comes out clean (or any cake tester for that matter).

Let them cool in the tin for 10 minutes and remove them and cool on a wire rack completely.

While the cuppies are cooling it's time to make the frosting.

For the marshmallow strawberries frosting:

Put the cream in a medium/small saucepan. Break the marshmallow strawberries into small pieces and add them to the cream. Melt completely, stirring constantly.

Chill overnight in the fridge and prepare the frosting the day after.

Whip the cream until it gets a thick consistence, add red food coloring (a small drop, for example Wilton's Christmas Red). Put the frosting in a piping bag using a round tip (Wilton 2A) and frost your cuppies. 

Store in the refrigerator until serving.