Chocolate Orange Liqueur Cupcakes

We love spirits, chocolate, and cake, and this recipe brings together all three, so it’s a winner in our books. These cupcakes are a wonderful balance of decadent chocolate and tangy citrus, featuring a Spanish orange liqueur in both the cake mix and the icing. Topped with Terry’s chocolate orange mini eggs, these are perfectly rich and zesty.

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Ingredients

• 110g plain flour

• 20g cocoa powder

• 140g caster sugar

• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 40g unsalted butter

• 120ml milk

• 1 egg

• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

• 4 tbsp orange liqueur (we used Federica)

• Juice of 1/4 of an orange

• 100g unsalted butter

• 200g icing sugar

• 4 tbsp cocoa powder

• 2 tbsp orange liqueur

We based this on a recipe from the BBC Good Food blog, and adjusted it slightly. You can find the original here.

Method

Mix the dry ingredients until combined.

Whisk the milk, egg, vanilla extract, liqueur and orange juice together, then add to the dry mixture bit by bit. Beat to until the mixture is smooth, but be careful not to overmix once combined.

Spoon the mixture evenly between the paper cases (around two-thirds full).

Bake for 2-25 minutes at 180ºc. Leave to cool before icing.

For the buttercream icing, mix the icing sugar with the cocoa powder, and cream together with the butter. Once combined and fluffy, add the orange liqueur.

We used orange zest and Terry’s chocolate orange mini eggs to decorate.

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