Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting
Chocolate may be the ultimate cake flavour and peppermint happens to perfectly complement it. Luckily, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, when you put them together you get a delicious combination is hard to resist. Upgrade your March 17th celebration this year by making these Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting. Hot tip – they happen to go perfectly with a pint of Guinness too!
This blog post may contain affiliate links. What does that mean? We may get a small commission if you make a purchase using our links, which helps us to keep posting new holiday content every week.
If you like a nice high twirl of frosting – we definitely do! – we suggest doubling the ingredients. This will ensure you have enough frosting to generously decorate two dozen cupcakes.
What you’ll need:
- Chocolate cupcakes (recipe below)
- Cupcake liners
- Peppermint buttercream frosting (recipe below)
- Piping bag
- Large star piping tip
- Green gel food colouring
- Mixer
- Muffin tin
Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting
Make the chocolate cupcake batter using the recipe below. Line a muffin tin with liners and then fill with each cup with three generous tablespoons of batter.
Bake the cupcakes in the oven for about 20 mins.
In an electric mixer, cream together butter and vegetable shortening. We chose to use shortening in this frosting recipe, opposed to all butter, because we wanted to get a real white frosting. Using all butter will taste a little bit better, but will make a more cream colour frosting.
Add powdered sugar, one cup at a time and mix well.
Divide the frosting in half and colour one bowl green. We recommend using a gel food colouring as the liquid kind can dilute the texture of the frosting.
Transfer the frosting in two lines onto plastic wrap and then roll into a log. You could also use a spatula to fill a piping bag directly with the two colours of icing. It’s a little bit of a messier method but works just as well.
Place the plastic wrap frosting log into a piping bag, with a large star tip attached.
Decorate the cupcakes with large twirls of frosting. Starting of the outside of the cupcake and pipe circles, moving inward, allowing the frosting to pile up on itself until you reach a peak. Then stop applying pressure to the piping bag and pull it away from the cupcake.
Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting
Equipment
- Mixer
- Two mixing bowls
- Two medium bowls
- Cupcake liners
- Muffin tin
- Piping bag
- Large star tip
- Kettle
Ingredients
Cupcakes
- 1 3/4 cups Flour
- 2 cups Sugar
- 3/4 cup Unsweetened Cocoa powder
- 2 tsp Baking soda
- 1 tsp Baking powder
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 2 Eggs
- 1 cup Brewed coffee
- 1 cup Heavy cream Thicker milk can be used as a substitute
- 1/2 cup Vegetable oil
- 1 tsp Vanilla extract
Peppermint Frosting
- 1/2 cup Butter
- 1/2 cup Vegetable shortening
- 4 cups Powdered sugar
- 2 tbsp Milk
- 2 tsp Peppermint extract
Instructions
Cupcakes
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Fill a muffin tin with cupcakes liners.
- In a mixing bowl, sift together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, coffee, cream, oil and vanilla.
- Pour the coffee mix into the dry mixture and mix until thoroughly combined (about 2 mins).
- Add three generous tablespoons of batter to each cupcake liner.
- Bake 20-25 minutes. Let cool completely before decorating.
Peppermint Frosting
- In a mixer, cream together butter and shortening.
- Beat in the peppermint extract and combine thoroughly.
- Add the powdered sugar, one cup at a time, until fully mixed into the butter mixture.
- Add the milk and beat until light fluffy.
We hope you enjoy these St. Patrick’s Day Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting! If you’re looking for more St. Pat’s inspiration, check out our Rustic Lucky Signboard and our Clover Chair Sashes. We have tons of St. Patrick’s Day DIY, crafts and recipes for you to choose from. Head on over to our St. Patrick’s Day page.