Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting

Ingredients & Substitutions

• Flour: Unlike my vanilla cupcake recipe, I use all-purpose flour in this recipe because part of it gets replaced with cocoa powder.
  • I HIGHLY recommend using a digital scale to measure the flour and cocoa powder, as they’re so often over measured. 
• Cocoa Powder: use unsweetened cocoa powder. I prefer dutch-process but natural cocoa powder also works. The color and flavor will be slightly less intense.
• Baking Powder: to leaven the cupcakes. 
• Sugar: I used granulated sugar and I don’t recommend cutting any out.
• Oil: I use oil for my cupcake recipes. Vegetable oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, olive oil, etc. all work fine. 
• Eggs: Use large, room temperature eggs.
  • If you’re in a pinch, place them in hot water for 5-10 minutes. 
• Sour Cream: I’ve used greek yogurt and sour cream in this recipe and they both work well. You can also use plain yogurt.
• Milk: I use whole milk or two percent but any milk will work here, even dairy free. 

Why do I use the reverse creaming method?

The reverse creaming method is where you combine all the dry ingredients including the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, etc. with the butter and oil first. In this step the butter and oil are coating the flour particles. When the flour is coated with fat first, it inhibits the development of gluten, making the cupcakes extra tender (over developing the gluten is what can make cakes tough). 

This also provides a ‘tight’ crumb which means you should have large air pockets in the crumb of the cake. The lack of the large air pockets helps the cupcakes rise more evenly so that they’re not lopsided and don’t deflate when you remove them from the oven. 

The best vanilla frosting for chocolate cupcakes

This is pretty much a personal preference. In my small-batch cupcakes, I used American buttercream (chocolate or vanilla).

 If you have any extra egg yolks lying around, French buttercream is always a good idea. If you have leftover egg whites lying around, Swiss meringue buttercream will be perfect.

For these ones, I used a my favorite buttercream! It’s a combination of French buttercream and Italian buttercream. I call it the ‘whole egg buttercream’ because it tastes just like the other meringue based buttercreams, it’s stable like them but it uses whole eggs instead of just egg whites or just egg yolks. 

The recipe is in the recipe card but you can also read more about it in my Frosted 2.0 downloadable guide (below). It’s a continuation to my cookbook, Frosted.

If you’re looking for something more unique, try my sweetened condensed milk frosting or a cream cheese frosting (you can skip the brown butter).

How to store these chocolate cupcakes

I usually just cover them with a cake dome or place them in an airtight container and store them at room temperature for 2-3 days. You can store them in the refrigerator for an additional 2-3 days but if it’s any longer, I recommend freezing them.

To freeze the cupcakes, place them in an airtight container and then place the container in a freezer bag, squeezing out all the excess air. Bring them back to room temperature by thawing at room temperature for a few hours before serving. 

Thanks so much for reading today’s post, if you have any questions just comment down below. Make sure to leave it in the comment section because I can’t answer in the rating section.

If you make these chocolate cupcakes, I’d love it if you left a star rating for me. If it’s less than five stars, please leave a comment with the rating so I know why! 🙂

As always, have a blessed day and happy baking!

Love, B