I Heart Chocolate Cupcakes w Easy Two Tone Buttercream {Happy Valentines!!!}

Summary: I’m never quite sure about Valentine’s Day. If you’re in a relationship there’s pressure and if your single, it all feels a bit sucky. But I am sure about cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes no less! They taste good no matter what your doing or who your eating them with. These sponge like chocolate cakes are very easy and taste wonderful. I went with pretty vanilla buttercream swirls but you could use any flavour you felt like. This two tone technique is as simple as piping a plain swirl, I promise!  I saw the technique on YouTube and knew it would be a perfect technique for these Valentine’s Day cupcakes. I’ve put a link to the video in the instructions for you. Pretty sprinkles are always fun, I put some close ups for you (please don’t judge my average piping skills!) but they are super pretty in real life. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could combine the two tone technique with piping a rose instead of a swirl or even make a cupcake bouquet! 

Ingredients

• 85g milk chocolate, finely chopped
• ⅓ cup cocoa powder
• ¾ cup black coffee, hot
• ¾ cup plain flour
• ¾ cup castor sugar
• ½  salt
• ½ tsp bicarb soda
• 90ml flavourless vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp white vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla 
• 1 qty basic buttercream icing
• Gel or paste food colouring (I used Wilton Pink Gel)
• Various sprinkles

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180C and line a 12 cup muffin pan with paper party pan liners. 
2. Place the chopped chocolate and cocoa powder into a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer. Pour the hot coffee over the mixture and whisk until smooth. Allow to come to room temperature on the bench or place in the fridge to speed things up.
3. Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt and bicarb in bowl and set aside.
4. Once the chocolate mix is at room temp, whisk in the oil, eggs, vinegar and vanilla, beat until smooth. Add the flour mixture and once again beat until smooth and combined.
5. Divide the batter evenly between the muffin pan cups.Bake for  17 to 19 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, before removing them and placing on the wire rack to cool completely.
6. Make up the buttercream icing and tint it pale pink with the food dye. If you want to see how to make the icing and pipe a simple swirl, this video of mine shows you how. If you want the two tone effect, the technique is simple. 
7. Fit an icing tip in a disposable piping bag, fold back the top like you are ready to fill it and then use a small paintbrush to paint more pink gel or paste (liquid won’t work) food dye onto the bag in two stripes. Fill as normal and pipe. I made both of my stripes in the same pink I used to tint the buttercream but you can use whatever colours you like. This video from Jenn shows you exactly how to do it. Just jump to the 3.16 if you only want to see how to do the icing. 
8. I finished my cupcakes with little candy hearts, pink sugar crystals, a few candy pearls etc from the supermarket. Mine came in one of those canisters that are divided in four and I got mine from Coles. I also used some tiny silver, heart shaped edible glitters from Wilton that I bought in a kitchen ware store last year. Of course, you can finish yours with anything you like or just leave them plain.