These little cup cakes are made with my go to chocolate cake recipe. The recipe makes one large cake or around 22 good sized cup cakes. The cup cakes can be decorated for any occasion, but in this case being so close to Easter, it seemed appropriate to have an Easter theme.

The recipe is taken from the Magazine Goodtaste – April 2001 edition.

Ingredients for cake

185 g butter, soft, but not melted

300 g (2 cups) SR flour, sifted

70 g (2/3 cup) cocoa powder, sifted

395 g (1 3/4 cup) castor sugar

3 eggs at room temperature

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp expresso instant coffee powder

250 ml (1  cup) water

1. Preheat oven to 170°C (less for a fan forced oven). Brush a deep round 25 cm cake pan with melted butter and line the base and sides with baking paper or prepare around 2 cupcake trays.
2. Combine the flour, cocoa, sugar, butter, eggs and vanilla essence in a large mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat on low speed until just combined.
3. Mix the coffee and water together and add very slowly to the cake mixture while beating on slow speed. Once all ingredients are combined increase mixer speed to medium and beat for 3 minutes until smooth and paler in colour.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan, smoothing the surface with the back of a spoon. Bake for around 60 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Alternatively fill the cup cake cases to about 3/4 full and bake for about 25 minutes or until tops of cakes are firm.
5. Remove from the oven and leave in pan for 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
6. For the Easter cup cakes, cover each cake with a chocolate butter cream icing and just before serving top each cake with a little Persian fairy floss and two small Easter eggs – to make the eggs stick put a small dot of icing on each cake before putting the eggs on top of the fairy floss. It is important to add the fairy floss just before serving or it will dissolve due to the moisture in the buttercream icing.

Tips

I used large sized eggs