Chocolate Cupcakes with Red Raspberry Buttercream Frosting

The past few days have been nothing but snow and ice. An inch of ice and five of snow has led to the city essentially being shut down. Two snow-days for schools and many business and "use extreme caution" alerts from the Department of Roads. What does this boil down to? Me going stir crazy. After two days of being snowed in at home, I needed something to do besides read, watch tv, and do laundry. So rather than vacuum or go to the gym (although both really need to be done), I decided chocolate/raspberry cupcakes sounded nice. Don't you agree? And I've been dying to frost cupcakes with a large round icing tip. The little things in life, I know.

So I searched and searched for the perfect chocolate cupcake recipe. I'm not a big chocolate fan, and even less of a chocolate cake fan. But today sounded like a good day. Molly recommended to me The Pioneer Woman's chocolate cake recipe. The PW says it's The Best Ever Chocolate Cake... so I thought I'd give it a try.

Here's the recipe (with my minor changes): 2 cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
¼ tsp salt
½ cups buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup butter
4 heaping tbsp cocoa powder
1 cup boiling water
1 chunk dark chocolate for each cupcake


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake tin with cupcake papers.
In large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, combine the buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, and vanilla. Stir and set aside.
In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and stir to combine. Add the boiling water, allow to bubble for a few seconds, then turn off heat.

Pour chocolate mixture over flour mixture. Stir a few times to cool the chocolate. Pour buttermilk mixture over the top and stir to combine.

Fill each cupcake paper 2/3 full. Place one chocolate chunk in the middle of each cupcake.
Bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then place them on a baking rack to finish cooling.

After these were cooled (and I went to the gym and had dinner with Mike, Molly, and Dave), I made the frosting.

Here's the recipe:


1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
4-6 cups powdered sugar (I just added until it was the consistency I wanted)
1/2 cup seedless raspberry jam (I used about 3/4 cup to make it taste better)


Blend the butter and jam with a mixer until smooth. Add powdered sugar a little at a time until it is the consistency you'd like.


Then I piped this frosting onto the cupckes using my grandma's frosting bags and tips. It was actually the coupler from her set, since I don't have a round tip large enough to frost like I wanted. But it worked great -- Thanks Grandma!

After a raspberry and some chocolate sprinkles... Voila! 

Oh, and a quick shout-out to those who have been

telling my dad about my baking and blogging.

He has to keep tabs on me somehow.

Thanks for keeping him in the loop.