Sweet Sound Bites: Spiced Orange Drizzle Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Frosting

Orange and chocolate. Two great tastes, even better together.

​We featured these sweet bites on the dessert buffet at our Annual Holiday Open House, and they might make a repeat appearance for Valentine’s Day. They’re that good. 

The mini size should mean that I’m saving on calories, but we all know it means I’ll have two. Sorry not sorry.

Continue reading for the recipe, photos, and today’s Sweet Bites Playlist – new acoustic music from We/Or/Me + Joan Shelley. I hope you like these artists as much as I do.

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Please enjoy today’s playlist featuring sweet sounds from We/Or/Me + Joan Shelley as you read on. 

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Click the photos to enlarge them and read the captions.

Printable Recipe- Spiced Orange Drizzle Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Frosting
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Spiced Orange Drizzle Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Frosting
Recipe source: What the Fruitcake blog
 
Cupcake Ingredients:
Makes 12 regular-sized cupcakes or 24+ mini cupcakes

• 1 1/2 sticks (175g) Unsalted Butter
• 6 ounces (175g) white superfine sugar (or golden caster sugar, if you can find it)
• 6 ounces (175g) Self-Rising Flour
• Note: Here’s the DIY method if you don’t have self-rising flour in your pantry: Add 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt to one cup of all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon Ground Ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon Ground Nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 2 Large Eggs
• Zest from 1 Large Orange
• 1/3 cup Milk
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla

 
Drizzle Ingredients:

• Juice from 2 Large Oranges
• Sugar to taste

 
Directions:

• Pre-heat oven to 350°F (180°C). Line a cupcake tray with cupcake papers
• Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
• Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until just combined.
• Fill cupcake liners to about 2/3 full.
• Bake for 18 – 22 minutes, or until the cake springs back when lightly pressed or toothpick comes out clean.
• While the cupcakes are baking, combine orange juice and sugar to taste.
• Remove cupcakes from oven, and while still hot, use a skewer to spike 3-4 holes in each cupcake.
• Using a pastry brush, brush each cupcake with orange drizzle, or spoon drizzle over each cupcake, up to about 1 tablespoon each.
• Leave to cool for another 15 – 20 minutes.
• Remove cupcakes from cupcake tin and cool completely on cooling rack.
• Top with a swirl of frosting. We used Dark Chocolate Frosting (below) but the original recipe calls for cream cheese frosting sprinkled with a pinch of ground cinnamon – yum!

 
Dark Chocolate Frosting
Source: Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes

Note: Martha’s recipe yields twice as much. We needed only half a batch to ice 12 regular size cupcakes or @ 30 minis. This recipe is for the half-batch.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup plus 1 1/2  teaspoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup plus 1 1/2  teaspoons boiling water
• 1 1/8 cups (2 ¼ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 6 Tablespoons confectioners' sugar, sifted (1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon)
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• ¾  pounds best-quality semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Directions:

• Combine cocoa and boiling water, stirring until cocoa has dissolved.
• With electric mixer on medium-high, beat butter, confectioners sugar, and salt until pale and fluffy.
• Reduce speed to low.
• Add melted and cooled chocolate, beating until combined and scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
• Beat in the cocoa mixture.
• Frosting can be refrigerated up to 5 days or frozen up to 1 month in an air tight container. Before using, bring to room temperature and beat on low speed with an electric mixer until smooth again (do not use a hand held mixer).