Sea Salt & Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

Hope you’re all well! Today is Wednesday, and when I got up it was -4°C - I could barely move! 

To make things even better, my front door decided to lock itself shut yesterday, so I was stuck inside - which I took as the perfect opportunity to bake something indulgent and comforting: Sea Salt & Dark Chocolate Cupcakes.

Ingredients:

For the Cupcake Batter:

• 85g dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids), broken into pieces
• 70g golden caster sugar (I used normal as didn't have golden)
• 70g light muscovado sugar
• 120g butter, melted
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tsp sea salt flakes
• 2 medium eggs
• 70m milk (whole or semi-skimmed milk)
• 140g self-raising flour, sifted
• 1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder, sifted

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (or fan 160°C or gas mark 4). Get a muffin tin and line with cupcake cases. I find the muffin trays are better than cupcake tins as they are deeper and keep the shape of the cupcake/muffin.
2. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water, once melted whisk in 70ml of boiled water and whisk until smooth. Leave this to the side to cool down.
3. Add both sugars to a bowl and rub with your fingers until you've got rid of little lumps or if your lazy like me put it in the mixer and put the whisk attachment on and leave it for 5 minutes - this works too!
4. Then add everything to the bowl of mixed sugar - so the cooled melted chocolate, cooled melted butter, vanilla essence, sea salt flakes, 2 eggs, milk, self-raising flour and cocoa powder. Mix together either with a wooden spoon or by food mixer (if doing it that way). Once all mixed together divide the mixture into the 12 cupcake cases - they will look very full but don't worry they won't overflow.
5. Bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Take out from the oven and leave in the tin for 5-10 minutes and then place onto a wire cooling rack - be careful as they will still be hot.

For the Buttercream Icing:

• 120ml double cream
• 120g dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids), finely chopped or grated
• 50g butter
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 100g icing sugar sifted

Method:

1. Add the cream, chocolate and butter into a bowl set over a pan of hot water. Stir until the mixture is melted. Once melted, stir in 60ml of hot water and whisk until combined together and glossy looking. Stir in the salt flakes.
2. Place in the fridge or somewhere cool for an hour or so ... or until the mixture as thickened and cooled. It will look very runny but it will thicken - don't panic!
3. Once cooled - whisk in the 100g sifted icing sugar.
4. Once cupcakes are cooled, and once ganache is ready either spread over the cupcakes or put in a piping bag and pipe onto the cupcakes. Sprinkle with sea salt for decoration.