Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting

These Chocolate Cupcakes with easy Vanilla Frosting are a fabulous dessert, special occasion treat or birthday surprise. Made with simple pantry ingredients, you will fall in love with this recipe.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword chocolate cupcake recipe, chocolate cupcakes, vanilla frosting

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings cupcakes

Calories 252kcal

Author Lauren's Latest

Ingredients

For the Chocolate Cupcakes:

1 ¾ cups all purpose flour
¾ cup dutch processed cocoa powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules, such as Folgers optional
¾ cup vegetable oil or canola oil
2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 egg white

For the Vanilla Frosting:

1 cup butter softened
1 pound powdered sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
⅓ cup heavy cream* or more, as needed (see notes about substituting milk below)

Instructions

For the Chocolate Cupcakes:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 32 muffin tins with paper liners and set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt together to combine. Set aside. In a liquid measuring cup, stir buttermilk, vanilla and instant coffee granules (if using) together. Set aside.
In a separate large bowl, mix oil and sugar together until combined. Mix in eggs and egg white, one at a time, until mixture becomes lighter in color, about 90 seconds.
Alternate adding in flour mixture with milk mixture, starting and ending with flour. Scrape the sides and mix again to ensure a smooth batter.
Using an ice cream scoop, fill tins 2/3 of the way full with batter.
Bake 15-22 minutes in the lower 2/3 of the oven. Cupcakes will be done when a toothpick comes out clean or mostly clean with a few moist crumbs. Cool 5-10 minutes in pans before trying to remove and transfer to cooling racks. Cool completely before frosting.

For the Vanilla Frosting:

In a large bowl, measure and add butter, powdered sugar, salt and vanilla. Stir with beaters on low (or paddle attachment on stand mixer) to mix and break up the butter. It will still be very powdery and dry. Slowly add in the heavy cream. Once you notice the frosting start to come together stop adding the cream. You may need to add more than the amount listed. This is also normal. Increase mixer speed to medium to get rid of any lumps and create a smooth frosting. Scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl and mix again to ensure a completely smooth frosting.
Vanilla frosting will be done when it can hold its shape, but you can easily move a butter knife through it. If it's too thick, add more cream and mix. If you've added too much cream and the frosting is too soft, add more powdered sugar. If you notice there are a lot of air bubbles in your frosting, use a large wooden spoon to beat a lot of the air out of the frosting by hand.

Notes

*You can substitute milk for heavy cream in the frosting recipe. Start with half the amount and slowly add more in as needed until it reaches the desired consistency.

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