Chocolate Cupcakes with Pink Frosting

✏️ Recipe creation

I wanted to create a cute pink cupcake that chocolate lovers could enjoy, making it great for girly kid's parties, pink-themed parties, baby showers, bridal showers, Valentine’s Day and more.

I love these chocolate sponge cupcakes, it’s based on the recipe I use for my chocolate Oreo drip cake and Disney Maleficent cupcakes – fan favourites!

These easy chocolate pink cupcakes are simple to make, using a basic chocolate sponge and an American-style buttercream with pink food colouring. It’s a chocolate and vanilla-flavoured dessert sure to go down a treat with a crowd!

🥘 Ingredients

This pink chocolate cupcakes recipe calls for the following ingredients:

1. Chocolate cupcakes:

• Vegetable oil: or other neutral flavoured oil.
• Egg: large size, room temperature for ease of mixing.
• Milk: full-fat or semi-skimmed for a creamier consistency.
• Vanilla extract: use extract or paste over essence for best flavour.
• White sugar: finely granulated such as caster sugar.
• Plain all-purpose flour: sieve for a smooth cake batter.
• Cocoa powder: unsweetened type for baking (not drinking) e.g. dutch-processed.
• Baking powder: always check the expiry date before use or the cake won’t rise.
• Hot coffee: fresh or instant coffee.

2. Pink buttercream:

• Unsalted butter: room temperature for a softened butter that’s easier to beat.
• Powdered icing sugar: sieve your confectioners’ sugar for a smooth frosting.
• Vanilla extract: use extract or paste for best taste.
• Milk: use full fat or semi-skimmed milk.
• Salt (optional)
• Pink food colouring: use a gel or paste to prevent adding too much moisture.

See the recipe card for quantities.

Top tip: For accuracy, it’s best to weigh your ingredients rather than using cups.

♻️ Substitutions / Variations

Ingredient substitutions

Instead of white sugar, you can use golden caster sugar or light brown soft sugar. This gives it a more caramel flavour.

You can swap the all-purpose plain flour for self-raising flour and reduce the baking powder to only ½ tsp.

You can use fresh hot coffee for this recipe, or 2 teaspoon instant coffee dissolved into 100ml (½ cup) hot water instead. Either caffeinated or decaf works great.

You can use whole, semi-skimmed or non-diary milk in the cupcake batter and buttercream. For the buttercream, this gives it a thinner, creamier consistency, so only add as much as needed, 1 tablespoon at a time.

For the pink icing, you can swap pink food colouring for a small amount of red colouring.

Flavour options

You can swap your pink vanilla frosting for another pink frosting like this raspberry puree buttercream or the pink strawberry buttercream used in my best strawberry vanilla cake recipe.

You can also change the chocolate cupcake for another type like vanilla sprinkles cupcakes or these soft lemon cupcakes.

📖 Method

Chocolate cupcakes

Preheat oven: 180°C / 160°C (fan) / Gas Mark 4 / 350°F

Step 1: In a mixing bowl, beat the egg, oil, vanilla, sugar and milk together until fully combined.

Step 2: In a separate bowl, sieve in the cocoa powder, flour and baking powder and whisk them together.

Step 3: Gradually pour the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring together as you pour until just combined. There may be a few small lumps left, but that’s ok.

Step 4: Slowly add in the hot coffee (fresh or instant), mixing as you pour until the liquid has only just combined.

Step 5: Divide the mixture evenly between the cupcake cases in the muffin tin.

Step 6: Bake for 15-20mins until risen and springy to the touch. Allow the cupcakes to cool on a wire rack while you make the buttercream.

Pink buttercream

Step 1: Beat the butter (either by hand, using an electric mixer or stand mixer) until pale, light and fluffy. This could take several minutes.

Step 2: Sieve half of the icing sugar into the butter and beat until combined.

Steps 3 - 4: Repeat the above step with the remaining half of the icing sugar.

Step 5: Add in the milk, vanilla extract and salt, then mix until smooth. Stir in food colouring, a few drops at a time, until you get the desired colour.

Step 6: Once your cupcakes have fully cooled, add your buttercream to a piping bag fitted with a nozzle of your choice (e.g. large open star) and pipe large swirls onto each cupcake, then enjoy!

🧁 Other goodies

Looking for some more easy desserts?

If you love easy cupcakes, perfect for birthday parties and special occasions, give these tasty treats a try:

• Funfetti cupcakes
• Lemon orange cupcakes
• Raspberry vanilla cupcakes

For more great chocolate cupcake frosting ideas, check out these delicious cupcake toppings:

• Boozy Baileys buttercream – add pink food colouring for a pink Baileys frosting!
• Fresh lemon buttercream
• Orange buttercream
• Caramel buttercream with store-bought caramel

You can also take your chocolate cupcakes with pink icing to the next level by filling them with a few teaspoons of this delicious strawberry cupcake filling or this lemon curd cupcake filling.

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