These Malteser bunny chocolate malt cupcakes with vanilla malt buttercream are one of my best ever Easter cupcake ideas.

The delicious chocolate malt cupcakes are topped with a vanilla buttercream that looks like grass and there’s even a cute Malteser bunny chocolate poking out of a rabbit hole in the middle!

One of my favourite things about Easter is the sweet treats, and these chocolate bunny cupcakes are one of my best Easter desserts. The mini bunnies are just so cute as well as delicious. With how adorable and colourful these chocolate bunny cupcakes are, they'd also be a great Easter treat for kids.

I also think they’d make great bunny birthday cupcakes – perfect for parties! I can just imagine munching on a whole batch of cute bunny desserts on a Spring day.

Easy Easter Malteser bunny chocolate malt cupcakes with vanilla malt buttercream

Jump to:

✏️ Making a tasty and easy recipe
🥘 Ingredients notes
🔪 Equipment notes
🍱 Storage
💭 Top tips for success
♻️ Alternatives and substitutions
🧁 Other goodies
📋 Recipe
💬 Comments

✏️ Making a tasty and easy recipe

When it comes to Easter desserts and Easter baking ideas, one of the most fun ideas is incorporating some of the tasty Easter chocolates and sweets with cakes, cupcakes, brownies, cookies – you name it! You can use your favourite Easter chocolates to decorate your baked goods, using them as toppers or hiding them inside as sweet surprises.

I love Maltesers, the original chocolates as well as just about every other variation they come up with! The malt flavour and honeycomb inside are just too good to resist. Their chocolate bunnies are the perfect Easter treat, and I think they look super cute in a rabbit hole for these happy bunny cupcakes.

I wanted to use the Malteser flavours to inspire a tasty chocolate cupcake recipe, complete with a hint of malt in the chocolate sponge cake and the stronger malt flavour of the vanilla malt buttercream.

🥘 Ingredients notes

As with many of my baking recipes, I recommend starting with room temperature ingredients for these chocolate Easter cupcakes. This will improve the consistency and ease at which your ingredients will mix together.

Always sieve your flour, confectioners sugar, baking powder and cocoa powder. I used to be a bit lazy and skip this part, but it really makes such a difference to get you a lump-free mixture.

When measuring your ingredients, I always recommend using weights rather than cups where possible for greater accuracy. Accuracy is important for the amount of flour used.

🔪 Equipment notes

I like to use digital scales for weighing my ingredients as it's easier and more accurate than other scales. I'm a fan of these KitchenAid or Salter ones!

Use measuring spoons for your teaspoon and tablespoon amounts where possible. Be sure to level off the heaped ingredients in your scoops before adding them to your mix.

🍱 Storage

Once decorated and finished, it's best to place cupcakes into an airtight container. These Easter bunny chocolate malt cupcakes should keep for several days in storage at room temperature.

If you want to freeze your cupcakes, you can wrap the unfrosted and undecorated cupcakes in plastic wrap / cling film and freeze them. Your buttercream frosting can also be frozen in an airtight container. Both should keep for 1-2months in the freezer.

Defrost and use as normal per recipe. The buttercream may need to be beaten again to whip up to nice and fluffy before use.

💭 Top tips for success

Cupcake making tips:

When making cupcakes with raising agents (i.e. using self-raising flour, baking powder, baking soda, etc.) such as this one, try to not over-mix your cake batter. The texture of your cake will be dense rather than a light and airy sponge.

When pouring your cupcake batter into the cupcake liners in the muffin tin (I quite like the Wilton muffin pans!) you only need to fill each of your cupcake cases to roughly ⅔ full. If you fill it more than this, you might have your cupcakes looking a bit more like muffins as they may spill over!

Don’t open the oven mid-bake. You’ll have probably heard this advice before, but it’s such an important factor that it bears repeating. I’ve been there before and nobody likes a cake with a sinkhole!

Buttercream tips:

For a gorgeously creamy buttercream frosting, start by beating your butter until it’s light and fluffy. It could just be me, but this always seems to take longer than I think. It should be several minutes of beating the butter if using a stand/electric mixer. This will go a long way in giving you creamy and light frosting.

Another buttercream colouring tip is to only add the colouring a drop at a time, and to note that your colour will develop and strengthen over time. This means that you should stop adding more colouring a shade lighter than you’d like your final colour to be. For the buttercream grass here, I use only 1-2 drops of green gel food colouring as I like a more pastel green colour – perfect for Easter!

Cupcake decoration tips:

When cutting out a small hole for your Easter bunnies to sit in, you only need to cut a few inches deep. This will allow most of your cute chocolate bunny to be on show and means you’re not getting rid of too much of your tasty cupcake sponge.

Troubleshooting help:

If you’ve got any specific questions on making these Easter Malteser bunny chocolate malt cupcakes with vanilla malt buttercream, please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll try my best to help out!

Alternatively, you can get in touch via my Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest – I’d love to hear from you!

♻️ Alternatives and substitutions

Malteser bunny chocolate cupcakes are one of my favourite cakes for Easter. However, if they're not available where you live or you’re making these for a bunny-themed birthday or another special occasion outside the Easter season, you may not be able to get hold of them. Instead, you can use a different chocolate bunny to go in the rabbit hole instead. I’ve used mini Lindt bunny chocolates before, and they go great too!

To give your cupcakes a malt flavour, I add a malted milk drink powder, such as Horlicks or Ovaltine. I usually use the original flavour, but the chocolate flavour would also be delicious.

I usually use plain flour in this cupcake recipe, but alternatively, you can swap plain flour for self-raising flour of the same quantity (100g for a standard-sized batch) and reduce the baking powder by 1 tsp.

Frosting equipment options:

For the buttercream grass on these bunny cupcakes, I use a piping bag and open star piping nozzle (such as this 1M piping tip or a small one). It gives a nice and easy grass style with a piping tip that many home bakers usually have.

However, if you have a special grass piping nozzle this would look great on your cupcakes too! You can also see Wilton's tutorial and tips for piping realistic grass.

Alternatively, if you don’t have a piping bag or nozzle, you can use a spatula, knife or spoon to top your cupcakes with using. You can then use a fork to rake up the frosting into a grass effect.

🧁 Other goodies

I definitely recommend that you whip up a batch of these deliciously soft and easy Easter Malteser bunny chocolate malt cupcakes with vanilla malt buttercream! But as an avid home baker, I’m sure you’re asking yourself “what next?”.

Well, if you love a good chocolate cake, why not check out my recipe for an Oreo chocolate drip cake or give my recipe for Terry’s chocolate orange cupcakes a try?

Or for more Easter baking ideas, take a look at my recipe for a homemade hot cross bun muffin – a fun twist on the traditional Easter food. They’re great for an Easter breakfast, brunch or dessert!

Looking forward to some new recipes? Check out my Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest pages for a few sneak peeks and some sweet inspiration! Or if you’d like to hear about our latest recipes, why not subscribe to our newsletter?

Malteser Bunny Chocolate Malt Cupcakes with Vanilla Malt Buttercream