Chocolate Cupcake Recipe with Red Velvet Frosting

Dark and decadent Chocolate Cupcake Recipe with creamy Red Velvet Frosting! What?!? These chocolate cupcakes are like a shot of love potion right to the heart. Plus we’ve got a super cute Valentine printable today.

You’ve had chocolate cupcakes.

And you’ve had red velvet cake.

But have you ever tried a dark Chocolate Cupcake Recipe with Red Velvet Frosting?!

If not, it’s time.

This ultra moist chocolate cupcake recipe starts with a rich blend of dark cocoa powder, butter, buttermilk, and Gold Medal Flour.

Gold Medal All Purpose Flour is so consistently light and fresh, it’s always my first choice for baking cupcakes. It provides that fluffy, yet moist crumb that really makes a cupcake shine.

Now let’s talk about the red velvet frosting…

The three things that make a red velvet cake “red velvet” are buttermilk, a little bit of cocoa powder, and a heck of a lot of red food coloring.

So we added these things to our frosting base, with a little cream cheese, to make the buttermilk twang really stand out.

The results are a rich and tangy vibrantly red frosting that looks marvelous piled high on the dark chocolate cupcakes.

To set this Chocolate Cupcake Recipe with Red Velvet Frosting apart for Valentines Day, we’ve added lovey-dovey chocolate words on top!

This is a very simple garnish.

Melt chocolate and pour into a squirt bottle or piping bag with a small tip. Then lay wax paper out on your counter top and write connected words like: Love, Hugs, Kisses, Smooch, Hubba Hubba, You+Me, Swoon, Cutie, and so on.

Make sure to write more words than needed, because some will break when you pick them up.

Once the chocolate hardens, peel the wax paper off the back and place them on top of the Chocolate Cupcake Recipe with Red Velvet Frosting.

A friend showed me this easy way to package cupcakes, so you can deliver pristine Valentine cupcakes all day long.

Place each cupcake in a short clear plastic tumbler and place the tumbler in a cellophane bag. Then tie with twine or ribbon and add a cute tag. The cup protects the frosting and garnish from getting smashed.

Brilliant, right? I have some pretty smart friends.

To complete your packaging, we’ve got fun cupcake tags for you today, as a little extra thanks-for-visiting-us-each-week gift.

Hopefully these make your Valentine treat project a little easier!

To use our Valentine Tag Printable…

Link Here: Free Valentine Cupcake Printable Tag on ASpicyPerspective.com

We recommend printing on white card stock paper.

This easy Chocolate Cupcake Recipe with Red Velvet Frosting, along with the sweet tags and wrappings, will be a hit at your office or in your child’s classroom this year.

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Chocolate Cupcake Recipe with Red Velvet Frosting

Prep Time: 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes minutes

Dark and decadent Chocolate Cupcake Recipe with creamy Red Velvet Frosting!

Servings: 24 cupcakes

Ingredients

US Customary - Metric

For the Chocolate Cupcakes:

• 1 1/2 cups All Purpose Gold Medal Flour
• 2/3 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 10 tablespoons unsalted butter softened
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For the Red Velvet Frosting:

• 1 pound unsalted butter softened
• 4 ounces cream cheese softened
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 5 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6-8 cups powdered sugar
• Red food coloring

For the Chocolate Garnishes:

• 1 cup chopped chocolate or chocolate candy melts

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F and line muffin tins with 24 paper liners. Sift all dry ingredients together. Cream the butter and sugar in an electric mixer, until light and fluffy. Set the mixer to the lowest setting and add the buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. Slowly combine the dry ingredients with the wet, until the batter is smooth.
• Fill the liners half full and bake for 15-20 minutes—until the cake springs back when touched. Remove the cupcakes from the tins and allow them to cool completely before frosting.
• While the cupcakes are cooling, place the chocolate in a microwave safe bowl and microwave in 30 second increments, stirring in between, until melted. Then pour the chocolate in a squirt bottle (or piping bag with a small tip) and pipe cursive or connected words onto wax paper. Keep them small so they fit on top of the cupcakes, and write more words than needed, in case a few break. Allow the chocolate words to dry completely before peeling off the wax paper.
• For the frosting, beat the butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffy. Scrape the bowl, and beat in the buttermilk, salt, cocoa, and vanilla. Slowly add the powdered sugar until your desire thickness is reached. Then beat in red food coloring until the frosting is as dark as you want it. I used almost 2 teaspoons.
• Place the frosting in a piping bag with a large tip and pipe the frosting high onto the cupcakes. Then gently place a chocolate word on top of each cupcake.

Notes

Can't stand the idea of red food coloring? Bring the buttermilk (in the frosting recipe) to a boil then mix with sliced beets. Allow the buttermilk to cool completely. Remove the beets and continue with the recipe for a nice naturally pink velvet frosting!

Nutrition

Serving: 1cupcake, Calories: 431kcal, Carbohydrates: 53g, Protein: 4g, Fat: 25g, Saturated Fat: 16g, Cholesterol: 78mg, Sodium: 191mg, Potassium: 162mg, Fiber: 2g, Sugar: 43g, Vitamin A: 695IU, Calcium: 51mg, Iron: 1.8mg

Course: Cupcakes

Cuisine: American

Author: Sommer Collier

Making this recipe? Follow us on Instagram and tag @ASpicyPerspective so we can share what you’re cooking!

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Gold Medal Flour. All opinions are my own.

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