Maltesers Chocolate Cupcakes

“This recipe was translated and updated from my old blog experienciaculinaria.wordpress.com on the 28/07/2021”

I made this recipe last July 2019 for my son’s birthday, who is a chocolate lover.

But hey I got creative since birthdays are the only days of the year where I put my cake decorating qualities to use, one of the things I love the most after cooking is decorating cakes and cupcakes, it is something that takes me to an almost meditative state, nobody can talk to me, touch or interrupt me when I’m doing it.

As a cooking nerd, I follow a number of bloggers and channels that are my inspiration, and one of my favorites in terms of creative cupcakes is Nick Makrides from The Scran line, this vlogger is admirable he shows up his creative side in all his beautiful and unique cupcake designs, mesmerising, if you want some inspiration go run to his channel. And his recipes are not far behind, a bit unconventional to how a cupcake is normally made but wow, the result is great, the cupcakes are super soft and delicious. So today’s recipe is based on his “Devil Food Chocolate Cupcake” which is a super decadent and chocolatey dark chocolate cupcake.

My son’s special requirement: it had to be double chocolate cupcake, so these were filled with chocolate ganache sauce, a Malteser surprice centre and covered with Cocoa – Maltesers flavoured buttercream and more Maltesers on top and sauce, (I got inspiration from the brand’s colors to decorate the cupcake if you don’t know the Maltesers, they are delicious and light chocolate bombs popular in Australia, which centre is made of honeycomb and then covered with a light layer of chocolate). Here’s a picture so you can have a look.

They were such a hit that I had to make them twice that week. Everyone at the party, adults, and children, were delighted. 

This is a long recipe, I recommend reading carefully as well as reading the tips to make Maltesers Chocolate cupcakes, unfortunately, I was not able to take step-by-step photos so I am doing my best to explain the recipe.

Tips to make Maltesers Chocolate Cupcakes

• Avoid overbeating the batter.
• Use butter and eggs at room temperature.
• To scoop the batter into the paper cups you can use an ice cream scoop to make it faster and easier and maintain consistency.
• To make this lactose free, substitute butter for Margarine or Vegetable Shortening, and heavy cream for a lactose free alternative like Zymils, if you want to keep it completely dairy-free, then vegetable shortening is the best option and for cream, you can use coconut cream (chill and use only the cream on top) or there’s a new brand that offers a vegan heavy cream that is stable enough to use straight away from the brand Loco, or use any suitable vegan cream for baking.
• The chocolate sauce recipe makes 2 cups, for these cupcakes you can make half of this recipe or make it all and reserve it lasts in the fridge for 1 week.
• Oven temperature is lower than other recipes and cooking time is longer, this is to avoid the muffin top effect, it also results in a super moist crumb inside the cupcake which is one of the beauties of this recipe.
• This buttercream recipe seems to be a lot but if you are piping the cupcakes high it will be enough for 12-14 cupcakes. I use a small amount of cocoa to be able to dye this later in bright colours, if you wish to go heavier with the chocolate flavour, and don’t mind your colours being dulled by the chocolate, add extra couple of tbsp of cocoa, be mindful that this may end in a thicker buttercream consistency which you can soften by adding extra milk.
• When piping the buttercream, first cover the hole with some cake and add a bit of buttercream on top with an offset spatula, this will allow for the buttercream to stick much better to the cupcakes. I like leaving part of the cupcake exposed as in the picture, I think it looks beautiful and also makes it so much easier to handle it without people getting all covered in buttercream when eating this.
• Use 1M Wilton star tip to pipe sundae style icing from the outside to the centre, using a bigger star tip will be good as well as it creates a chunky look and makes the duo colour to be better appreciated. These are my suggestions to achieve the same look in pictures you can pipe as you wish using different nozzles.
• Use the following tools and materials to achieve the best results: Regular size cupcake tin (12 cupcakes), Stand Mixer/ Electric mixer with paddle beaters, Apple corer, 3×14 inch (large) heavy-duty disposable piping bags, Wilton 1M nozzle or wide-open star nozzle from another brand (2d nozzle could work too), for the best look use brown paper cups.
• Set aside at least 3 hrs to make this recipe from start to end, you can make the ganache and the buttercream the day before, however, you will need to leave the ganache and buttercream out of the fridge for at least half an hour to be able to pipe it.