Little chocolate cupcakes

I don't know about you but I love a good cupcake! I have been looking for a good chocolate cupcake recipe for a while and stubbled upon this one in the launch issue of delicious. - I must tell you now that I have EVERY issue of delicious. I love this magazine....beautifully photographed food and recipes that I use over and over again.

Anyway the recipe for these cupcakes initially included rum (for a adults only treat) but I decided to leave that out because my children were sure to want some! They turned out well - moist and chocolatey and I iced them simply with some butter cream icing.

Chocolate Cupcakes

1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 cup buttermilk ( use 1 cup of milk with a good squeeze of lemon juice if you don't have buttermilk)
1 egg
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180°C and place the flour, sugar, cocoa and baking powder in a bowl. Add 1/2 tsp salt and stir to combine.
Place buttermilk, egg, oil, vanilla and rum in a separate jug then mix into the dry ingredients. Beat well to combine.
Line a muffin pan with paper muffin cases and divide mixture between them. Bake for 25 minutes. Set aside to cool and then ice.

I liked this recipe too because there was no creaming of butter and sugar - just mixing of wet and dry ingredients together. Master 4 helped me with this and he was able to help sift the flour as well as crack the egg and mix the wet ingredients and of course....lick the spoon at the end!