Black Cocoa Cupcakes with Raspberry Jam

Black cocoa cupcakes with raspberry jam are the perfect dessert for your Halloween celebration. They deliver all the flavours together with a spooky appearance. What could be better than this!?

Now, I need to admit I’m not a massive fan of Halloween. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have anything against this festive occasion, but it’s just not natural to me. I love seeing others going all in – carving pumpkins, getting into costumes, or going trick or treating. We don’t have this in Lithuania, so I always felt like I’d be “faking it” by celebrating.

However, baking is a whole different story. It gives me the freedom to be creative and a little bit crazy. I always tend to make lovely and cute looking desserts this time of year, really allowing myself to release my inner child.

Although, you know me – I tend to keep everything as natural and homemade as possible, so I had to find a way to create jet-black muffins with blood-red filling, without using any artificial colouring. A truly terrifying task!

For the bloody filling, I used a mix of blackberries and raspberries to give a deep, rich colour. But achieving a natural black colour (without burning the cupcakes) is a little trickier… To solve this conundrum though, here comes the most incredible and amazing ingredient – black cacao powder. It’s deep in colour, rich in flavour and completely different from your usual cocoa. It also has a stunning coffee taste. So if you’ve ever felt the need to experiment with ingredients – this recipe is made for you.

These black cocoa cupcakes are to die for. Even if you’re not celebrating Halloween, there’s no harm in making something sweet for yourself.

If you’re looking for different options than black cocoa cupcakes, try out this recipe:
Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Frosting

Black Cocoa Cupcakes: How to make them?

This recipe has three stages. Make the jam (which you can make a week in advance), make the cupcakes, and make the frosting (which can also be made the night before).

Everything is very easy. Just follow these steps:

• Make the jam by heating the berries with some caster sugar.
• Make the cupcake batter by beating butter with sugar. Add the eggs.
• Mix all the dry ingredients for your cupcakes and incorporate them with the wet ingredients. Your batter needs to be quite thick

• Line the cupcake tray with cases and fill two-thirds of them with batter.
• Bake in the oven for 25 minutes.

• While your cupcakes are baking, make the frosting by beating all the ingredients together.
• Fill your piping bags with the frosting and jam.
• Pipe the jam into your muffins and pipe the frosting on top.

Black Cocoa Cupcakes Recipe Variations

Don’t forget the kitchen is your playground. So be creative and adventurous! If you want to incorporate different flavours, feel free to do it. To make your life a little easier though, here are some options on how you can change the recipe:

• The first swap you can make is black cocoa powder. If you don’t want to use it, feel free to change it for regular cocoa (adding around 50g). An extra tablespoon of instant coffee will bring all those rich flavours.
• You can also use nutty flour to bring moisture to your cupcakes. Substitute 50g of plain flour with an almond meal.
• For my jam, I used a combination of blackberries and raspberries. Feel free to change these berries for any of your favourite ones. You can make strawberry, cranberry or even blueberry jam.
• Lastly, if you don’t have cream cheese, you can make a simple buttercream (butter and icing sugar) frosting for your dessert.

Recipe

Ingredients

Raspberry jam:
300g raspberries / blackberries
60g caster sugar
1 tablespoon pectin

Cupcakes:
150g room temperature butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
150g flour
40g black cocoa powder (I bought mine from Amazon)
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
2 tbsp milk

Frosting:
200ml double cream
200g cream cheese
2 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp black cocoa powder

Method

Prepare the jam:

1. Heat the berries in a saucepan with caster sugar.
2. After the berries start breaking down, add the pectin and mix everything together.
3. Let the jam cool completely.

Prepare the cupcakes:

1. Heat the oven to 180 degrees and line a 12 hole cupcake tin with paper cases.
2. Beat the butter with caster sugar in a large bowl using an electric mixer for a couple of minutes, until you have a pale and smooth mix.
3. Add the eggs and whisk until combined and smooth.
4. In a separate small bowl, sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.
5. Add the dry ingredients, together with milk, into the wet ingredients and stir until combined.
6. Spoon the batter into your prepared cupcake cases.
7. Bake them in the oven for 25 minutes.
8. Let the cupcakes cool down completely.

Prepare the frosting:

1. Gently whisk the double cream.
2. Add the cream cheese, icing sugar and black cocoa powder.
3. Whisk everything together until your frosting is firm.

Arrange the cupcakes:

1. After the cupcakes cool down completely, remove some of the sponge from the middle of the muffins.
2. Add the raspberry jam into a piping bad with a round nozzle.
3. Pipe the jam into the cupcakes.

4. Add the frosting into a new piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe the cream on top of the cupcakes.
5. Serve the muffins with a drizzle of the jam.