Devil's Food Cupcakes with a Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

I haven't baked since Thanksgiving. Since the semester is drawing to a close and the work was piling up, I decided to take a bit of a hiatus, but now that I have a month and a week off (ahem!), I'll be doing lots more baking. To start things off I made these:

Are they not just the cutest, most scrumptious things you have ever seen? The recipe was so easy, and, I think, if you're going to go through the trouble of making homemade cupcakes then you might as well make your own frosting. This frosting is a basic buttercream. It's a little on the sweet side, but the cupcakes are not sweet at all due to the unsweetened cocoa, so the flavors balance out nicely. I used a large star tip to apply the icing.

I got the cupcake recipe from the Cupcake Bakeshop blog by Chockylit, who is just the queen of anything cupcakes. She can make cupcakes from absolutely any ingredients. Anyway here is the recipe:

Devil's Food Chocolate Cake
makes 24 cupcakes or over 50  mini/ 350 degree oven

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1-1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Measure out everything but the eggs directly into your mixer bowl.
2. Mix on low speed just until incorporated.
3. Beat on high speed for 2 minutes.
4. Add eggs, beat on high speed again for 2 minutes.

Measure out into cupcake pan lined with cupcake papers (or grease each cup if you're like me and don't like buying cupcake papers that will just be thrown away anyway). Bake for about 15-20 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool slightly in the pan then transfer to a rack to cool completely before frosting. 

As you saw in the picture above, I did mini cupcakes. The cooking time for these was about 15 minutes. If you decide to do mini cupcakes as well, fill each cup about 3/4 full.

Here's my Buttercream Frosting recipe:

This made a little less than I thought, so you may want to make a serving and a half of icing.

2 cups confectioners sugar
a little bit of vanilla
1 stick butter at room temp.
2 tablespoons milk

With electric mixer, cream the butter until creamy. Make sure to scrape the sides of the bowl. Add in the vanilla once the butter is creamy. Add the confectioners sugar a little at a time, beating slowly after each addition. Once all the confectioners sugar is blended in, add in the milk and mix until it looks like it is spreadable.

Make sure the cupcakes are completely cool before icing. To ice, you can either use a spatula or use a piping bag with a large star, which is what I did. Don't ice them too much!

Have Fun!