Chocolate Rose Cupcakes

This year my birthday was on a Friday, so I brought these with me to choir rehearsal.

The cake recipe is the standard Hummingbird Bakery chocolate cake recipe, while I used the Peggy Porschen one with a little twist for the butter cream because the Hummingbird recipe is a bit too sweet for me. Yes, I actually said 'too sweet' ;)

Okay, so here is what you need:

80 ml oil
2 eggs
240 ml milk

200 g sugar
200 g flour
1 tbps. baking powder
40 g cocoa powder
1 pinch salt

Step 1: Mix the wet ingredients in a bowl.

Step 2: Mix the dry ingredients in another bowl.

Step 3: Add dry mixture to wet mixture in three parts and stir well after each addition.

Step 4: Bake in muffin tins at 190°C for 15-20 minutes.

Step 5: Let cool down completely.

Step 6: Level the top of each cupcake by cutting off the top bulk. Pull a tiny bit out of the centre and fill with apricot or orange preserve. See picture below.

Step 7: Mix 125 g soft butter and 125 g sieved (!) confectioner's sugar until a fluffy even mass forms. Then - and here comes the twist - add 4 tsp. mascarpone and some drops red food colour (or as desired).

Step 8: Pipe flowers onto each cupcake, using a star tip or a leaf tip. Decorate with cut out fondant leaves, if desired.

Step 9: Eat them :)