Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Blackberry Buttercream

Dark chocolate dessert idea

These dairy-free dark chocolate cupcakes with a luscious blackberry buttercream are the answer to all your dessert dreams! With velvety rich chocolate and a burst of tangy sweetness from the blackberry topping, these cupcakes are guaranteed to satisfy your sweet tooth. These decadent cupcakes are great for several special occasions such as a birthday, graduation, Halloween, New Year’s Eve or any celebration.

The blackberry chocolate buttercream frosting is made with seedless blackberry preserves or you can use your own home made jam. This frosting makes a perfect match for the delectable dark chocolate cupcakes. If you’d prefer a more colorful frosting, you can omit the cocoa in the buttercream recipe and the preserves will give your frosting a lovely pink purple tint, or you can use a food color to enhance the purple. Makes 18 regular sized cupcakes.

Let’s begin!

Ingredients to make dark chocolate cupcakes

Dark Chocolate Cupcake

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened dark chocolate cocoa powder
• 2 tsp instant coffee powder (or 1 tsp espresso powder)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup canned coconut milk (full fat)

Blackberry buttercream frosting ingredients

Blackberry Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1 cup plant butter, softened
• 4 cups confectioner’s sugar, sifted
• 1/2 tbsp dark cocoa powder, unsweetened
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup seedless blackberry preserves (or homemade jam)

Optional Garnish:

• Chocolate shavings
• Edible sprinkles
• Fresh blackberries

How to make dark chocolate cupcakes

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350℉ and line a muffin pan with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, instant coffee powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together remaining cupcake ingredients (eggs, both sugars, oil, vanilla extract and coconut milk with an electric mixer until well blended, about 2 minutes.Add dry ingredients to large bowl and mix until just blended and no dry ingredients remain, about 1 minutes or so.

Fill cupcake liners halfway and bake in center of preheated oven for 16-18 minutes.When baking is complete, place on a cooling rack for 5 minutes, then transfer cupcakes to another cooling rack to completely cool before frosting them.

How to make chocolate blackberry buttercream frosting

In a large bowl, add butter and use an electric mixer to cream until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Next, start adding confectioner’s sugar, 1 cup at a time, and mix well after each addition. Next, add cocoa powder and pinch of salt and mix for 1 minute more. Scrape down sides of bowl and add the vanilla extract and blackberry preserves and mix until well incorporated. Transfer frosting to a frosting bag with Wilton 1M tip (or you can snip a corner of plastic baggie) and swirl frosting on top of each cupcake.

If desired, add some extra garnish of shaved chocolate, blackberries, chocolate skulls or some fun edible sprinkles for the occasion.These are decorated for Halloween dessert with festive orange, black and yellow sprinkles, a fresh blackberry and dairy-free chocolate skulls. For the silicone skull mold on Amazon, click HERE.

These also make a great dessert idea for New Year’s Eve celebration. I added some elegant gold edible star sprinkles for garnish to make them extra special.

Enjoy!

💜Julie