On a walk through your local wood at this time of year, you will find a glut of ripe, ready to be picked blackberries. Beyond pies and crumbles, what can be done with such a bounty of berries? Look no further. Combine creamy chocolate with a refreshing tang in these chocolate and blackberry cupcakes.
For the Cake
- 150g blackberries
- 100g butter
- 100g chocolate, broken into chunks
- 225g self-raising flour
- 175g caster sugar
- 2tbsp cocoa powder
- 2 large eggs, beaten
For the Icing
- 100g butter
- 100g icing sugar
- 100g blackberries (plus 12 to decorate)
- Preheat your oven to 180C/gas 4 and line a 12 hole muffin tin with muffin cases (you can use fairy cake cases, but you’ll have to make more smaller cakes this way).
- Stick the blackberries in a food processor and blitz for a few seconds, or alternatively mash with a fork until you feel less angry, you should have a nice mix of chunky blackberry bits and juice.
- Melt the chocolate and butter together in a saucepan on a low heat.
- Mix the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and a pinch of salt in a large mixing bowl, and then boil your kettle.
- Pour the chocolate and egg mixtures into the dry ingredients along with the blackberries and 100ml of boiling water.
- Mix together until everything is smooth, and then divide between your muffin cases. Bake in your oven for 15-25 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the cakes comes out clean. Remove the cakes from the tin and leave to cool.
- Whizz the other half of the blackberries for the icing in a food processor, making sure the mix stays fairly chunky – you don’t want it too smooth.
- Cream the butter and icing sugar together. Add the icing sugar to the butter bit by bit, sieving it as you go. You’ll get engulfed by an icing sugar cloud if you try and add it all in one go.
- Once smooth, spoon two tablespoons of the blackberry mix into a sieve held above the bowl full of icing. Press on the berries until all the juice has been squeezed out. Stir the berry juice into the icing, and repeat until you have a nice, vibrant icing that is still quite firm. Add too much juice and the icing will be too sloppy to pipe.
- Pipe or spread onto your 12 cooled cakes, top with a berry and enjoy!
Katie Dawtry