Chocolate Cupcake with Hazelnut frosting and Chocolate flowers!

Oh yeah! sometimes you find some good things on Pinterest. These flowers were one of them. I thought these would be the star of the show but the frosting was fabulous!

So here's what I did:

For the cupcake:

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup Starbucks dark hot chocolate powder (or cocoa powder)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup hot water + instant coffee or 1 cup strong brewed coffee from early in the day

To make: 

Preheat oven to 350 F   

Heat water in micro for 2 mins and add instant coffee. Then add the 1/3 cup of cocoa or hot chocolate.

Mix all wet ingredients together + add the dry ingredients and beat until there are no lumps. Fill the cupcake liners 2/3 full and bake for about 30 mins. Makes about 24 cupcakes depending on how much you add in each!!!

Note: Bake 20 mins is making 2 9" cakes :)

For Hazelnut Frosting:

Ingredients: 

Half a jar of Jiff Hazelnut spread (you can also use nutella)

2 sticks butter (softened) - I like unsalted

1 tblsp vanilla 

Powdered sugar (eyeball it! Or taste as you go or judge by thickness.. maybe about 1 lb)

6-8 tblsp milk, heavy cream or half and half or milk (whatever you have at hand)

How to make: Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffly (it turns pale and kinda harder to stir), add half a jar of Jiff spread and vanilla (I found that Jiff has more hazelnut flavour than Nutella) and beat some more. Add milk 2 tblsp at a time until you reach the desired consistency. Transfer to piping bag with any wide tip you want.

For the Chocolate Flowers: 

Follow recipe here: http://sweetrevelations.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/dark-chocolate-roses/ 

My take on the flowers: Some Taste Testers (= work peeps) liked this while some thought it was too rich while others thought the consistency was fudgy! For me, I could still taste the Cornstarch and did not like it. For next time, hopefully I can find a way to mask that.