Chocolate Maple Cupcakes
If you love the maple flavor, you will be thrilled about these Chocolate Maple Cupcakes. They are made with a perfectly moist chocolate cake, a nice hazelnut crunch, a well-balanced maple flavor, and topped with an incredibly delicious Maple Swiss Meringue Buttercream. A cupcake for the books!
The Maple flavor is my favorite! I can’t get enough! Maple tea, maple syrup, maple glazed donuts, maple-flavored granola, the list goes on! That’s why I felt like I had to develop a recipe that incorporates this incredible flavor! I haven’t made cupcakes in a while – so cupcakes it was! I first started calculating the ingredients and then began mixing and baking. And I’m so glad I did! Because, oh my, they turned out delicious, an absolute winner!
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Swiss Meringue Buttercream
It is the BEST!! I’m Swiss, and I’m still not used to piled on frosting on cakes, cupcakes, and wherever else frosting goes on here in the US. Cupcakes aren’t even that big in Switzerland. So, there is no surprise that these fancy cakes have never been my favorite, mainly because of the amount of frosting!
When I started making cupcakes at home, I knew that I had to make them with a light and not overly sweet frosting. This Swiss Meringue Buttercream is perfect and not difficult to make. It might sound intimidating, but I assure you, it’s super easy! And if you made it once, you will never go back to regular buttercream frosting.
Maple flavor
In this recipe, I used three different types of maple flavor. I used maple sugar, maple syrup, and maple extract!
◦ Maple sugar smells incredible and is made from maple sap. The sap gets boiled for longer than it is needed to create maple syrup. Once almost all the water is boiled off, all that is left is maple sugar.
◦ Escuminac is hands down my favorite Maple Syrup! Its flavor is incredible! It is 100% pure and unblended maple syrup from a farm in Quebec, Canada!
◦ I haven’t found real, pure maple extract around here, but I have had good results with this particular Maple Extract from McCormick. Please let me know if you have a different maple extract you swear by. I’d love to try it out!
E Guete (Bon appétit)!! Don’t forget to share some pictures with me and tell me how you liked these Chocolate Maple Cupcakes. It would make my day if you tag @mirjamskitchenyodel on Instagram, share on Facebook or pin on Pinterest.
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Chocolate Maple Cupcake
Ingredients
- 200 g Butter
- 200 g Lindt dark chocolate
- 100 g Maple sugar
- 70 g Maple syrup
- 30 g Granulated sugar
- 1 1/12 tsp Maple extract
- 5 Egg yolks
- 80 g Hazelnuts shredded
- 120 g All-purpose flour
- 5 Egg whites
- 1/8 tsp Salt
- 3 cups Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Instructions
For the chocolate batter
- Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.
- Add the butter, dark chocolate, maple sugar & granulated sugar, maple syrup, and maple extract to a medium-sized pan and melt it on the stove over low heat. Then let it cool for about 15 minutes.
- Separate the egg whites from the yolks. Add the yolks, shredded hazelnuts, and flour to the melted chocolate mix. Mix until well incorporated.
- Place the egg whites and the salt into a large mixing bowl and whisk them with a hand mixer until stiff peaks form.
- Carefully fold the stiff egg whites into the chocolate mix. Be careful not to mix too hard, or you will lose all the air in the egg whites, and the batter will get runny.
- Use a cookie scoop and add the batter to the lined muffin tin. Fill the liner to about 3/4 full.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes, and then let them cool all the way through.
Maple Swiss Meringue Buttercream
- Make the Swiss Meringue Buttercream according to my recipe. Instead of adding the vanilla extract, I substituted it with the same amount of maple extract.
- Fill the buttercream into a pastry piping bag with a round or a star tip. Hold the bag straight up about half an inch above the surface of the cupcake, then squeeze the pastry bag and start piping around and up the cupcakes to create a spiral. Continue spiraling until you have reached the desired height. End the spiral at the center of the cupcake.
- Then, dust the buttercream with chocolate powder and add some chopped hazelnuts and chocolate sprinkles.
