Chocolate and Caramel Easter Nest Cupcakes

Warning – these are MOIST little buggers. They will sink in the middle, which makes it perfect for making caramel icing nests on top!

So, I was in London a few weeks ago and my culinary highlight of the trip was Violet Cakes in Hackney. They’d come under my radar before for their famous halva brownies. And then again when they were commissioned to make the royal wedding cake. I started following them on Instagram, and drooling.

So we went, we bought pretty much one of everything and chowed down. There is something bittersweet about eating baked goods that are SO MUCH BETTER than what you can whip up in your kitchen. But then I did get to eat the best vegan chocolate cake, cookie, brownie and cupcake that I’d ever had in my life. So I’m counting it as a reality check and an overall win. Because it was delicious.

The cupcake was a dense dark chocolate cake, covered with sweet salty caramel icing.

It was life changing.

My mum bought me the cookbook and I immediately went home to recreate it. I have tweaked the recipe sliiiightly, so mine came out a bit denser than hers. I will still probably play around with it a little more but it’s very yummy as is.

As it's Easter, I chucked some mini eggs on top and called it a day!

Makes 14-16 cupcakes

Ingredients for the Cupcake

• 1 egg
• 125ml buttermilk
• 50ml vegetable oil
• 80ml warm water
• 225g caster sugar
• 110g plain flour
• 50g cocoa
• Pinch salt
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp baking powder

Ingredients for the Buttercream

• 75g caramel (I use boiled condensed milk for mine).
• 100g butter
• Pinch salt
• 1 tbsp milk
• 450g-600g icing sugar
• Chocolate sprinkles and mini eggs, to decorate

Method

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees and line your cupcake tin.

Whisk together the egg, buttermilk and vegetable oil. Slowly whisk in the warm water.

Whisk in the sugar. Then add in the flour, cocoa, salt and bicarb/baking powder.

Whisk again until smooth.

The mixture will be super runny, so you can put it in the fridge for an hour to firm up a bit and make it easier to divide into the cases

Spoon into the cupcake cases and bake for 20 minutes until cooked through.

Put on a rack to cool

While cooling, make the icing. Whisk together the caramel and butter and salt. Add half the icing sugar and whisk again. 

Add the milk and whisk, then gradually add the rest of the icing sugar until you have a smooth, thick, piping consistency.

Now let's decorate! Put a smooth smear of buttercream in the middle of the cupcakes.

Then pipe an outline around the outside. Sprinkle some chocolate sprinkles around the outline..

.. and then fill with chocolate eggs!