I think I saw these on Instagram and saved them away for the perfect time to try them. I’ll just jump straight in to the recipe comments here as it’s pretty simple. The original recipe has more of a yellow cake/vanilla base; however there’s an option in the recipe to do a Mocha version. We had some black cocoa left in the pantry so I used it which is why these are so dark. We thought it would be fun to try it since we’re big chocolate fans. We did use cake flour and brewed coffee as well.

The buttercream wasn’t difficult either. I did use the whisk attachment rather than the paddle because the last few times I’ve made an all butter frosting I still found small chunks of butter that weren’t incorporated. I did end up putting more heavy cream as well but you kind of just eye that until it reaches the right consistency. We did have some chocolate covered espresso beans so I was able to add those as a garnish.

My cake base was a little dry so I probably should have pulled them out a little sooner; that’s the difficulty with chocolate cakes/cupcakes as it can sometimes be difficult to tell when they’re done. I’d recommend checking them a few minutes before they’re supposed to come out just in case they’re done before you think. Taste wise these were good, but as my husband said he wouldn’t have really known they were supposed to be coffee if I hadn’t mentioned it. The buttercream was very good but again, didn’t really taste like coffee/espresso.

I’d definitely try these again though and see what it tastes like with the original cupcake base and maybe add a little more coffee/espresso powder to liven things up a bit.

Recipes used: Barley & Sage