Dark Chocolate cupcakes with the easiest buttercream ever!

Last night I was working on an order for a late night pick up. An order for cupcakes of the deviously darkness with a letter on the cupcakes to make out a personal message. "Dark chocolate, no seriously dark intense chocolate" is what the aim was.  It was for a group about 20 people so I suggested classic dark chocolate cupcake, it's inspired by devil's food cake but with a dark chocolate cream cheese icing.

The second flavour was a American style chiffon cake, so not as light as what I traditionally bake but still lighter than your typical American Cake. With intense dark cocoa and orange zest and

cointreau(orange liqueur). The icing was a super glossy dark chocolate buttercream with more cointreau.

Those of you who read my blog fairly often are starting to notice a pattern: Irish Cream Brownies, Champagne Buttercream, Cointreau in the cupcakes... I use alcohol frequently in baking. I always discuss that with the customer or whenever I'm baking for a potluck. Honestly it's cheaper than flavour extracts, tons of flavours, and if it doesn't work out in a baking experiment just use it for cocktails. ^_~

But I digress...

The cupcakes were baked then it was time for lettering. I admit that lettering is something that I am working on improving. I do great with chocolate and royal icing on fondant but royal icing doesn't work on buttercream (the fat dissolves the sugar) so I decided on another buttercream for the lettering. I was tempted just to use my plain buttercream recipe but that would have been too fluffy and just too much butter.

I recalled a recipe from my restaurant days that was super simple but it was shortening based. There's a time and a place for shortening and  this was not it. A quick query on Google and I found the perfect recipe! Only 2 ingredients, I'm not even going to tell which two because you should totally visit Cookies and Cups and check it out yourself.

I had a few cupcakes left over and decided to bring them to work.

  CESC is the place where I work everyday, "saving the world" as Mama describes my work. ^-^ I obviously need to work on my lettering with a round tip. But this icing's lovely and I can't wait to have more fun with it this long weekend. I need some mocha cake in my life.