Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: So much rich, delicious chocolate flavor.
Texture: The cupcake is moist and tender, the ganache filling is slightly fudgy, and the buttercream on top is thick and creamy. Heaven in every bite!
Ease: Fairly easy, but a little messy.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe: Perfect cupcake for any chocolate lover.
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Chocolate Blackout Cupcakes are what chocoholics’ dreams are made of.
As a total chocoholic myself, recipes that contain chocolate in any form are generally what excite me the most – let alone a recipe that contains chocolate in this many forms!
The chocolate in these Chocolate Blackout Cupcakes hits you immediately. Especially if you take a big enough bite to reach the chocolate ganache filling right off the bat. There’s so much goodness in both taste and texture happening here that I encourage you to fully savor every moment.
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These cupcakes are perfect for Halloween (especially if you add some white chocolate spiderwebs on top!) or Valentine’s Day (the perfect dessert for you and your chocolate-loving Valentine!).
Sprinkle of Science
How to Make Chocolate Blackout Cupcakes
How to Make Moist Chocolate Cupcakes:
- Weigh your ingredients. I highly recommend using a digital kitchen scale to weigh your ingredients. Without a scale, it’s so easy to accidentally add too much of your dry ingredients, especially flour and cocoa, resulting in dry, dense cupcakes. Learn more about how to measure ingredients here.
- Oil. Oil creates an ultra-moist texture and open, slightly spongy crumb which is perfect for chocolate cupcakes. Since oil is liquid at room temperature, it gives the palate a sensation of moisture even though it contains no water! Give your vegetable oil a sniff before using to make sure it’s fresh. Feel free to use melted coconut oil instead of vegetable oil. Learn more about Oil vs. Butter in Baking here.
- Dutch-processed cocoa powder, eggs, and vinegar. More on these ingredients just below.
What Type of Cocoa Powder Do I Need?
For the best rich chocolate cupcakes, use Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder to achieve a deeper color, and because it will typically contain more cocoa fat (learn more about cocoa powder here), resulting in more moist and tender cupcakes.
You can find Dutched cocoa in some specialty kitchen stores, or online here. I haven’t tried using black cocoa, but that should work just fine too. If you must use natural cocoa powder, that will work as well, but your cupcakes might not be as dark in color or as rich in flavor.
Why Are Eggs Used in Cupcakes?
The more whole eggs a cake or cupcake recipe has, the richer it’ll be. For this recipe, I added an extra egg yolk. This adds a touch more richness, chewiness, and structure, so the cupcake can stand up to a generous amount of frosting.
Why is There Vinegar in This Recipe?
This may seem like a strange ingredient, but I promise you won’t taste it in the final result. It simply helps to activate the baking soda to create tall, fluffy cupcakes.
Preventing Cupcake Liners from Sticking
It’s important to use high-quality liners to prevent sticking. These are my favorite cupcake liners that basically never stick. If liners sticking to your cupcakes are a common problem for you, check out my How to Prevent Cupcake Liners from Sticking post.
How to Fill Chocolate Blackout Cupcakes
Possibly the best part of this recipe, Chocolate Blackout Cupcakes are filled with a hidden pocket of rich and fudgy chocolate ganache. Filling cupcakes is made easy with one simple tool: an apple corer. Use the corer to evenly remove the center of each cupcake. Bonus: little cupcake scrap pieces for you to enjoy while finishing up in the kitchen 😉
How to Store Chocolate Blackout Cupcakes
Store Chocolate Blackout Cupcakes covered at room temperature for up to 1 day, or in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Dark Chocolate Buttercream
This buttercream has a LOT of chocolate in it, both in the form of melted chocolate and cocoa powder, so it’s thick, rich, and decadent. Feel free to play around with adding in more cream to thin it out, or more powdered sugar to thicken it up.
Interested in Learning More About the Science of Baking?
Check out my online baking class, The Magic of Baking! All of the video lessons, downloads, and side-by-side comparison photos are ready and waiting for you right now. It’ll show you how and why baking recipes work so you can bake with complete confidence.
More Cupcake Recipes:
More Chocolate Recipes:
Chocolate Blackout Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the ganache filling:
- 2 ounces (57 grams) semisweet chocolate
- 1/4 cup (59 grams) heavy cream
For the cupcakes:
- 4 ounces (113 grams) bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
- 1/3 cup (28 grams)
dark Dutch-processed cocoa powder - 1/2 cup (119 grams) boiling water
- 3/4 cup (95 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup (50 grams) packed light brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup (113 grams) sour cream or plain yogurt, at room temperature
- 1/4 cup (56 grams) vegetable oil
- 2 large eggs plus one egg yolk, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons white vinegar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the frosting:
- 8 ounces (227 grams) bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
- 3 cups (375 grams) powdered sugar, sifted
- 1/4 cup (21 grams) dark cocoa powder, sifted
- 8 ounces (227 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
Instructions
Make the filling:
- Place the chocolate and cream in a medium microwave-safe bowl and microwave until mixture is warmed, about 30 seconds. Whisk until smooth. Place mixture in refrigerator until just chilled and firmed, no longer than 30 minutes.
Make the cupcakes:
- Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350°F.
- In a medium heatproof bowl, add the chocolate and cocoa. Pour hot water over mixture. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes. Whisk mixture gently until smooth then set aside to cool.
- Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with high-quality cupcake liners.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda. Set aside.
- Whisk sour cream, oil, eggs, egg yolk, vinegar, and vanilla into the cooled chocolate mixture until smooth. Stir in the flour mixture until smooth, being careful not to overmix.
- Using a spring-loaded scoop, divide the batter evenly among prepared muffin cups. Bake until cupcakes are set and firm to the touch, about 17 to 20 minutes. Let cupcakes cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing from pan to cool completely, about 1 hour. Cupcakes can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 day.
Fill the cupcakes:
- Using an apple corer or pairing knife, slice a small section of the center of the cupcake, being careful not to slice through the bottom. Fill each hole with 1 heaping teaspoon of the firmed ganache.
Make the buttercream:
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the sugar, cocoa powder, and butter. Mix on low speed until well blended and then increase the speed to medium and beat for another 3 minutes. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl, as well as the mixer attachment. Add the salt, vanilla, cream, and cooled melted chocolate and beat on medium for 2 minutes, or until light and fluffy.
- Spread or pipe evenly over the filled cupcakes. Serve or store covered at room temperature for up to 1 day, or covered in the fridge for up to 3 days.
This post was published in 2018 and has been updated with additional baking tips and baking science information. Photos by Ashley McLaughlin.
Delicious! Best cupcakes I’ve ever tasted! And they were fun to mix without using a mixer.
Wonderful to hear!
Delicious! Best cupcakes I’ve ever tasted!
Hooray! Glad to hear that!
Hi! Everything on your site looks divine and i can’t wait to try some recipes. Quick question about this one: i notice the recipe for the cake part of these cupcakes is the same as your best chocolate cake recipe except with a little less flour. Does the amount of flour vary between cupcakes and cake or have you tweaked the recipe to improve it? If so, which flour amount is best? Thanks!
I have to make cupcakes that are decorated green for a baby shower. The mommy-to-be loves chocolate cupcakes. Do you think this recipe would be good with vanilla buttercream?
Absolutely! You could also check out my recipe for Mint Chocolate Cupcakes, which have a green frosting on top!
I made these cupcakes for my granddaughters birthday and they were definitely a hit. The cake was moist and everyone thought the ganache center was a fun surprise. I will definitely keep this recipe in my list of favorites and make them again.
I’m so happy to hear this! I always feel so honored when you make one of my recipes for such a special occasion!
These cupcakes are sooo AMAZING! I love chocolate and these where perfect. Rich, fluffy, delicious chocolatey goodness. And the frosting came out amazing too, definitely will use it for other recipes too. And it wasn’t hard to make so definitely recommend it.
I followed the recipe exactly and it said it made 12 so I made 12 and every single one of them ended up overflowing and ruined thanks for wasting a ton of ingredients.
Omg Hannah, rude! Maybe you didn’t measure correctly and who cares how many it says it makes- don’t overfill the cups!
I found this recipe but decided to only make the actual cupcake from this recipe. The cupcakes were AMAZING!! My whole family loved them and I am so excited to try this recipe with the filling and icing soon!! The cake reminded me of a delicious brownie but cake form!! SO GOOD
Too good. All cupcakes lasted one day in our home and were only 3 people
I made these today and they are DELICIOUS!!! Thank you so much for sharing! I tweaked the frosting slightly (used 1 stick of butter but added a tbsp-ish or two of milk) only because I was short the butter. I can’t wait to share them tomorrow for Mother’s Day. Thank you!
I made this recipe for my son’s birthday and let me tell you, they were a hit! This was the first attempt in making cupcakes and even I was impressed! The richness chocolaty flavor was AMAZING!
I made this recipe via a skype bake date with my best friend, because of the contact ban (corona virus etc.). Usually we meet almost every saturday to cook and bake together and with baking he often needs my help. I thought it could be fun to try someone else’s recipe and it sure was! It was exciting to do something out of my own way and it turned out great. The only thing is, it was too sweet for me and the amount of buttercream was for my taste a bit much – we had some leftover cream, but that is fine. I just used that the next day on pancakes 😀 fun recipe, easy to follow along, nicely explained and super super tasty Muffins <3