Mary Berry’s Christmas Chocolate Cupcakes are light, fluffy and topped with festive vanilla buttercream. Great for children to help decorate too! 

This is my go-to recipe for chocolate cupcakes and is so tasty I haven’t felt the need to look for an alternative. I’ve slightly adapted Mary Berry’s recipe to make these festive beauties. 

Mary Berry’s original recipe is a chocolate cupcake with chocolate buttercream. I decided to swap the buttercream to vanilla because sometimes a chocolate cupcake and frosting can be a bit too much for people, and also I wanted to make the frosting look like a Christmas Tree which would be easier with a light frosting. 

To create the Christmas Tree frosting is actually really easy. I added gel colouring to the buttercream to make it green and then used a star tip nozzle. I then added a few sugar balls to look like baubles and lights and added a star on top. It was simple to do and looked really cute and Chritsmassy! 

Apart from looking festive and cute, these cupcakes are really tasty. They are really light and fluffy with a lovely creamy buttercream. Plus they are also really simple to make. 

The original recipe kept the frosting thick and then used a pallet knife to spread it onto the cupcakes. I prefer the look of piped frosting because it looks a bit more clean and professional – mine would look a mess iced with a pallet knife! Start by adding three tablespoons of the milk and keep adding a little more making sure you beat well in between each addition until you get the consistency you want. 

If you want the icing to be a bit more luxurious, you could use whole milk or even cream. I use semi-skimmed or sometimes 1% fat milk as this is what I always have in the house and the icing is still really delicious. 

Makes 12 cupcakes 

For the cupcakes
4tbsp water, boiled
40g cocoa powder
3 eggs
175g unsalted butter
165g caster sugar
115g self raising four
1 tsp baking powder 

For the buttercream
140g softened butter (has to be butter not margarine)
280g icing sugar
1-2 tbsp milk

1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC and line a cupcake tin with liners and set aside
2. Sift the cocoa powder into a bowl and add the boiling water. Mix until it forms a thick paste and then add the remaining cake ingredients. Mix until combined

3. Divide the mix between the cupcake liners. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes until a cocktail stick comes out clean. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack

4. When the cupcakes have cooled completely, make the icing. Melt the butter and sift in the cocoa powder and icing sugar
5. Add enough milk to get a smooth consistency that isn’t too runny but it thin enough to pipe
6. Spoon the buttercream into a piping bag with a star shaped tip. Starting at the edge of the cupcake, ice round in a circle and then upwards to create the Christmas Tree look 
7. Add any decorations you like to make it look like a Christmas Tree