Chocolate Malt Filled Cupcakes

This cupcake recipe was born out of some research I did on cream filled cupcakes, combined with a desire to make something up using one of my favorite Easter candies:  Whoppers Robin Eggs.  I offered to bring dessert for our Easter get together yesterday, and it was fun to be able to make something with ingredients I had on hand and a little bit of creativity.  Have lots of Easter candy leftover?  Then, this would be perfect for you to make!  Everyone seemed to enjoy them, and my husband even told me they were the best cupcakes he'd ever had {I hope he wasn't lying, but it's quite possible he exaggerated a bit for his overly emotional pregnant wife}.

I used some pretty standard Betty Crocker recipes for the cake and the icing, and added a bit of a twist for the inside filling.  Hope you enjoy!

Starlight Yellow Cake
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups milk
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 large eggs

Heat oven to 350F.  Line muffin tins with cupcake liners.  Beat all ingredients together in large mixing bowl on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly.  Beat on high speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally.  Pour into cupcake liners, about 1/2 to 2/3 full.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool on wire racks.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting and Malt Filling
6 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup butter, softened
4 teaspoons vanilla
2/3 cup baking cocoa
6-8 tablespoons milk
1 cup Whoppers Robin eggs candy

Mix powdered sugar and butter in medium bowl with spoon or electric mixer on low speed.  Mix in vanilla and chocolate.  Gradually beat in just enough milk to make frosting smooth and spreadable.  If frosting is too thick, beat in more milk.  If frosting becomes too thin, beat in a small amount of powdered sugar.

Place candy in a food processor and chop until fine crumbs appear.  Place 1/3 of the icing into a small bowl and stir in the chopped candies.  This will be used for the cupcake filling.

To Assemble:

Ideally, you want to have an actual pastry bag with piping attachment for this process, but since I didn't, I used an object that could make a small hole in the cupcake, and placed the frosting in a ziploc bag with a tiny hole in one corner.  It worked fine.

Make a small hole in the top of each cupcake:

Snip a little corner of the ziploc bag for the icing to squeeze through:

Squeeze into the hole {this will work, just be patient with it; you only need a small amount of filling in each one}:

In another ziploc bag, place some of the plain chocolate frosting.  Make a bigger hole in one bottom corner of the bag and pipe on the top of the cupcake, starting on the outside of the cupcake and working in, in a swirling motion until the cupcake is covered.

Place a single Whopper egg on the top and you are finished!

cake and chocolate buttercream frosting source:  Betty Crocker's Cookbook


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