My coworker Chyna had an IOU for some cupcakes from her birthday a while back, so she decided to use it recently for her girlfriend, Yasmin's birthday instead. She said that Yasmin really liked the chocolate orange combo so I should try to make cupcakes with that theme. My initial (internal) reaction was "ew, that sounds gross," but as I researched recipes more, it became a challenge that I was ready to accept. It's always good to get suggestions like this one because I would never in a million years think to bake chocolate orange cupcakes, but because of Chyna's request, I did, and they were quite a hit!

Also, my brother got me some awesome measuring cups and spoons from Sur La Table for Christmas that I was pumped to use. I wanted some nice, stainless steel, heavy duty cups and that's exactly what these are. They weigh so much! The set of cups includes a 1½ cup and a 2 cup!!!! I had never even heard of such a thing before these. This is especially thrilling for someone like me who often doubles (or triples) recipes and needs big loads of flour and sugar.

Look how beautiful they are:

The set of measuring spoons comes with a little leveling tool that I probably won't ever use but it still feels fancy.

OK, back to the cupcakes. As it turns out, chocolate-orange is definitely a British thing because most of the recipes were from the UK and used grams and a mysterious and intriguing ingredient called "icing sugar" which my British coworker later confirmed is what they call confectioner's sugar (not as exciting as I imagined). I struggled to decide on a recipe but went with one that had lots of real orange in it.

Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

Original recipe from Long Distance Baking

MAKES 12 CUPCAKES

INGREDIENTS:

CUPCAKES

½ cup butter
2 oz semisweet baking chocolate
½ cup cocoa powder
¾ cup flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
½ cup buttermilk
juice of one orange (~¼ cup)

FROSTING

½ cup butter (softened)
juice of one orange (~¼ cup)
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon orange zest
chocolate sprinkles (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a pan with 12 cupcake liners.

Before beginning, you might want to use one orange for zesting and the other for large peels to use as cupcake decorations. Both oranges will end up being juiced for the batter and frosting, so you'll want to use the skin beforehand.

I used a peeler to peel thick orange slices to go on top of the frosting, and a zester to get the zest for the actual frosting.

In a large microwaveable container, melt the butter and chocolate together. Mix the eggs, sugars and vanilla in a large bowl. Add the flour, cocoa powder, soda, powder and salt slowly, alternating with buttermilk and the melted butter/chocolate mixture. Squeeze the orange into the mixture and combine.

Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

To make the frosting, beat the butter and orange juice. Add the orange zest and powdered sugar, using a bit more than it calls for if necessary to get to the right frosting consistency.