Make your Monday a little sweeter with these homemade chocolate malt cupcakes. A delicious combination of chocolate malt cupcakes topped with a vanilla, white chocolate and malt flavoured buttercream. These will be perfect for your next baking project!
I love sharing all my new cupcake creations on the blog, so this time I turned to another of my absolute favourite chocolate sweets.
Are you familiar with Maltesers? They’re malt balls covered with a thin layer of milk chocolate. They’re crunchy, sweet and I could definitely eat an entire sharing bag all to myself!
For these cupcakes you have a choice of a few different cupcakes to bake: you can bake a classic chocolate cupcake or bake a chocolate or vanilla cupcake with malt powder added. Sometimes I like to use my favourite chocolate cupcake recipe. It’s made with dark chocolate and cocoa powder for rich chocolate flavour, however on this occasion I decided on baking chocolate cupcakes with malt powder added to the cupcake batter as well as the buttercream. The buttercream of which is my recipe and the chocolate malt cupcake recipe I found on this amazing website.
These cupcakes are fantastic as they are, but topping them with a generous helping of my homemade buttercream takes this cupcake recipe to the next level. This recipe is almost identical to my favourite vanilla buttercream, however with this buttercream I’ve added malt powder and white chocolate. The best thing is the buttercream tastes exactly like the centre of a Malteser. I have to admit after I finished the first cupcake I was reaching for another straight away!
Running this blog has certainly given me a serious sweet tooth!
If you are a Malteser lover just like me then you’ll love this cupcake flavour combo. Bake the cupcakes for parties, a girls evening in or even for afternoon tea. They’ll be an instant hit! The cupcakes got a resounding thumbs up from the taste testers, particularly one who had just come home from a long day at work and devoured two of these cupcakes in one sitting!
(Makes 12)
Ingredients:
Chocolate Malt Cupcakes:
50g cocoa powder
175g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt (add just a pinch if using salted butter)
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
225g caster sugar
175g butter, softened
2 large free-range eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
175ml milk
4 tablespoons malt powder (such as Horlicks or Ovaltine)
Vanilla White Chocolate Malt Buttercream:
225g butter, softened
250g icing sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
40g malt powder, sifted
125g white chocolate, melted and cooled slightly – you can use dark or milk instead of white chocolate
4 tablespoons double cream or milk, plus extra if needed
Method:
- To make the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 180°C / 160°C fan / 350°F / Gas Mark 4. Line a cupcake tin with 12 paper cases and set aside. In the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, sift the cocoa powder, flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda and sugar into the bowl. Mix together until combined. Now add the butter and mix until the butter is completely incorporated and no lumps of butter remain.
- In a jug or medium-sized bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, milk and malt powder until thoroughly combined. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in a slow and steady stream. Mix until combined, then stop of the mixer and scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl and continue to mix for a further 20 seconds or so. At this point the batter might appear a little lumpy, however any lumps will disperse as the cupcakes bake. Evenly distribute the batter between the cupcake cases, bake the cupcakes for 20-25 minutes or until a cake tester when inserted into the centre comes out clean without any uncooked batter attached. Allow the cupcakes to cool on a wire rack completely.
- To make the buttercream: Cream the softened butter for a 2-3 minutes until pale in colour. Now add the icing sugar and vanilla and continue to mix for 5 minutes (stop the mixer halfway through and scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl). Now add the malt powder and the cooled white chocolate and mix until combined. Finally, add the cream beat for another minute. Fit a piping bag with your favourite nozzle and fill with the buttercream. Decorate the cupcakes as desired. They’ll last in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days.
Recipe Notes:
- Adjust the icing sugar depending on how sweet you like your buttercream. I find 250g is sweet enough given that we’re also adding white chocolate to the buttercream.
- I prefer using double/heavy cream and not milk in my buttercream as it results in a creamier and lighter texture. You may need to add more cream/milk until you reach your desired piping consistency.
- Decorate the cupcakes with whole and chopped Maltesers (Whoppers are the US equivalent). I used a sharp knife to cut the Maltesers up into smaller pieces, just be careful doing this. Make sure you decorate with the chocolate sweets just before serving otherwise they tend to go stale and lose their crunchy texture.
Enjoy!
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Am drooling now looking at those pictures! 🙂
Thank you Jessica for yet another lovely looking recipe; I was just wondering, what benefit does using bread flour bring to these cupcakes? I’ve seen it used in cookies, but not cupcakes before, and your recipe caught my intention and intrigued me enough to want to find out more. If you are able to let me know it’s ‘purpose’, I would be really grateful. Thank you so much. I hope the cupcakes were as yummy to eat as they are to look at 🙂
Hi – thanks so much for your kind comments. The bread flour helps the gluten development and improves the structure and also the texture of the cupcake. The cupcakes were really delicious.
Let me know if you have any other questions and enjoy the cupcakes! 🙂
Ooh thank you. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my comment. I thought I had seen these cupcakes previously, but these lovely new photos were too eye catching not to take another peek 🙂 Do you use bread flour own in cupcakes then, or just occasionally? I think I do have some bread flour amongst my baking things, or if not, I am sure I can get some, I would like to give your recipe a try, that’s for sure! Thank you Jess, so much for your help. x
Ooh I’m a big malt and Malteser lover here!! I’m putting my hand up for this 😀
You make the best cupcakes, Jessica! This version is simply stunning. I love the chocolate and malt buttercream combo! I think I could devour these all!
MALTESERS!! You said the magic word! Pinning!
These cupcakes look awesome, Jess! Whenever I feel a cupcake craving, I know I can just bounce over here and find all sorts of cupcake awesomeness! 🙂
You always have the best cupcakes, Jess! Feel free to send some my way or let me know if you ever need a taste tester. 🙂
These cupcakes are beautiful and so fun, Jess!! You make the prettiest cupcakes, and these are no exception! Plus they sound seriously delicious… and kinda dangerous, because I’m pretty sure no sane person could only have one of these beauties! Cheers, friend!
Vanilla Malt Buttercream?! Genius. <3
I’m crazy about malt balls, so I love the sound of that buttercream! These are so pretty and look so delicious!
Looks absolutely delicious!!!!😊
XO
Div
Your cupcakes are my favorite! Love all the creative ideas! Great recipe!
I love malted milk balls! In the US we have Whoppers and I’m addicted to them- they come in a milk carton type box and me and my friends always finish one on movie nights 🙂 Delicious!
Well, these just look amazing! I’m a sucker for cupcakes of all kinds so ya know I’m obsessed over these 🙂
I’d be like the person who ate two in a row after a long day at work…These sound so good, Jess! I love that there’s dark chocolate and coffee in your cupcake batter.
Hi Jessica! Your pictures looked so good I just had to try these for myself, but I’m having a lot of trouble with the frosting. I don’t expect you would know the fix for this (as where I live – in a climate that’s very hot and humid – is very different from yours), but it’s way too liquid right after I mix it and doesn’t hold any shape at all, and after I put it in the fridge to cool for a while, after I get past that too-hard-to-pipe stage, it suddenly turns super liquid again. There doesn’t seem to be a sweet spot in between. If you have any ideas on what might be the problem I would really love to hear them!
Hi Michelle – yes, buttercream/frosting can be very difficult to make when the weather is hot and humid. It’s definitely the humidity that’s causing the problem. I always have the same difficulty in the summer months when it can get quite warm. I would recommend the same as what you did by putting the buttercream in the fridge to allow it to harden slightly but not to leave it in there for too long as it will get too hard and won’t be able to be piped. Also if you have air conditioning or a fan it would be helpful to use it and maybe add less or none of the cream/milk to buttercream mixture if it’s too runny. Hope that answers you question!
Thanks for the suggestions, Jessica – they’re very helpful. Will try them out!