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Hey everyone! It’s Chelsea back from Chelsea’s Messy Apron to share a fun dessert recipe with you today! These cupcakes are rich with a chocolate fudge flavor. The frosting is a lightly-whipped strawberry mousse. The airy frosting balances out the dense chocolate cake creating an awesome cupcake combination that is a favorite in my family and a hit at any event I bring these to.
When I make cupcakes, I generally doctor up and change a pre-made cake mix. This makes the cupcakes super easy and quick to make, but they taste great! One of my favorite additions to a cake mix is adding a dry pudding mix. I used a chocolate fudge pudding mix in these cupcakes and it lends an incredibly rich chocolate fudge taste. I also start with a cake mix that already has pudding in the mix. So it’s basically double the chocolate, and double the fudge. And I don’t know about you, but I can never have too much chocolate 🙂
The other additions include the following line-up: 3 eggs, sour cream, vanilla Greek yogurt, some vegetable oil and a touch of vanilla extract for good measure. If you want, you can switch up the quantities of the yogurt and sour cream. You can use all sour cream in this recipe or all yogurt. I like a mix of the two, but these cupcakes will turn out great if you decide to use just one or the other.
To balance out the rich and over-the-top chocolate cupcakes, I wanted a light frosting. With Valentine’s Day just ending and plenty of leftover strawberries, I thought a strawberry frosting would be great. This frosting isn’t your ordinary frosting by any means. The frosting is more of a very light strawberry mousse.
The ingredients are easy – pureed strawberries, strawberry pudding, and Cool Whip. Not your traditional line-up for frosting, but the perfect complement to these chocolate cupcakes. I love piling frosting on my cupcakes a mile high, but if you aren’t a huge frosting fan, feel free to halve the amounts for the frosting and put less on the cupcakes.
Seriously, these cupcakes will melt in your mouth. Making it just that much easier to shove another twenty couple down!
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Chocolate Cupcakes with a Strawberry Mousse Frosting
Ingredients
Cupcakes:
- 1 package Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix 15.25 oz
- 1 package chocolate fudge pudding mix, dry 3.9 oz
- 3 large eggs at room temperature
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1/4 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup vanilla Greek yogurt or plain
- 2 and 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 cup buttermilk
Frosting:
- 2 cups strawberries stems removed
- 1/2 cup strawberry pudding dry
- 2 cups Cool Whip
- Optional: powdered sugar and strawberries to garnish
Instructions
Cupcakes
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin tin with liners and set aside.
- In a large bowl, sift together the pudding and cake mix.
- In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, vegetable oil, sour cream, yogurt, and vanilla.
- Mix wet and dry until combined (do not over-stir or beat in too much air)
- Fill up the liners 3/4ths the way full and bake for 17-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Remove and let cool.
Frosting:
- Remove the strawberry stems. Place the strawberries in a food processor and pulse until completely liquid. Stir in the strawberry pudding and then lightly fold in the Cool Whip.
- Using a star tip pipe the strawberry filling onto the completely cooled chocolate cupcakes.
- Optionally garnish with a piece of a strawberry and a sprinkle of powdered sugar
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
