Dark chocolate & avocado cupcakes

Dark chocolate & avocado cupcakes

Rich dark chocolate combines beautifully with the creamy ripe avocados and toasted walnuts to create a truly melt-in-the mouth, unique and luxurious taste. Avocado replaces butter in this cupcake's frosting, making it a slightly healthier option. Lily Vanilli, renowned for her cupcake sculptures, has baked this deliciously unique cupcake using Divine Chocolate and Tate & Lyle fair-trade sugar. Here's how to recreate your very own couture cupcake creation with Divine Chocolate and Tate & Lyle fair-trade sugar.

What you need:

For the cake mixture

For the topping:

What you do:

  1. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4
  2. Break up the chocolate bars and melt gently. Remove the bowl from the heat and leave to cool. Put the butter and sugar into a food mixer and beat until light and creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition
  3. Stir in the sour cream on low speed, followed by the flour and finally the melted chocolate, mixing gently until thoroughly combined. Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases and bake for 25mins until firm to the touch. Remove the muffins from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack
  4. Meanwhile make the topping: Using a hand mixer, blend the avocado with the lemon juice until you achieve a smooth consistency, working out any lumps. Slowly blend in the sugar, increasing the speed of the mixer as you go (feel free to add more or less sugar to achieve a consistency & taste you like)
  5. Spread over the cooled cakes. Using a zester, create some dark chocolate shavings and sprinkle some onto the frosting and top with a cooled toasted walnut.

Tate & Lyle

Tate & Lyle

Tate & Lyle's Fairtrade Caster Sugar, Icing Sugar and Royal Icing Sugar are all sourced from Belize, the sugar company's first Fairtrade accredited grower-partner, from whom it has purchased sugar for over 35 years.

More cup cake recipes

Coffee-toffee cupcakes

Coffee-toffee cupcakes

If you've got a sweet tooth and also love coffee-flavoured desserts, these cupcakes are going to be right up your street!

Honey & lavender cup cakes

Honey & lavender cup cakes

Why have plain old chocolate cup cakes when you could treat friends and family to scrummy Fairtrade honey and lavender versions created by Lily Vanilli?