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I am, and always will be, Team Chocolate at dessert time. Give me ALL the chocolate and make it dark. But since we don’t always need a huge batch of giant cupcakes, this recipe is a small batch of mini cupcakes!! And to make it more interesting, we’re using a combo of dark and black cocoa powder for ultimate intensity.

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This recipe was originally published on December 6, 2018. It was republished on January 20, 2022 with updates.

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Chocoholics Unite

If you are a true card carrying member of Team Chocolate, I need to take a moment and direct you to my Death By Dark Chocolate Cake recipe. It’s insane. This recipe has all the chocolate you could ever want. But I digress…

This recipe is basically the same as that cake, but cut in half. However, I did have to make a few tweaks. For one, the leaveners needed to be adjusted to prevent disaster. For two, I really wanted to bake cupcakes with a bit of black cocoa in them.

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Leavener Blunders

Let’s start with what went wrong. At first, I just cut the amount of baking powder and baking soda in half, like I did with all of the other ingredients. This gave me a flood of cupcake batter all over my cupcake pan.

For round two, I cut back on both the baking powder and baking soda. This batch came out 99% perfect. There were some weird bubbles on top of quite a few cupcakes. Turns out, that can happen when you have too much leavener in the recipe. Next time, I will try nixing the baking soda completely, but I’m including it in the recipe because it did work fine enough.

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Black Cocoa vs Dark Cocoa

Instead of using just dark cocoa powder (aka dutched cocoa powder), like I did in my dark chocolate cake, I desperately wanted to use some black cocoa powder too. Black cocoa powder is a heavily alkalised cocoa powder that gives Oreos their unique flavor.

Black cocoa powder doesn’t taste quite like chocolate, but it has a smooth, intense flavor. By combining these two powders, we end up with mini dark chocolate cupcakes that have a deep flavor without the bitterness.

Cupcake Liners

My black and white polka dot cupcake liners are from the Dollar Tree and I love how cute they are! Turns out that they are actually bigger than my Wilton mini cupcake liners. With this batter, it is imperative to not overfill the liners.

As such, if your liners are flush with the top of the pan, use just shy of one tablespoon of batter. But if they are slightly larger, you can use a full scoop of batter. It’s a super tiny difference, but it is still the difference between a perfect cupcake and an overflowing mess.

Related Reading: Easy Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

Don’t Throw Out Leftover Batter

This recipe will make roughly 48 mini dark cupcakes. I have never used all the batter for mini cupcakes though. You can bake regular cupcakes, cake waffles (pour batter into a waffle maker), or a mini cake. This time around, I made 24 mini cupcakes and two 4 inch cake layers! You do you and use the batter however you want.

Top Tips for Cupcakes

Make sure all of your ingredients are at room temperature. This will help everything blend nicely and give your cupcakes a nice texture.
Scrape down your bowl occasionally. Ingredients can hide out at the bottom of your bowl. Make sure everything gets blended!
Place some dried rice (½ – 1 teaspoon) in the bottom of each cupcake cavity before adding your paper cases.
Use a tablespoon to perfectly portion your cupcake batter.

Now to the Dark Chocolate Frosting

I knew that these mini dark cupcakes were going to get a dose of black cocoa powder, so I figured we’d do the same combo for the buttercream. If you’re looking for a recipe that uses just black cocoa powder and is completely black, hit up my Oreo Cake.

With this buttercream, the final color was not as important as the flavor. Since black cocoa has an earthy flavor, I needed to make sure the dark cocoa kept everything balanced. I only used 8 drops of black gel color, but you could absolutely add a bit more.

Related Reading: 12 Tips for Better Cakes & Cupcakes

Piping Time!

I used a 2D piping tip for these pretty rosettes. A 1M tip would give you a similar look as well. I was so torn with how to style these little cupcakes! In the end, I decided to go for a minimalist approach.

But… I feel like you deserve to have some options. I considered adding some gold leaf, gold paint on some of the ridges, or even topping them with a tiny buttercream flower. Any of those would have looked totes adorable.

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Enjoy!

You are going to love the intense flavor of these mini dark chocolate cupcakes. Dark cocoa and black cocoa come together to give you the perfect bite of chocolate. And that frosting? Anyone who loves Oreos is sure to be hooked!

If you love baking, especially cakes and cupcakes, you need to check out the Bakes & Blunders Resource Library. It’s free for email subscribers and has over a dozen baking resources to help you out.