Almost Churro Cupcakes with Mexican Chocolate Frosting

With Cinco de Mayo tomorrow I knew I wanted to make something Mexican in flavor. I've posted quite a few recipes on here of different savory Mexican dishes and decided for this I wanted to make something sweet. The boy and I recently ate a Cava, a restaurant here in Toronto and in addition from a completely wonderful meal we had a wonderful dessert of Churros and Chocolate. Ever since I moved to Southern California 4 years ago I fell in love with churros and loved them even more dipped in a fabulously thick and rich Mexican hot chocolate. The churros and choclate at Cava were fabulous! This was my attempt to recreate this fabulous treat. I call them Almost Churro Cupcakes, because they are good but not exactly what I was going for when I started this. The cupcakes taste a bit too cinnamony and the chocolate icing isn't exactly what I was going for, not rich enough. That being said we had some friends over to watch hockey last night and they thought they were fabulous. With that kind of a criticism, I figured I'd still share the recipe. Plus I think the photos cam out pretty well.


Churro Cupcakes
makes 12-16 cupcakes

2 cups flour
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup room temperature milk
1/2 cup room temperature butter
1 room temperature egg
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until well combined and fluffy. Mix in egg and vanilla.
3. Mix together flour, baking powder salt and cinnamon. Add flour and milk alternately to the butter and sugar mixture, beginning and ending with the flour.
4. For regular cupcakes, place 2 heaping Tbsp of mix into paper lined cupcake tin. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Remove to a cooling rack and cool completely before frosting.



Mexican Chocolate Frosting

2 sticks butter - room temperature
1/4 sour cream
pinch of sea salt
3 cups icing sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp chipotle chili powder

1. Mix butter and salt until fluffy. Add icing sugar a few Tbsps at a time until frosting is stiff enough for piping.
2. Beat in sour cream and add a few extra Tbsp of icing sugar if it loosens up too much. Add in cocoa powder and spices mixing until well combined.

My problem with these cupcakes is they taste too much like the Cinnamon Brown Sugar ones. I think I'd like more of a white cake with cinnamon swirl, but I still consider myself a fairly novice baker and am not quite sure how to get that. The chocolate icing was close but would have been better if I had remembered to pick up dark chocolate. They taste very good, just aren't exactly what I was hoping for. Does any one have any thoughts or tips? If so I'd love if you'd post them in the comments or shoot me an email or tweet me @piccantedolce.

Enjoy!