How to Make Bakery-Worthy Chocolate Cupcakes

Sometimes, especially when I’ve had a bad day, I stop at an outpost of New York's famous Magnolia Bakery for a chocolate cupcake on the way home. The cake is tender, moist, and packed full of bittersweet cocoa flavor, and finished with a swirl of chocolate buttercream and a handful of sprinkles. It’s a fun, delicious confection that never fails to lift my spirits. Though cupcakes get a lot of hate—Slate once called the dessert “a blight upon our land” and Vice went so far as to say there’s something “fundamentally wrong” about the confection—I still have a soft spot for the petite dessert. I’m convinced that anyone with a negative opinion about cupcakes simply hasn’t had a good one. The very best cupcakes are moist and flavorful, with just the right amount of silky smooth frosting to accompany each bite. The best way to guarantee you’re eating a great cupcake? Making your own. (Yes, that even goes for those of us who pass by a Magnolia on the way home from work.) 

Luckily for us, our Birmingham-based test kitchen colleague Anna Theoktisto has a stellar recipe for classic chocolate cupcakes that are tender, deeply flavorful, and have a pleasing, subtle tang from sour cream. It’s an exceedingly simple recipe that requires no mixer and it takes just 15 minutes to prep the batter before baking, making this a minimal-effort dessert that’s perfect for both weeknights and special occasions. Here’s how to make them.

4 Tips for Making the Best Chocolate Cupcakes

Use a combination of bittersweet chocolate and cocoa powder for double the chocolate flavor. Though you could swap in milk chocolate for a sweeter cupcake, we recommend using chopped bittersweet or dark chocolate, which typically ranges from 64 to 72% cacao. For a more complex tasting cake, we incorporate Dutch-processed cocoa powder into the batter, which brings a mellow, earthy chocolate flavor.

Melt the chocolate with hot water. Melting chocolate with hot water may feel counterintuitive, since water can cause the chocolate to seize. But, as I noted in my chocolate mousse recipe, adding just enough liquid can help coat the cocoa particles and keep them fluid. So go ahead: Pour half a cup of hot water over your chocolate. Folding melted chocolate (instead of unmelted chunks or chips) into the batter also ensures the chocolate will be evenly distributed throughout the batter, resulting in a deeply chocolatey cake.

Reach for sour cream for the moist, delicious cupcakes. Fat inhibits gluten development by coating the gluten proteins glutenin and gliadin; because sour cream is rich in both fat and moisture, incorporating it into the batter results in cake that’s tender and moist, with a subtle tartness that complements the chocolate’s fruity notes.

Decorate with a piping tip for the prettiest cupcakes. For a celebration-worthy dessert, fit a piping bag with a fun tip, then pipe squiggles, stars, or an elegant rosette with your frosting of choice. If you don’t have a piping bag on hand, not to worry—you can simply top the cupcakes with icing using an offset spatula. We've included links to our chocolate and vanilla buttercream frosting recipes below, which both go wonderfully with these cupcakes, but feel free to use your favorite homemade or store-bought frosting.