AVO Magazine has existed for 14 years this month! Of course, that needs to be celebrated and so I decided to contribute with these delicious and cute AVO cupcakes. As a collaboration between AVO and MuchMunchies I love to share recipes with a Japanese side to them, but these are not my only recipes.
TIP: You don’t have to use my (cup)cake recipe or my buttercream recipe. If you’d rather use candy/colour melts instead of chocolate this would be fine too.
Difficulty level: ✩
Dit is gebaseerd op de bereidingstijd (exclusief de wachttijden tussendoor), het feit dat ik de chocolade niet tempereer en hoe simpel de stappen zijn om uit te voeren. Het tempereren van chocolade kan voor sommige nog wel eens moeilijk zijn dus dan zou er een ster bijkomen.
What you’ll need:
♡ Tomoya chocolates* (12)
- Tomoya Template (Link)
- 2 Cutting Boards, about the size of a A4 piece of paper
- Acetate (8cm high, not any smaller)
- Small or Barbecue Skewers
- 1 Glass (heath proof) Bowl
- 1 or more Silicone Spatulas
- 3 (disposable) Piping bags (or 1 piping bag which you clean and dry well in between)
- Optional: 1 Small Piping nozzle (for example Wilton tip 2)
- Optional: 1 Sauce pan (with a slightly smaller diameter than your glass bowl)
♡ AVO Logo chocolates* (12)
- AVO Logo Template (Link)
- 1 Cutting board, about the size of a A4 piece of paper
- Acetate (8cm high, not any smaller)
- Small or Barbecue Skewers
- 1 Glass (heath proof) Bowl
- 1 or more Silicone Spatulas
- 2 (disposable) Piping bags (or 1 piping bag which you clean and dry well in between)
- Optional: 1 Small Piping nozzle (for example Wilton tip 2)
- Optional: 1 Sauce pan (with a slightly smaller diameter than your glass bowl)
♡ Cupcakes (12)
- 12 Cupcake liners
- Cupcake or Muffin pan
- Electric Mixer + Beaters
- 2 Big Mixing Bowls
- Balloon Whisk
- Silicone Spatula
- Aluminium foil
- Optional: Ice cream Scoop
♡ Buttercream
- Electric Mixer + Beaters
- Big Mixing Bowl
- Silicone Spatula
- Bread- or Palette knife
* With this recipe you make 12 cupcakes and so you’ll need 12 chocolates. You can decide to choose one of the two designs, 6 of each design or you could make more cupcakes so you can make 12 chocolates of both designs.
Ingredients:
♡ Tomoya chocolates (12)
- 20 grams of Dark Chocolate
- 10 grams of Pink Chocolate (or white chocolate mixed with some pink food colouring powder)
- 100 grams of White Chocolate
♡ AVO Logo chocolates (12)
- 15 grams of Dark Chocolate
- 80 grams of White Chocolate
- Optional: Of you want the letters to be white you’ll need 15 grams of white chocolate and 80 grams of dark chocolate.
TIP: You’ll have some melted chocolate leftover, but if you use less than 10 grams of chocolate it’ll be hard to melt it without burning the chocolate.
♡ Cupcakes (12)
- 115 grams of Butter*
- 180 grams of Sugar
- 2 Eggs*
- 1 teaspoon of Vanilla Extract
- 250 grams of Flower
- 7 grams of Baking Powder
- 125 grams of Milk
♡ Buttercream
- 150 grams of Butter*
- 300 grams of Powdered Sugar
- 1 teaspoon of Vanilla Extract (or more if you prefer it)
- 4 tablespoons of Milk**
- Purple food colouring (gel or powder)
- Optional: Red food colouring (gel of powder)***
* These ingredients need to be at room temperature.
** You’ll only need the milk if your buttercream is too thick and you need to loosen it up a bit.
*** Whether you need this depends on the colour of purple you want to achieve.
Method
TIP: In this recipe I don’t temper the chocolate, which means that the chocolate won’t remain solid at room temperature, but will start to melt. If you do want your chocolate to stay solid at room temperature you can find several good methods for tempering chocolate online.
Preparation: Put the template on a cutting board and tape it down. Place some baking paper or acetate over it and tape it down at the back of the cutting board.
Cut the chocolate into small pieces, if you’re using chocolate bars. If you’re using chocolate melts then the pieces are usually small enough.
You can prepare your piping bag ahead of time. The best way to do this is to cut the end off of the bag, put the piping nozzle in the piping bag and then put the piping bag in a glass or measuring cup, folded open over the edges. You don’t have to use a piping nozzle, if you don’t then you keep the bag whole put it in a glass or measuring cup, folded open over the edges. You cut off the tip right before you start piping the chocolate.
TIP: Make sure you have plenty of space in your refrigerator!
♡ Step 1: Melt the dark chocolate, au bain-marie or in the microwave. Make sure you stir it often enough with a silicone spatula to make sure you don’t burn the chocolate. Don’t stir too quickly, or you’ll incorporate air into the chocolate. This step is the same for both designs, unless you want to make the AVO logo chocolates with white letters, then you start off with while chocolate.
♡ Step 2: Put the dark chocolate in a piping bag with a small nozzle in it, or which you cut a tiny tip off of.
♡ Step 3: Pipe the outlines for both designs on the acetate or baking paper. Take your time and don’t put too much pressure on the piping bag, because if you do too much chocolate might come out. Put the cutting boards in the refrigerator and wait for the chocolate to set. In the meantime clean the piping nozzle, if you only had one, and dry the piping nozzle with some kitchen paper. You can prepare your next piping bag, in the same fashion you did before, ahead of time.
♡ Step 4: Repeat steps 1 through 3 with the other necessary colours. For Tomoya you’ll need dark first, then pink and then white chocolate. For the AVO logo you’ll need dark and then white chocolate, unless you want white letters. In that case you start with white and end with dark chocolate. With small or barbecue skewers you can spread or correct the chocolate if needed.
♡ Step 5: Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Put the flower and baking powder, that is meant for the cupcakes, in a big mixing bowl and stir this through well with a balloon whisk.
♡ Step 6: Put the butter for the cupcakes in a big mixing bowl and add the sugar. Mix this through well with an electric mixer. Then add the eggs and vanilla extract and mix this through well.
♡ Step 7: Now alternate between adding milk and flower mixture to the butter mixture. Make sure everything is well incorporated, use a silicone spatula to clean the sides of the bowl well.
♡ Step 8: Put the cupcake liners in the cupcake pan and divide the cake batter evenly over the liners. I prefer to use an ice cream scoop to do this.
♡ Step 9: Bake the cupcakes for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. To check whether they are ready you can insert a skewer or knife in the middle of one of the cupcakes, if there’s no wet dough on it then they’re done.
♡ Step 10: Let the cupcakes cool down with aluminium foil over the pan, this way they remain a little softer because you’re ‘trapping’ the steam.
♡ Step 11: Put the butter for the buttercream in a big mixing bowl and beat this with an electric beater with whisk attachments. Add the powdered sugar, a little at a time.
♡ Step 12: Add the vanilla extract and mix this through well. After this you can add the food colouring, until you’ve reached the right colour.
TIP: If necessary, you can add some milk a little at a time, to make the buttercream more spreadable.
♡ Step 13: When the cupcakes have cooled, take them out of the pan and spread purple buttercream on them. Put enough on there so you’ll be able to create a flat top and so you can smooth out the sides as well.
♡ Step 14: Put the chocolates on top of the cupcakes.
♡ Enjoy!
I made these cupcakes to celebrate AVO’s 14th birthday, but of course you can make them for any occasion. Even if you’re less familiar with AVO then Tomoya is still a cute character and nice to put on top of a cupcake!
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