Chocolate & strawberry cupcakes

By lucylox on January 26, 2025

This is your ultimate Valentines Day recipe - a combination of chocolate and strawberry in a recipe made for two. Two delicious dairy-free and egg-free chocolate cupcakes topped with intense pretty in pink strawberry buttercream.

Valentines version with coloured white chocolate heart decorations

My lovely local friends at New Forest Fruit Snacks asked me to come up with a recipe for chocolate cake day that featured their delicious pulse dried strawberry snacks.

Strawberry and chocolate are flavours that go well, but for me I'm not keen the the texture of a wet soggy strawberry with crisp chocolate, it might just be me (and it seems to be by the popularity of chocolate coated strawberries!), but I don't think it works. Far better is using freeze dried strawberries, you get even more intense flavour and beautiful pink/red colour with none of the moisture. I have found that freeze-dried berries tend to lose their colour when baked and go a little brown rather than pink/red, and that isn't nearly so appetising! So my top tip is to use the strawberries in the non-baked part of a recipe, like the decoration or the icing, as in this recipe.

So here we have some rather superb rich chocolate cupcakes (dairy, egg and nut-free of course) topped with intense strawberry, almost sherbet like pink buttercream. Honestly this buttercream will make your life far better - it's so packed full of intense strawberry goodness. I reckon it'll be amazing sandwiched between two vanilla sponges or as a filling for some Linzer cookies.

As i say, this recipe is for two, but you could easily double, triple or even quadruple it for bigger quantities. But as this is essentially a romantic recipe, two seemed liked the perfect number!

I'd really recommend using this tip for making sure you get grease-free cupcake liner - simply place a few grains or uncooked rice into each tin, under the cupcake case. This will soak up any unwanted moisture and grease and you'll end up with the most perfect cupcakes!

top tip!

I've used large cupcake cases, like a muffin case to get two generous cupcakes; if you're using smaller fairy cake cases, i'd suggest you may be able to get three or four cakes out of this recipe.

Chocolate and Strawberry Cupcakes

Rich chocolate vegan cupcakes topped with intense strawberry buttercream

dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, soya-free, sesame-free, vegetarian and vegan

cupcake tray
cupcake liners

50 ml dairy-free milk
1 squeeze lemon juice
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 pinch bicarbonate of soda
45 g self-raising flour
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 pinch salt
35 g caster sugar
20 g dairy-free margarine (melted)

for the strawberry buttercream

25 g dairy-free margarine
100 g icing sugar
10 g freeze-dried strawberries
1 tsp dairy-free milk (if needed)

Preheat the oven to 180℃
Prepare the cupcake tin with liners
Add the lemon, vanilla and bicarbonate of soda to the milk and set aside
Place the flour, cocoa, and salt in a bowl and whisk together to lighten and combine
Stir in the sugar
Pour in the melted margarine and the milk mixture (stir before adding), and mix to form a wet batter
Fill the two cupcake cases 2/3rds full
Bake for 18-20 minutes until risen and a toothpick comes out clean.
Place on wire rack to cool

To make the icing

In a food processor, or using a rolling pin, crush the strawberries until they make a fine powder. If using a food processor, blitz the berries with the icing sugar.
Whisk together the margarine and icing sugar
Whisk in the strawberry dust, adding the milk if the buttercream is too thick
generously pile the buttercream on top of the cooled cupcakes either with a spatula or a piping bag.
Decorate with more strawberries or for Valentines why not make chocolate hearts or use heart shaped decorations