Coca Cola Cupcakes

We love Coke. A lot. There's nothing more refreshing than a cool Coca Cola on a hot summer afternoon. While Alexa prefers the regular variety, Kathryn has sworn her allegiance to its diet offspring. So it's no surprise that we had to make this recipe when we came across it on Pinterest. Surprisingly, you can't taste the Coke in the finished product. Instead the cupcakes end up extremely moist and fudgy, with a very intense chocolate flavor. We paired them with a simple buttercream, and they were absolute heaven. 

Ingredients:

2 C. all-purpose flour

1 ½ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

16 oz. Coca Cola Classic soda (Make sure to use the real thing. No diet)

½ C.  butter

¾ C. unsweetened cocoa powder (We used Hersey’s Special Dark)

1 C. granulated sugar

1 C. light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Part 1:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and line a cupcake pan with liners.

In a sauce pan, heat the cola, butter, and cocoa powder over medium heat, stirring periodically, until the butter has completely melted.

 Whisk in the sugars and continue heating until dissolved. 

Remove from the heat, stir in the vanilla, then allow the cola mixture to cool. 

You should get what looks a big pot o' tar. It's okay. It will taste much better than it looks. :)

Part 2:

While you're letting your tarry lookin' coke mixture cool, it's time to prepare the dry ingredients. 

This part is easy. Simply add your flour, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. Stir to combine.

Make a well in the center of the flour mixture.

Part 3:

Once the Coke mixture is only slightly warm to the touch, whisk in the eggs.

Pour the Coke mixture into the well of the dry ingredients, mixing them together until the batter is just blended and mostly smooth. 

Fill your pre-prepared cupcake pan 2/3 of the way full with batter and slide them into your preheated oven for 18-20 min.

We chose to frost these with our simple vanilla butter cream recipe, but they would also be fantastic with chocolate ganache. Either way, these cupcakes are sure to be crowd pleaser!