Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Cocoa Buttercream Frosting

I’m not sure why, but I just had a hankering for a chocolate chip cupcake. I guess it’s kind of like a muffin, but with frosting and that’s cool. I didn’t want the frosting too super sweet or too super chocolate-y because it would overpower the cuppin (cupcake/muffin?) flavor. But let’s face it, it’s buttercream frosting. It’s not exactly savory.

But it DID turn out to be really, really tasty!

Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

Cupcakes

· 1 cup butter

· 3/4 cup sugar

· 1 cup dark brown sugar

· 3 1/4 cups flour

· 1 t baking soda

· 1/4 t salt

· 2 eggs

· 1 T vanilla

· 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Frosting

· 1 cup butter, softened to room temperature

· 3 ½ cups powdered sugar

· 1/3 cup cocoa powder

· 3 T milk

· ¼ t salt

· 2 t vanilla

· ½ cup chocolate chips (if you have mini chips that’s great – if not, go big)

Directions

First, we’re going to brown the butter for the cupcake portion. Take your cup of butter and melt it in a small saucepan over medium heat. You’re going to want to stir it regularly and keep cooking until it turns brown with some little burnt patches in it, maybe 10 or 11 minutes. Don’t worry, this adds a ton of flavor! And don’t be concerned when it starts to foam up – that’s natural. It will go down once you take it off the heat. You basically want to get it to a rich brown color.

When it’s done take the browned butter off the heat and let it cool for a couple minutes.

After a couple minutes, pour the butter into a glass bowl and add the white and brown sugars. Mix with your hand mixer just until everything is combined – not long.

In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.

Now, lets go back to the butter mixture. Add the 2 eggs and vanilla and mix completely. Then, take the flour mixture and mix that until completely combined. Finally, add the chocolate chips and blend those in with a wooden spoon. And your batter is done!

Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 of the way full and bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or so – until the tops are a nice golden brown color.

Move the whole cupcake tin to a wire rack and let them cool completely (you can take them out of the tin and let them cool separately on the wire rack once the cupcake tin is cool enough to handle).

Now on to the frosting which, if you’ve made buttercream frosting before, you know is super easy.

Put the butter into a bowl and mix that by itself until it’s creamy – a couple minutes. Then, add in the powdered sugar, cocoa powder, milk, salt and vanilla and blend that with your hand mixer until everything is well combined. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips with a wooden spoon.