Green Earth Day Cupcakes - Cupcake Hero

April 22nd is Earth Day. I always do my little bit to be 'green', saving energy, using gray water on the garden, recycling, cloth nappies, it's little things, but I hope they are making some small impact.


This month I decided to go above and beyond the call of duty. The Cupcake Hero theme is... drum roll... Earth Day!


I have stalked the Cupcake Hero blog for a couple of months now, and I love the cakes everyone comes up with. I don't claim to be as good at it as some, but a girl has to keep challanging herself (oh and I simply can't back away from a competition).

My humble contribution to the Earth Day 'Hero is a White Chocolate Mud and Mint Cupcake with Mint Icing. Mud cake! You can't get more Earthy than MUD.


I used as many organic producs as I could get my hands on, milk, flour, eggs, sugar, chocolate and mint from my own garden how green is that?! . Sadly I was quite limited by my rural location. No matter, we soldier on.

I loved the white chocolate mud cake, moist and delicious, I am not a big fan of white chocie but it didn't stop me from eating two of these babies before the icing dried, nor from being sneaky and not sharing the job of licking the bowl with my 3 year old. I did however let her have a cooked one to eat and she ate the whole lot. Not just the icing - the whole cake! She licks the icing from a devils food cupcake but this she ate the entire thing. I was so shocked I let her have another one with out a thought.


I was however quite disapointed with the organic icing sugar. It had a funny smell in the bag, and when I mixed it with milk it was a rather unattractive brown colour. It took quite a bit of green colour to make it look nice. It was still very grainy so I tried warming it to disolve it a little. I started to disolve but it also started to stink! A delicate scent that reminded me of my Aunty's goat farm. Not pleasant. In short I binned it and went for the slightly less 'green' but also slightly less brown and smelly, icing sugar.


Can I say again how much I like this cake. It makes white chocolate taste fantastic, and the mint gives it such a fresh flavour.




I really enjoyed this Cupcake Hero, and looking at the dozen or so cupcakes in my kitchen I think I'll continue to enjoy it for a week or two yet.





White Chocolate Mint Mud Cake

Silghtly modified version of this


300g white chocolate
200g butter
250ml (1 cup) milk
165g (3/4 cup) caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (2 teaspoons natural vanilla essence)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
100g (2/3 cup) self-raising flour
150g (1 cup) plain flour
1 tsp of dried mint


Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius (145 degrees Celsius fan-forced).

Place chocolate, butter, milk and sugar in a large saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat when chocolate and butter have melted, and stir mixture until completely smooth.

Allow mixture to cool at room temperature for 15 minutes.

Add vanilla and eggs to chocolate mixture and stir until well combined.

Stir flours together in a large bowl. Add one cup of chocolate mixture to the flour and stir until a smooth paste forms.

Repeat with another cup of the chocolate mixture.

Add remaining chocolate mixture and mint, stir until mixture is smooth. This gradual method of combining the wet and dry ingredients helps prevent lumps

3/4 fill your cupcake papers with batter ( I got 22 cupcakes). Bake for 25 minutes or untill a skewer comes out clean.