I've been a bad, bad blogger. I don't have a good excuse why I stopped blogging in November. I made tons of baked goodies for the holidays, and the backlog for my blog kept growing. But I'm back! Even better, I've realized that I can publish recipes as long as I write my own text. Whee!
I love cupcakes, and I also love the combination of chocolate and raspberry. Martha Stewart has a great, easy recipe for one-bowl chocolate cupcakes, but I didn't want to do the typical thing with chocolate frosting. I found Martha's recipe for strawberry buttercream, and I decided to adapt it to raspberry buttercream. It turned out wonderfully!
Cupcake Ingredients:
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (NOT dutch-process)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Instructions:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, sift together all of the dry ingredients (cocoa powder, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt).
Add the eggs, water, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla extract. Mix everything together by hand until the batter is smooth, approximately 3 minutes.
Pour the batter evenly into the cups of a regular muffin tin lined with paper liners (if you don't have paper liners, butter the tins so your muffins won't stick). Bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffins comes out with only a few crumbs attached.
Let the muffins cool completely on a wire rack before you frost them. This is what the muffins looked like when I took them out of the oven:
Now it's time to make the buttercream! This is an unusual buttercream recipe, because it calls for egg whites instead of egg yolks. It's very good though.
Raspberry Meringue Buttercream Ingredients:
4 large egg whites
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into tablespoons
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) raspberry jam
Instructions:
First, puree the raspberry jam in a food processor until it is completely smooth. If the jam has seeds, make sure the seeds have been pulverized.
Combine the egg whites and sugar in the bowl of your electric mixer. Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and whisk constantly, until the sugar completely dissolves and the mixture is warm to the touch.
Attach the bowl to your stand mixer (with the whisk attachment) and beat on high speed until stiff peaks appear. Continue beating until the mixture is fluffy and has cooled. This should take approximately 5-6 minutes.
Add the pureed raspberry jam to the mixture, and combine with a spatula until smooth.
Now you have raspberry meringue buttercream! You can use a spatula or knife to spread the frosting on top of the cupcakes, but I wanted to do something a little more decorative. 
