Beginner-proof Chocolate Cupcakes

Here's my favourite chocolate (cup)cake recipe. It's super resilient, and always produces amazingly delicious results.

This batch makes between 18 - 24 cupcakes. If you need to cater for 24, I'd suggest increasing the mix by 50%.

2 cups plain flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon bicarb (baking) soda
1 cup (250ml / 1 Australian stick) unsalted butter
1 cup Coke
5 tablespoons cocoa powder (if you have it, split into 3 dutch processed cocoa & 2 cadbury)
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees celsius
Sift flour, sugar and bicarb together into a mixing bowl and set aside
In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Using a whisk, add in coke and cocoa powder, continue whisking until it boils
Pour hot chocolate mix into the flour/sugar mix, stir with wooden spoon until just combined
Add buttermilk, eggs and vanilla, stir until liquid is mixed through
Using your electric mixer, mix for 2-3 minutes on a medium speed (if you don't have a mixer, you can do this by hand, but you should probably just go buy one as it's a great investment)
Line your tray with patty pans
Pour cupcake mix into pans, filling to 2/3 of the patty. Note: The consistency of the mix should be quite liquidy - moreso than store-bought mixes or other recipes.
Bake for 25 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when touched on top

Perfect fill

For the perfect fill, use an ice-cream scoop. A larger sized scoop is perfect to fill one cupcake.
Mess-free fill

This one is my current choice, as I know the right amount to fill, and preventing mess is my biggest concern.

To avoid mess, pick up one of these Wilton dispensers (I got mine from Spotlight), and pour your cake mix into a piping bag (or zip-lock bag) with this attached. After a few pans filled, you'll be 100% mess-free.
Vegan-friendly alternative version

These are very easily converted to be accessible to vegans! I'll cover veganizing this recipe in a future post.