Lindor Milk Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

So silky and smooth, with a little hidden surprise inside, these lindor milk chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream are definitely my most popular cupcake recipe!

Oh. My. God.

Have I created something dangerous. I mean really, really dangerous.

You know how your head starts turning when you have some extra ingredients or food hanging around, and you want to use them up? Yeah, I accomplished that today, and probably put on 20 lbs.

These Lindor milk chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream are soooooooooo good. I am serious; probably my favorite chocolate creation ever. There is no going wrong with Lindt chocolate. Even someone like my brother, who is not a chocolate fan, loves Lindt’s Lindor Milk Chocolate (I am not endorsed by Lindt at all, just stating a fact!) They are so soft, and creamy, and plain delicious! My mother-in-law always buys me the huge box of assorted flavors from Costco each Christmas and I tend to devour the box in no time. However, I do have my favorites. The milk chocolate and hazelnut flavors get eaten first, and I usually give my daughter the dark chocolate. Surprisingly, the white chocolate is always left. I have nothing against white chocolate; it may have to do when I was a child and my mother believed I was allergic to chocolate. That year I only received white chocolate for Easter (while my brother and sister got the good stuff!) All the flavors are delicious, I just have my personal favorites.

Since Valentine’s Day is the next major celebration approaching us in the food blogging industry (though, football season is upon us, but we are not sports fans here,) I thought I would get a head start and use up these last remaining chocolate truffles. The idea for the Lindor milk chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream hit me one night while I was in bed. Yes, I go to bed thinking about food and wake up thinking about it. I knew the small balls would fit perfectly into cupcakes, but I did not want to bake them directly into the batter because the Lindt Lindor Chocolate is usually very soft. Literally you bite into the hard shell, and the inner chocolate is melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness! So I did the next best thing; I placed the unwrapped chocolate directly into the cupcakes as soon as I removed them from the oven. Result? A soft melting of the chocolate, without losing it everywhere! Ahhhh! I am still drooling! Pretty sure I would remarry my husband if he presented these to me on Valentine’s Day!

Now, one snag I hit along the way was getting the icing on top of the cupcake, even after the cupcakes had cooled. See, I wanted to do that cool blob technique because I already knew the cupcakes would be rich. I figured less was more when it came to the buttercream. Except, when I went to begin the blob right above the exposed soft chocolate, it instantly pushed into the Lindor chocolate, causing the filling to run everywhere. I tried chilling the cupcakes in the refrigerator to get the chocolate filling to firm up more, and that seemed to help, but the technique I wanted to use was still not working. UPDATE: No issues this time around. I just made sure to push the truffles further into the cupcake this time 🙂 In the end I went with the classic 1M swirl technique, making sure to drop the buttercream onto the cupcakes gently and not make the swirl too large. I was super happy with the result, even if I had to change my game plan. I had also wanted to make pink candy melt hearts as toppers, but my candy melts would not melt! I think they must have gone bad because I have never had this much trouble before.

I was worried the chocolate buttercream would be on the soft side since I decided to use pure butter and melted chocolate. Usually I use cocoa powder. Since we are looking at temperatures between -20 and -25 degrees Celsius these days, I was not concerned at all about these cupcakes drooping on the way into Mr. TCW’s work. I did not want to mask the Lindt chocolate flavor in the buttercream but found it needed a touch more chocolate, so that is why I added just a touch of cocoa powder. Helps to get rid of that overly sweet icing taste.

I just realized as I type this that I took no pictures of the actual inside of these Lindor milk chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream! What was I thinking?! The whole point was to show off the awesome milk chocolate filling! I was obviously too busy eating these cupcakes to remember such an important feature. I guess that is an excuse to make them again?! Plus, I did technically create these for Valentine’s Day, so I could always recreate them on February 14th… Or a gluten-free recipe… UPDATE: I made sure to get a picture of the inside of the cupcake this time around!