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We’ve been making butterfly cakes for years but recently I realised that although I shared a butterfly cakes recipe a while ago, I’ve never shared our chocolate version – and it’s simply too good to keep to ourselves!
How to make Chocolate Fairy Cakes that look like butterflies
These butterfly cakes are so easy to make. Our recipe makes eight big chocolate butterfly cupcakes or up to 18 smaller chocolate fairy cakes. It uses a simple cake recipe with cocoa powder to make it into a chocolate cake. You could also switch the vanilla for orange flavouring if you wanted to make chocolate orange fairy cakes instead.
To make the butterflies on top, you use a spoon to scoop a circle out of the top of the cake before cutting it in half, adding chocolate frosting to the hole in the top of the cake and then positioning the two half pieces of cake on top to form wings. Simple but effective.
We sometimes add chocolate chips to these easy peasy chocolate fairy cakes which are delicious and if you wanted you could add extra decoration like a dusting of icing sugar or some sprinkles. We also always use ready made frosting as chocolate icing for fairy cakes but you can make your own if you prefer. There’s a great recipe for a chocolate topping for fairy cakes here.
For cakes like this I always use margarine as it’s cheaper and always works well to create a lovely light sponge but you could use unsalted butter if you wanted. It’s a really versatile chocolate fairy cake recipe and one that we make often. If you didn’t want to make the cakes into chocolate butterflies, the recipe created the best easy chocolate fairy cakes too – and you can decorate them how you like.
If you’re looking for more cakes to make, here’s our Lemon Bakewells, Madeira Cake, Chocolate Chip Fairy Cakes and Oaty Fruity Muffins. You can see all our recipes to date here.
What equipment do you need to make these butterfly cakes?
You will no doubt have most of the equipment you need for this recipe at home already but, in case it helps, here are the things we use to bake these cakes at home:
These are pretty much staples for baking in any home kitchen and once you have them you won’t need to replace them often.
Here’s our Chocolate Butterfly Cake recipe:
Ingredients
- 145 g self raising flour
- 145 g sugar – granulated or caster sugar work well
- 145 g margarine – at room temperature
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla essence or vanilla extract
- 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
- chocolate frosting
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5
- Line a muffin tray with paper cases.
- Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and then spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases until they are half full.
- Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until nicely golden on top.
- Leave to cool completely.
Here’s how to make a butterfly cake out of cupcakes:
- Cut out the top of the cakes using a spoon, fill with chocolate frosting and then cut the discarded piece of cake in half before placing the cake pieces back on top to resemble butterfly wings.
The cakes can then be eaten as they are, dusted with icing sugar or sprinkled with sprinkles! They store well for a few days in an airtight container.
If you’d like to print or pin the Chocolate Butterfly Cakes Recipe for later you can do so below. Enjoy!
Chocolate Butterfly Cakes
Ingredients
- 145 g self raising flour
- 145 g sugar – granulated or caster sugar work well
- 145 g margarine – at room temperature
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla essence or vanilla extract
- 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
- chocolate frosting
Instructions
- Line a muffin tray with paper cases.
- Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and then spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases until they are half full.
- Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until nicely golden on top.
- Leave to cool completely.
- Cut out the top of the cakes using a spoon, fill with chocolate frosting and then cut the discarded piece of cake in half before placing the cake pieces back on top to resemble butterfly wings.
*Note: Nutritional information is estimated, based on publicly available data. Nutrient values may vary from those published.
