McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive Cupcakes; little fluffy brown sugar cakes topped, swirled with chocolate buttercream frosting and topped with McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive Nibbles!
They are regularly voted the UK’s favourite biscuit, chocolate or otherwise.
They are perfect with a cup of tea or cold glass of milk, in a lunchbox, in your rucksack, or just eaten while standing in the kitchen deciding what you can be bothered to make for your dinner.
McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives are a British staple, tempting to all ages, and were invented in my home country of Scotland less than a hundred years ago. Apparently, in our cold little island nation, we eat 71 million packets of McVitie’s chocolate digestives in the United Kingdom every single year, which works out as us devouring an average of around 52 biscuits per second. Now that is a LOT of biscuits!
Chocolate Digestives are still somewhat drowned out in their online presence, however, by big American brands such as Oreo or emerging European brands like Lotus. With one swift Pinterest search you can find THOUSANDS of Oreo-based recipes, and almost as many using Lotus’ Biscoff biscuits and spreads. Our humble Digestive biscuit garners far less results.
Today I’m turning this fact on its head, and after experiencing just how delicious a Chocolate Digestive inspired recipe (like these McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive Cupcakes) can be, I’ll probably be doing it again very soon!
These McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive Cupcakes are so simple but so perfect.
Fluffy little cakes made with brown sugar, to mimic that caramelised but wholesome Digestive taste, using a little wholemeal flour can help with this too! The cakes are swirled with some wonderfully fluffy chocolate buttercream frosting, flavoured only with some regular cocoa powder rather than made too rich with melted chocolate. On top, you’ll find either some crumbled shards of Chocolate Digestive or a few inviting chocolatey bites of Chocolate Digestive Nibbles. The Nibbles are great because they don’t go soft in the frosting over time like the regular Chocolate Digestives can, also they have a higher chocolate-to-biscuit ratio, which makes me happy.
I brought these cupcakes in to my office for a charity bake sale, and they were all snapped up pretty quickly. People LOVE a hybrid of their favourite treats!
To make these McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive Cupcakes, simply follow the recipe below!
McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive Cupcakes
McVitie's Chocolate Digestive Cupcakes; little fluffy brown sugar cakes topped, swirled with chocolate buttercream frosting and topped with McVitie's Chocolate Digestive Nibbles!
Notes
BE A MAVERICK: why not try out this recipe with a different flavour of Digestives like white chocolate or caramel?
Ingredients
For the cupcakes:
- 200g (13 tbsp) soft butter or margarine
- 180g (1 cup) soft light brown sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 200g (1 ½ cups) self-raising flour (plain or wholemeal)
- Pinch of salt
For the chocolate frosting and decoration:
- 220g (15 tbsp) soft butter
- 400g (2 ¼ cups) icing sugar
- 30g (¼ cup) cocoa powder
- Splash of milk to soften if necessary
- Pack of McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives or McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive Nibbles to decorate
Instructions
For the cupcakes:
- Preheat your oven – 180 C / 160 C fan / 350 F / gas mark 4 – and line a 12-hole cupcake or muffin tin with paper, foil or silicone cupcake cases.
- In a large bowl, weigh out all of your cupcake ingredients and use and free-standing mixer, electric whisk or just a good old wooden spoon to beat everything together until smooth and combined.
- Use an ice cream scoop or a regular big spoon to divide the cake mixture evenly between the 12 cupcake cases.
- Bake in your preheated oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden, risen and springy to the touch.
- Allow to cool completely.
- Meanwhile, you can make your chocolate frosting!
For the chocolate frosting and decoration:
- In a large bowl, weigh out all of your frosting ingredients except for the chocolate biscuits.
- Using a free-standing mixer, electric whisk, or just a wooden spoon, mix the ingredients together until evenly combined.
- Take an extra 2-3 minutes to thoroughly beat the frosting until paler and fluffier. You may need to add a little milk to help loosen it. This makes the frosting so much more delicious!
- Once your cupcakes are cool, use a piping bag (or a sandwich bag with a hole snipped from the corner) to pipe your frosting on top. You can also simply spread a generous blob of frosting on with a spoon or knife.
- When you have frosted all of your little cakes, decorate however you like with some McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives or McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive Nibbles. I used a few biscuit crumbs as well as the Nibbles – I much prefer the higher chocolate to biscuit ratio!
- Enjoy!
If you like these McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive Cupcakes, you may also like…
Banana Milkshake Cupcakes
Toffee Popcorn Cupcakes
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You don’t actually use digestive biscuits…..?
Hi Millie – you’re absolutely right! As the post says, these cupcakes are an ode to the flavour of the classic biscuits, with a hint of the real thing of the Nibbles on top.