These Coffee & Chocolate Cupcakes are only 3 ingredients and have a full cup of coffee poured directly into the batter.

This is just one of the mini muffin recipes. If you like them, check out our full list of The Best Mini Muffin Recipes.

I make three ingredient muffins all the time with cake mix, water, and yogurt. Someone suggested swapping the water for coffee to add a richness to the muffins. So of course, I had to try her swap. And these Coffee And Chocolate Cupcakes were born.

I’m calling them cupcakes and not muffins because I topped them with powdered sugar. If I hadn’t topped them with anything, I would be calling them muffins.

They’re sweet, a lot sweeter than our chocolate muffins. The coffee really does bring out the coffee flavor.

Salt does too.

So I really should have bought the espresso sea salt I stumbled over recently. That would be the perfect thing to top these with.

Maybe I’ll make espresso salt and remake these.

Or maybe I’ll just buy espresso salt and remake these. That sounds more possible.

Coffee And Chocolate Cupcakes Recipe

These are technically three ingredient cupcakes because the powdered sugar topping is optional. That doesn’t add anything to the cupcake; it’s just there for aesthetics.

Coffee And Chocolate Cupcakes Ingredients:

• 1 box Devil’s food cake mix
• 1 cup strong brewed coffee
• 5.3 oz. cup of Greek coffee and cream yogurt
• Optional: powdered sugar

How To Make Coffee And Chocolate Cupcakes:

Pre-heat your oven to 350.

Mix together the Devil’s food cake mix, brewed coffee, and yogurt until combined. Make sure there aren’t any lumps in the batter.

Spoon a heaping 1/2 tablespoon of batter into each cavity of a non-stick mini muffin pan.

Bake for 14 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. This recipe makes two batches of mini muffins. A second batch may bake a little quicker, so check them around the 12 minute mark.

Set the coffee and chocolate cupcakes on a wire rack.

Top with a light layer of powdered sugar while the coffee and chocolate cupcakes are still warm.

Let the coffee and chocolate cupcakes cool completely.

Pack them in an airtight containers with parchment paper between layers of cupcakes. These cupcakes are a little sticky and if you pack them when they’re warm or pack them too close, there’s a good chance they’ll stick together.

What cake mix works best?

You can use any brand and any flavor of cake mix to make three ingredient cupcakes. We’ve used carrot cake mix and Funfetti cake mix to make different iterations of these muffins.

But, here’s the difference between those and these Coffee And Chocolate Cupcakes.

When we made Carrot Cake Muffins and Funfetti Muffins, we used one cup of water instead of one cup of brewed coffee. Water is clear (obviously), so it doesn’t add any coloring to the light cake mixes. Coffee would make the light cake mixes dark, so using coffee as a substitute for water in, say, a vanilla cake mix wouldn’t be a good idea.

So a dark cake mix is best. And if you’re making these, you want a chocolate cake mix. If not, there won’t be any chocolate in these cupcakes.

But as far as a specific chocolate cake mix, you can use any. I like Devil’s food cake mix because of its rich flavor, but you could do a simple chocolate cake mix or double chocolate cake mix if you want.

You could use a German chocolate cake mix too, but that would change the flavor of these.

What yogurt is best for these?

A lot of the coffee flavor comes from the brewed coffee, but some of the coffee flavor comes from the coffee and cream yogurt. The one that I use has a really rich coffee flavor which imparts a lot of coffee flavor into this –even though technically it’s a coffee and cream yogurt. It actually takes exactly like a latte.

If you can only find a straight coffee yogurt, not coffee and cream, that’s fine.

And if you can only find a coffee-flavored regular yogurt, not a coffee-flavored Greek coffee yogurt, that’s fine. Regular or Greek yogurts both work. And I’ve done this with low-calorie yogurts, and those work in the recipe as well.

If you can’t find a coffee-flavored yogurt, you can substitute something else, but you won’t have as much coffee flavor in them as you would with a coffee-flavored yogurt.

If you’re substituting flavors, I would recommend something mild, like a plain yogurt or a Vanilla yogurt, one that doesn’t add too much flavor and meshes with the coffee flavor. We make Lemon Muffins using a lemon yogurt. Lemon yogurt works perfectly in that recipe, but it wouldn’t in this Coffee And Chocolate Cupcakes recipe.

What kind of coffee makes the best Coffee And Chocolate Cupcakes?

I really like coffee and I really like the flavor of coffee. So for me, the stronger the coffee, the better. And these Coffee And Chocolate Cupcakes agree.

We have a “strong” button on our coffee maker, which brews a stronger cup of coffee. That button actually does make a different, although I have no idea how.

There are some brands of coffee that are so weak, even with that “strong” button. And a weak coffee wouldn’t add too much coffee flavor to these, and that’s the whole point of using the coffee.

So.

The easier answer is you can use any coffee.

The better answer is that a dark or French roast coffee will work better than a breakfast blend or a light roast. An espresso blend would work really well too.

And ground coffee versus whole bean doesn’t make a difference. You need a brewed cup of coffee, not grounds or beans, so don’t worry about that.

Can you make these full-size cupcakes?

I made these as mini cupcakes for this recipe because I just think they’re cuter that way. That’s also how I prefer to make them because one bite of dessert is honestly perfect.

I love dessert, and I always want dessert, but one bite satisfies that craving for me. So if I have mini cupcakes, I’ll eat just one bite and be good. If I have full-size cupcakes, I’ll eat the whole thing.

But these absolutely work as full-size cupcakes. You’ll only get about a dozen full-size cupcakes out of this as opposed to four dozen mini cupcakes.

Want more desserts using coffee?

• Coffee Cake with Hazelnut Glaze
• Tiramisu
• Affogato
• Cold Brew Coffee Pie
• Espresso Brownies