Chocolate cupcakes with coffee buttercream icing

I've never really gotten into the cupcake craze; I've always preferred to bake cakes or pies, but yesterday I gave a go at it. 

We had a 50th birthday celebration at work today for one of our nurses & I was assigned dessert. Since my coworker loves coffee, I decided to incorporate that into the cupcakes. 
Since I don't like chocolate or coffee, I had no clue if these tasted good. I called in my trusty quality control and he confirmed that they were in fact edible and, moreover, "delicious!"

So y'all should give cupcakes a chance too. Its my personal opinion that cupcake bakeries are a fad, just like the fro-yo places, but hey, they taste pretty good so I'll won't object too much.

Chocolate cupcakes (adapted from joyofbaking.com)

1/2 c. cocoa powder
1 c. boiling water
1 1/3 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 stick unsalted butter
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Once the water comes to a boil, mix the water and the cocoa powder stirring until dissolved. Set aside. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking soda and salt. Cream together the butter and sugar in your mixer making sure that it becomes fluffy. Then, add the eggs one at a time. Once those have been incorporated, add the vanilla extract. Mix in the dry ingredients until blended. Finally, stir in (by hand) the cocoa concoction, which has hopefully cooled by now. Pour into 16 lined muffin tins filling them about halfway or so. Bake at 375 for 16-20 min. I always set my timer for well below and then continue to check it so that they do not over brown. 

Once the cupcakes have come out of the oven, set to the side and let them cool.

Coffee Buttercream Icing
1/2 c. butter, room temp
1 1/2 c. confectioners sugar (powder sugar), sifted
1-2 T. coffee (ground very finely) or just instant coffee
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Cream the butter and sugar together. Adding the coffee, followed by the vanilla extract. Taste to make sure its not too strong of a coffee flavor. I used more like 2 T. of coffee but no one thought it was too strong and it pairs nicely with the chocolate.

** Joyofbaking.com had suggested using dutch cocoa, but I adapted the recipe to use just regular cocoa. Her recipe called for 1/2 c. dutch cocoa and 2 tsp. baking powder. I did some research and when you want to swap these two, you have to change around baking powder with baking soda. Use the same amount of cocoa, but if using regular cocoa use baking soda and only half the amount, therefore 1 tsp.

*Photo cred: my incredibly talented husband