Nil, I've made these as cupcakes together with a friend and they turned out heavenly (Begga had some too) - as well as used the same recipe to make a small cake to take over to another friend's for dinner.
I think I linked it before, it is perhaps not so much "for dummies" but I think it's not so hard either:
Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cupcakes
When we made the cupcakes, we also used the recipe on that link to make the peanut-butter frosting as well, I think you've said that your lil princess likes peanut-butter? Perhaps it will be a hit.
When I brought it for a dinner, I made a simple chocolate butter cream frosting, but added rum flavoring.
Rjkeller:
First, the thing to know is that in German / Swiss German "aroma" means both taste and smell soooo... (this is a thing of amusement for me sometimes when my hubby says my shampoo "tastes" - instead of smells - good )
Vanilla can be had a few different ways here, the closest to vanilla extract like I'm used to comes as a liquid in some packets (like you may find single-serve mayo for example) from Dr. Otker and is "bourbon vanille".
You can also find vials of vanilla flavoring too though, usually butter vanilla, which can be very buttery flavored - I use them both, each depending upon what I'm intending to make and how much the butter flavor will go or not.
There also are sachets of vanilla flavored sugar - I'm a lot less conversant with it's use as many of the recipes I use are American recipes which call for vanilla extract. (Hopefully some of the folks with more experience with Swiss baking supplies will have pointers for swapping out the vanilla sugar vs liquid extract / flavorings).
Of course, in addition to those, it is possible to get vanilla beans (much more easily and inexpensively than I recall getting them in the US) or little "pots" that contain the scrapings from inside the bean.