Cupcakes and birthdays

Last week we celebrated two birthdays in our home.  To make it especially fun we experimented with a few cupcake recipes that I got from a recent Enrichment Meeting.  

Here it is, a recipe that Paul calls "guilt inducing", William said was too sweet, James couldn't even finish one, but Peter, Maryanna, and Clara said was "yummy".  For me, I just don't really like sweets like I do fried salty food but I did enjoy a few small bites.  One warning though - have a glass of milk nearby because they are densely rich.  We also pushed down a marshmallow in a few of them as a sweet surprise for the kids but that only got mixed reviews.  

The Best Chocolate Cupcakes (originally from 125 Best Cupcake Recipes)- makes 1 dozen

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Combine dry ingredients.  Beat together sugar, oil, egg and vanilla.  Whisk in buttermilk and flour, beating until smooth.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Scoop into paper cups and bake at 350 for 22-27 min. or until tops of cupcakes spring back lightly when touched.  Let cool for 10 minutes and frost with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (The Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook)

1 cup butter, softened

1 TBS plus 1 tsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

6 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Blend until spreading consistency

A few more tips:

- remember neighbors tend to be overly generous when lending out needed ingredients - always remeasure.  We ran out of flour (I still have 100+ lbs. of bread flour - I was just short on all purpose) on our first batch but ending up adding too much because we made this mistake.  But thanks again Joy for the flour and Liz for the powdered sugar!

-don't forget the vanilla - it really does soften the flavor.  It was omitted from our first batch because of distraction.  Our 2 yr old birthday girl was caught running in the street during that step of the process.

-if the kids are to lick the bowls  - have them wear a full body smock or just strip them down and give it to them in the tub because that buttery chocolate frosting is messy and hard to get out of clothing.  That may apply also for the official cupcake eating time.