Sweetly Done

Without the usual ham and honey mustard, this year Easter Sunday took on an entirely different form: eggplant lasagna, home-grown fava beans in olive oil and sea salt, and porcini-rosemary rubbed rib-eye steak. Not too shabby! Alas, I cannot take credit for these non-Easter delicacies, as I was merely one of the lucky guests at a lovely birthday party which happened to fall on Easter. However, I provided the birthday cupcakes, which were light and fluffy, and soft and gooey on the inside, due to a filling of melted chocolate and cream cheese. The cake itself is dark and tender, and I finished it all off with a nice cream cheese frosting and bittersweet chocolate shards. I love this cupcake recipe--it has never failed me--and though it's from the distinctly old-fashioned "Joy of Cooking" (only recently updated from its 1974 incarnation) I find it to be a totally modern, totally crowd-pleasing recipe. As I was baking these cupcakes for my dear (platonic) friend, I thought: "Wish I were baking these for J. Nich...or James Marsden...or even the Harvard Writer. Because they're so good, they're reason enough to fall in love with me!"

Black Bottom Cupcakes (from "The Joy of Cooking")

Preheat oven to 350. In medium bowl, beat until smooth:

8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup sugar

Add and beat until smooth:

1 large egg

Stir in:

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Whisk together thoroughly in a large bowl:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened nonalkalized cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Add:

1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla

Stir with a rubber spatula just until smooth. Fill the muffin cups about half full. Place a heaping tablespoon of cream cheese mixture in the center of each. Bake until a toothpick inserted into cakey part of cupcake comes out clean, 20-25 minutes. Remove from the pan and cool on a rack completely before frosting. (I like to make a cream cheese frosting, but a chocolate frosting would be yummy, as well.)

I always have about 1/2 cup of the cream cheese mixture left over...which could be used as a delicious filling for cheese puffs....

And there you go! A mighty impressive (but simple!) sweet treat.

Now, where's my sweet guy to go with them? Come sweetly to me!