I made cupcakes last night and they were FABULOUS! I got the recipe from Annie's Eats. It's her standard chocolate cupcake recipe. Any recipe she makes that calls for chocolate cupcakes always starts with these (most recently the turtle cupcakes from a couple of weeks ago which I can't wait to try) but this is my first try at making them.
I used the chocolate frosting recipe from my mom's family cook book. I think they turned out perfect!
I took them to my in-laws' house for dessert. Aaron even got us some ice cream to go with them.
Dinner tonight was chicken, bacon, and ranch macaroni and cheese with garlic toast. Ya know how I keep saying Aaron has a thing about having macaroni and cheese with every meal? Well his dad insists on having bread with every meal. It doesn't matter if you give him plain old sandwich bread as long as you give him bread he's happy. Apparently when he was younger his mom served biscuits with every meal.
So my nap time adventure started with a trip to the grocery store to catch the sales before they change on Sunday. Then when I got home I put the groceries away and started on dinner. I sometimes put dinner together in advance so I can just throw it in the oven once we get to Aaron's parents' house. I cooked the chicken and the pasta, made the sauce, put everything in the pan and covered it with crumbled bacon and shredded cheese.
This is the finished product. I forgot to get a picture of it before I melted the cheese on top but you get the idea.
Then I made the chocolate frosting for the cupcakes. This frosting recipe is amazingly easy. I've made it twice in the last two weeks. I don't know where my mom got it, but a few years back she was teaching some sort of computer class (she teaches high school business) and at the end of the semester she had all of her students each bring in a recipe from home. They each printed out a copy for every student and they all put together a cook book. I got to look at a few of the books they made and they were pretty cool.
Anyway, since they had to make the cook books my mom went ahead and made a sample one with recipes from our family recipe box. Some are my Nana's or her sisters' recipes, some my mom made up or found in other cook books. For Christmas that year she handed out her homemade cook book to everyone. Every so often she updates it with new recipes she's created or ones that I share with her and she emails me the PDF of the book which I download to iBooks on my iPod. It's handy for times when I'm at the grocery store and can't remember what goes in her spaghetti sauce or when I go to my in-laws and they spontaneously ask me if I have a potato soup recipe.
Last Friday I was all upset because I had made this cake and no one was going to eat it because I didn't have any frosting for it and I was wanting to make this chocolate cream cheese frosting I had seen online but I didn't have any cream cheese. Then I remembered seeing a couple of chocolate frosting recipes in my mom's cook book and I discovered that I had all of the necessary ingredients for one of the recipes! Mom's recipe saved the day because Aaron said he didn't much care for the cake but that he really loved this frosting.
Chocolate Frosting
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate
dash of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp milk
2 cups powdered sugar
Melt the chocolate and butter over a double boiler until smooth. In a medium bowl combine all other ingredients and whisk together. Add the chocolate mixture and mix until smooth. Let sit a few minutes to set up. Spread over cake or cupcakes and enjoy!
It is a very simple recipe. The frosting tastes better than canned frosting but is a similar texture and it makes about the same amount as one can of frosting. It easily frosted my entire bundt cake last week and this batch frosted about 20-24 cupcakes today.
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