American Dessert
CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES WITH CREAM-CHEESE FROSTING
INGREDIENTS
CUPCAKE
6 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons confectionary sugar
3 tablespoons granular sugar
2 eggs
3 tablespoons milk
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
FROSTING
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
6 ounces cream cheese
UTENSIL
cupcake pan
12 paper cups
electric beater or mixer
PREPARATION
Take butter out and let it soften. Beat eggs lightly. (They rarely ever beat you. They don’t even seem to try.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Put softened butter, eggs, confectionary sugar, and granular sugar in mixing bowl. Use beater set on mix until butter and sugars have blended. Add milk, chocolate chips, flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa. Use same setting on beater to blend all the ingredients.
Spoon an equal amount of the batter into each paper cup. Put the cups onto the cupcake pan. Put cupcake pan on center rack and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until toothpick stuck into cupcake comes out cleanly. Remove pan from oven and let cool for 15 minutes on wire rack.
Make frosting while cupcakes are cooling. Put white chocolate chips in small pot. Cook on low heat and stir constantly until all chips have melted. Remove from heat. Put cream cheese in mixing bowl. Add melted white chocolate chips. Blend with electric beater set to cream. (Some electric beaters have a “burst of power” button. It’s cool, like accelerating a FerrariTM. Well, maybe not. But a cool electric beater costs tens of thousands of dollars less.)
Spread an equal amount of the white frosting on top of cupcakes. Serve to joyous, clamoring guests.
TIDBITS
1) Chocolate comes from the Aztec word “xocolatl” meaning bitter water.
2) My spell checker does not recognize “xocolatl.” Perhaps this is fair as the Aztecs didn’t recognize what sugar could do for cocoa.
3) But the 15th century Spaniards did. So, the Spanish royalty sent conquistadors and chefs to the new land.
4) After a generation of bloody conquest of Mexico, the sugar isles of the Caribbean were safe for hot chocolate.
5) Lacking minimal amounts of No DozTM or even Red BullTM energy drinks, Napoleon carried chocolate with him on all his military campaigns.
6) Napoleon’s energized armies racked up victory after victory until his enemies starting carrying chocolate as well. Defeat for the French became certain when chocolate rich Switzerland defected from the Gallic side.
7) The world today remains in a state of precarious peace, based on equal access to chocolate for all nations.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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