TWD - CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES

COME JOIN THE HALLOWEEN PARTY! Costumes, Food, Fun, and Prizes!

It was an eeery Saturday night, with a slight chill in the air, and spirits were restless. So the DH and I dressed up in our costumes and had the local witch fly us over to the annual Halloween Party at our dance club. Let's hope that big bad wolf doesn't decide he is hungry. Well, I know him personally and he's not big or bad really, but he is usually hungry.

Guess what is hiding in Little Red Riding Hood's basket?

If you guessed Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes, you guessed correctly. I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone? I wanted to bake these cupcakes for TWD this week, and I needed to take food in my basket to the party - so that worked out perfectly for me! The only problem was since Lil Red Riding Hood only had twelve cupcakes, she had to be selective as to who would get to sample those tasty morsels and not seem to others like she was hoarding them for herself.

Thanks to all the TWD comments you left regarding the cupcakes. I took what you said, adjusted things, and my cupcakes turned out pretty perfect tasting. I substituted semi-sweet chips for the bittersweet and I added a dollop of sour cream to the batter to help make them moist.

I baked them for only 18 minutes. I was disappointed that they did not rise up to the top of my muffin cups. I'm thinking maybe I mistakenly bought huge mama baking cups and should have filled them with more batter. After they cooled, I piped in a little marshmallow creme. I made the ganache to put on top, but it barely covered the tops of them. Did I read that recipe wrong? I thought I would be creative and decorate them them with candy corn, etc., but wouldn't you know the local grocery store had sold out of regular candy corn. They only had caramel candy corn. VERY frustrating. I mean for gosh sakes it is Halloween week. Who doesn' t have a plentiful supply of candy corn. The caramel corn did taste good. I tried to make spider webs on top with orange icing, that didn't work. I scraped that off and and settled for some crude circles which were really just blobs of orange icing. I know what you are thinking. How could I take these wonderful, elegant cupcakes and turn them into simple cupcakes with orange globs on top that look like they were decorated by someone's three year old? Well rather than lie to you all and tell you I had a little helper, I'll just confess - I'm not a good cake decorator. You probably figured that out already from the pictures. But the good news is the cupcakes were outstanding! Thanks to Clara of I Heart Food4Thought for choosing these as our challenge for the week. Click on her link for the recipe.

Who doesn't love cupcakes. There is just something intrinsically different about these tiny little cake wonders. I feel young when I eat a cupcake. Maybe it is their smallness, but does size really matter? It is like having your own little dessert that is not big enough that you have to share. Have you ever noticed how you can offer one to the biggest man hunk you know and suddenly he turns into a little boy again? They make people smile and I like that.

A little cupcake history. Cupcakes first arrived on the scene in the late 18th century. The name likely came from the amount of ingredients used to create a cupcake–a cup each of flour, butter and sugar. Or, it could come from the fact that they were baked in teacups or cup-shaped moulds.

Can you imagine a CUP of butter? I dunno, sounds like Dorie had a hand in that original recipe. No offense Dorie, I actually love the butter in your recipes, but my waistline is showing it.

I'm having a Pay-It-Forward Give-A-Way as a special Halloween treat. It will be a giftcard. Do not forget to leave me a comment between today and Thursday. I'll be using a random number generator to decide the winner and I will post the winner's name on Friday, Halloween. I'll get your email address then and send you the prize. Sorry - I can only have one winner!

Here are a few of my friends/goblins that survived gobbling up my slightly ghoulish cupcakes at the party! And on a serious note, stay off those brooms, run from ghosts and goblins, eat, drink, be merry, and have a SAFE and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!