Pretty nice-looking cupcake, isn’t it? Beautifully domed, perfectly sized for the muffin tin cup. And the inside was moist and delicious, in spite of the fact that I overbaked it a bit. (Note to self: Be sure to use the oven timer that measures minutes and seconds, not hours and minutes, when baking something that requires minutes. If I hadn’t realized at about the 20-minute mark that I’d set the wrong timer, the above would be a picture of a lump of chocolate coal. As it was, they probably baked about five minutes more than necessary.) I did frost these with an unbelievably delicious chocolate buttercream, but I’ll be discussing that recipe in a later post.
Below are are two comparison shots of the cupcakes this week and the ones last week.
I originally made a version of this recipe from my beloved 
I’m not indulging in many desserts these days, but this one isn’t all that sugar-heavy, clocking in at 1 cup of sugar for the entire recipe. That’s 2 tablespoons of sugar per serving if you cut the pie into 8 slices, or 24 grams total. The goal is to keep daily added sugar consumption below 25 grams, or 100 calories. So you could have a regular-size slice and not go over your allowance for the day, as long as that’s all the added sugar you eat! Ice cream or sweetened whipped cream would be out as toppings, but unsweetened cream, whipped or unwhipped, would be fine.
Brownies, or some kind of simple bar cookie, are a great asset to have in your recipe box. You can pull them out, whip them up, and get them to the potluck or party in reasonably short order. You probably have a simple chocolate brownie recipe that you use; these two are a little off the beaten track. I’ve always had good success with them.
These are always a great hit when I serve them at parties, as they’re rich and crumbly like shortbread cookies but they aren’t sweet, so they’re nice for people who don’t like sweets or are staying away from them, but they’re still, well, cookies. And there are rarely more than a few left at the end of the evening. They’re no more labor-intensive than regular cookies, especially if you do what I tell you and roll them into balls instead of rolling them out.
Here’s a shot of one of the chocolate lava cakes I made for my brother-in-law’s birthday party. I think the last time I made these was for the same occasion, two years ago. Gideon has said periodically since then that I should make them again, and my answer has always been, “I’ll make them for Ed’s birthday.” So here they are. I made some changes from the recipe I found online, and this is now a pretty standard recipe anyway. I did find it interesting that, as for a number of recipes, the innovation came about because of a mistake. Its originator, chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, apparently pulled a chocolate cake out of the oven too soon and realized that its underbaked warm center was actually an asset. Then he must have developed the individual cakes that are usual today. A full-sized version would be very messy to serve.
You know what they say: The reward for working hard is to be asked to do more work. In this case, though, the work was a pleasure and being asked to do it was a great compliment. A couple from the Chorale, Barb and John Wollan, asked me if I would be willing to do the reception for the small (ha!) recital that they were planning to give. They’d pay me. Oh no, I said. Being paid makes things very complicated. I’m happy to do it. So above you can see the results. I had been assured that the number attending would be 100 at the very most. Well, there were at least 150, so I’m afraid that I spent much of the performance worrying that there wouldn’t be enough food. It ended up fine, though. We even ended up with a whole gallon of leftover cider.