Cream Cheese Crater Cupcakes

Some days you wake up and think, I could really use some espresso. With sugar. And chocolate. And cocoa. And butter, more sugar on top and more butter. No? Is that just me? I guarantee if you eat one of these for breakfast you won't feel tired. At least until the sugar crash.

Regardless I have the solution.

I made these yesterday, they came out of a little booklet I got with a Canadian Living magazine. There was no image and no frosting/decorating involved in the recipe, so I made all that up myself.

This says it makes 12 cupcakes. I doubled it and got maybe 18, so I'm not too sure... maybe they made puny cupcakes. I do no such thing.

Cream Cheese Crater Cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes (apparently)

• 1/3 cup (75 mL) boiling water
• 1 tsp (5 mL) instant espresso powder
• 2 oz (60 g) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) buttermilk
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) unsalted butter, softened
• 2/3 cup (150 mL) granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp (2 mL) vanilla
• 1 cup (250 mL) all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cocoa
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• Pinch salt

Filling:

• 1/2 cup (125 mL) cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) granulated sugar
• 1/4 tsp (1 mL) vanilla

FILLING: In bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla; set aside.

In small bowl, whisk boiling water and espresso powder into chocolate until smooth. Let cool slightly. Stir in buttermilk.

In large bowl, beat butter until light and fluffy; gradually beat in sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla.

In separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt; beat into butter mixture alternately with chocolate mixture, making three additions of dry ingredients and 2 of chocolate.

Divide evenly among 12 paper-lined muffin cups. With a spoon, make indentation in center of each. Spoon about 1 tbsp (15 mL) filling into each.

Bake in 350*F (180*C) oven until tops are firm to the touch, about 20 minutes. Let cool.

Notes:

1. I thought I had chocolate, turns out my youngest ate it all (except what he dumped on the floor, joys of parenting and all). So I used cocoa, and I found this handy conversion on using cocoa for chocolate: Cocoa/Chocolate Conversion. In my recipe I used the formula for semi-sweet chocolate. Their steps yield 6 oz of chocolate equivalent. This recipe calls for 2, but I doubled it. So if you want to make this substitution, use 3 tbsp cocoa, 2 1/4 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp shortening (or butter) for each 2 oz.
2. I found my cupcakes a tad dry for my liking, not crumbling dry, but I would've liked a bit more moisture. I'm not sure if it's that I left them in a minute too long or because of my chocolate substitution, but I feel like if you use real chocolate you might get a moister cupcake.
3. This batter comes out sort of like store-bought whipped frosting in consistency. It's more elastic though. When I was making the indentations I found the way to do it was to first use the back of the spoon to smooth the batter out (it won't simply fall into place in the paper cup). Then tilt it up at about a 45 degree angle, still using the back of the spoon, twirl in a circle in the center of the cupcake. It'll push the batter out toward the edges and create a well. If I didn't smooth the batter out first this worked horribly.
4. Finally - after making these, I think that in the future I might actually put the filling right in the center. Fill the cups halfway, put a dollop of filling in the center, fill the rest of the way. I think it'd work much the same but leave the tops smoother, and the filling more central. Just my thought.

Once the cupcakes have cooled, I piped butter-cream on them and coated with chocolate crunch sprinkles. They're really good, these sprinkles, by Wilton. The butter-cream I made had rum extract in it rather than vanilla, and it was quite good. This is a very rich cupcake, lots of flavour, so I found the butter-cream lightened it up some.

Picture time!