Tag: cupcakes

Recipe: Chocolate and Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I brought some cupcakes in to work last week and I thought I’d share the recipe here. Thinking over what I should bring, I was looking for something more substantial than a cookie, but still hand-held (for the sake of easier office eating). I soon narrowed it down to cupcakes and I looked through the cupcakes section of AllRecipes to see if anything caught my eye — and the Chocolate & Cream Cheese cupcakes sounded pretty good.

So, I bought some cream cheese and cocoa over the weekend and made the cupcakes later that week. I made them with Splenda and I’m pleased with how they turned out. And, other than the flour and chocolate chips, the cupcakes were relatively low carb (well, by cupcake standards, anyway). There’s also a photo of the cupcakes at the RD2 blog. Anyhow, on to the recipe:

Black Bottom Cupcakes I

Prep Time: approx. 30 Minutes
Cook Time: approx. 30 Minutes
Ready in: approx. 1 Hour
Makes 2 dozen cupcakes (24 servings)

Ingredients:
  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup white sugar
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips [regular-sized chips worked fine for me]
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup white sugar [or Splenda]
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder [I upped this to a heaping 1/3 cup, as recommended in the reviews]
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup water [I used a cup of milk instead, as recommended in the reviews]
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C). Line muffin tins with paper cups or lightly spray with non-stick cooking spray. [I both lined and sprayed, just to be sure.]

  2. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese, egg, 1/3 cup sugar and 1/8 teaspoon salt until light and fluffy. Stir in the chocolate chips and set aside.

  3. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, 1 cup sugar, cocoa, baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Make a well in the center and add the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla. Stir together until well blended. Fill muffin tins 1/3 full with the batter and top with a dollop of the cream cheese mixture.

  4. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes [I only baked mine for about 20 minutes, as recommended in the reviews].

The only change I might make would be to make extra cream cheese topping next time, as I almost didn't have enough for all of the cupcakes. But, other than that, I think I’d make these again sometime.

Roger’s Birthday at Texas Roadhouse

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

We celebrated Roger’s birthday at Texas Roadhouse last night. Interestingly enough, the chain is actually based in Indiana and only came to Texas relatively recently.

Since they have their menu right on their site, I checked that out beforehand. Before looking, I already had a fillet in mind, and they had two to offer (6 oz & 8 oz). At first, I wasn’t sure whether I should go for the 6 or 8 oz, but I quickly realized that it’s not every day that I have fillet (8 oz it is!).

And that wasn’t the only decision. Each entree also comes with two sides (cup of chili, baked potato, sweet potato, steak fries, green beans&hellip). So, I had more decisions. But, I quickly narrowed that down since they included house and cesar salads among their sides. And, since I wanted a salad anyway, I could just include my salad as a side and not have to order it separately.

I could have ordered a baked potato as my other side (you can’t go wrong there), but I figured that I’d have plenty of carbs from various birthday goodies. So, I just selected the vegetables as my other side.

The food arrived relatively quickly and it looked great. I wasn’t sure what to expect of the vegetables, but the vegetable side had broccoli, cauliflower and carrots (a reasonable combination). Before tasting anything else, I cut right into the fillet to check its done-ness — it seems that some steakhouses don’t account for meat’s tendancy to continue cooking after it’s removed from heat. But, it was pleasantly pink — a perfect “medium”.

The meat looked good, but how did it taste? Fantastic. It was warm and very tender — I really cherished each bite. Maybe it wasn’t the best fillet I’ve ever had, but I’d be hard-pressed to come up with which ones were better.

For birthday merriment, Leia and Ru made some double-chocolate cupcakes earlier in the day. As I understand it, Ru helped mix the batter while Leia baked and iced the cupcakes. They brought them along to Texas Roadhouse for dessert.

As cupcakes go, these were possibly thesecond best from-a-mix cupcakes that I’ve had. I’m also a chocolate fiend and the double-chocolate nature was an added bonus. Leia even adorned them with sprinkles/jimmes.

As it turns out, these cupcakes featured the dot-type sprinkes. The dot-type sprinkle adds a pleasant color to the cupcakes but they can be rather crunchy — somewhat like adding sugar-flavored sand to a cupcake. Don’t get me wrong — I like dot-type sprinkles as much as the next guy — but perhaps the cylindar-type (softer) sprinkles could have been even better.

I’m not one to turn down a steakhouse, but I was a bit skeptical about Texas Roadhouse. After all, could a good steakhouse really come out of Indiana? In the end, it worked out great and I’d go back to Texas Roadhouse anytime.

Mmm, Delicious Evil

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

Pillsbury may be evil, but they make some tasty cupcakes. I’m alluding to the cupcakes at Thomas’ party, of course. (I boycott Pillsbury and its parent-company General Mills due to their heavy-handed legal department.)

I don’t hold it against him for buying Pillsbury cupcake mix since he probably wasn’t aware of their past history. Nonetheless, the yellow-cake cupcakes had a fluffy denseness. The texture was almost like a pound cake, but not quite that dense. And, they had a pleasant degree of sweetness though not overwhelmingly so.

Still, I find it amusing that supermarkets tend to feature only three brands among cake mixes (in addition to the store’s house brand). Generally, there’s Betty Crocker and Pillsbury, but those are both the same company (General Mills). The third brand is often Duncan Hines (which is evil-free, as far as I can tell).