black bottom cupcakes

These cupcakes are amazing. Maybe a bit time consuming as there is some layering involved, but it's well worth it. They have a not-too-sweet chocolate bottom/base and a light cheesecake top with butter icing. YUM!

I made these cupcakes for the restaurant opening of one my mother's friends. It was the first time when I had to make a mass amount of cupcakes for strangers. People loved these cupcakes and one lovely lady asked for the recipe. She also jokingly asked me to cater for her next event - I was secretly really excited about this and for a second, thought about dropping out of Honours to follow in my father's footsteps... ANYWAY...

Black bottom cupcakes

Base

1 1/4 cups plain flour

3/4 cup castor sugar

1/3 cup cocoa

1/2 tsp bicarb

1/4 tsp salt

2/3 cup buttermilk

1/4 vege oil

60g butter, melted and cooled slightly

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup choc chips (optional)

Topping

200g cream cheese

1/4 cup Castor sugar

1 egg

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees C. Line cupcake tins

2. In a large bowl, mix sifted flour, sugar, cocoa, bicarb and salt

3. In a separate bowl, mix together buttermilk, oil, butter, egg and vanilla til well combined

4. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add buttermilk mixture. Stir to combine then mix in choc chips

5. To make topping, beat together cream cheese, sugar and egg.

6. Spoon batter into prepared tins then cover with cream cheese topping.

7. Bake up to 20 mins.

8. Meanwhile make butter icing. (n.b. I didn't include the ingredients/method for this because it varies every time I do it and depends on the weather/quality of butter/icing sugar...)

recipe altered from Baking Bible by Penguin Books

Tips:

*Instead of using buttermilk, you can get a cup of low fat milk and add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice. Let it sit until it curdles. Voila!

*In this recipe, there is a low ratio of cream cheese topping to the black bottom. I'd say its like 1:3 respectively. Increase the indicated portion in the recipe, if you like.

*The amount of icing I put on the cupcakes was a bit much... If you aren't horrified about how ugly the cupcakes turn out to be, don't bother with any icing (trust me, they are a bit lopsided when they come out of the oven because the black bottom bubbles through the cream cheese top)