Easter. Chocolate. Yum.

My girls were here for a couple of sleeps. It's so nice to spend time with Lucy, uninterrupted time to just stare at her! She is going to be 2 months old this Easter Sunday! Now she can do some tricks: smile, coo, and fluff like crazy! (Fluff is the preschool nice word we use for a bodily function that sneaks out sometimes!)

I have been on a chocolate binge this last week. The black bottom banana bars I made last weekend for the game, were gone so fast I made another batch. Then I made these wonderful chocolate cookies with half of a big marshmallow on top drizzled with fudge frosting! Oh MY! I don't know if I can share that recipe yet, because I got it from a preK mom. THEN today I made black bottom cupcakes, and yes they are tasty. I am planning to switch it up a little and make my dad a butterscotch pie for Easter. I have been given 3 different recipes, not sure how to pick the winner?!?

Here we go with the cupcake recipe.

BLACK BOTTOM CUPCAKES

First buy a packaged chocolate cake mix and make according to directions. I went with a dark chocolate version, but you pick what you like the most. Go ahead and fill cupcake liners with a scoop of the batter, they should be a little more than 1/2 full. I think I got about 27 out of my mix. Next you'll be making the filling.

1- 8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup chocolate chips
Mix all of these ingredients together and top each cupcake (not baked yet) with a teaspoon of the cream cheese batter. Now Bake it at 350* for about 20 min. or until it tests done.

Now comes the frosting. Hershey's has a great butter cream frosting recipe on the baking cocoa box. However, today I used this recipe.

Mocha Frosting
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup hot strong coffee (I add in some espresso powder too)

Beat butter in a large mixing bowl until smooth. Add pwd sugar and cocoa slowly, mix constantly alternately with vanilla and coffee. Use your discretion on the amount of liquid. Less or more to make it a good consistency for spreading.

The original frosting recipe was twice this amount, but there was so much left over! It's just enough to frost the cupcakes.