Easy Chocolate Cupcakes with White Icing

As if there wasn't enough sugar pulsing through my veins this Halloween week, I decided to make some festive cupcakes to pass out to friends that we were visiting on Halloween. When it comes to cupcakes, I always go straight to the Master... Ms. Martha Stewart.

I love to browse pictures and recipes on MarthaStewart.com. Most of the cupcakes actually look too pretty to eat, though I can only presume they are spectacularly delicious as well as adorable. While I wish I had a whole day to devote to the craft of cupcake baking and decoration, most times that is not the case...so I settled on her "Easy Chocolate Cupcakes with White Icing recipe".

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/chocolate-cupcakes

I baked the cupcake per the exact instructions, adding 1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips to the batter. (I was out of sour cream so I substituted buttermilk instead.) The recipe made exactly 12 cupcakes and they appeared done at 22 minutes.

After the cooled completely, I piped a generous mound of the simple white icing on each of them. (softened butter, powdered sugar, a splash of milk and a drizzle of vanilla extract.) I then decorated the top with some chocolate covered, candy coated sunflower seeds in Halloween colors. You can find these things in speciality and gift stores- I see them all the time these days.

The cupcakes looked simple yet festive. The flavors were delicious - rich and chocolatey- however the cake was much more dense than I was anticipating. Perhaps my buttermilk substitution was off in proportion, or maybe its time to replace my baking powder? I actually went back to read some reviews of the recipe online and it sounds like others had a dense result too. They were still tasty, almost a cross between a cake and brownie in texture. The icing (though it looked great piled high) was quite rich as well, I had to scoop some off the top while I was eating them.