Chocolate & PB Cupcakes

I will start this particular post by noting that I am not of those cakers who vehemently abhor box cake mixes. While it is true that I would much rather bake a cake from scratch, I have no problem with a box cake mix.

And I did have a box cake mix sitting in the cabinet, due to expire on December 8. I couldn’t think what to do with it, so I decided I’d bake cupcakes with it, frost six of them and freeze the rest for when I need a quick cupcake fix. Let me tell you that I needed a quick cupcake fix on Saturday, the day I baked these cupcakes. I caught the cold that my daughter, son and and husband had last week and I could barely manage to eat anything; the only thing that sounded good was a cupcake.

So, I quickly mixed and baked two dozen chocolate fudge cupcakes. On top of the six cupcakes I planned to eat, I evenly placed about 10 semisweet chocolate chips the very second I took the cupcakes out of the oven. After a minute or so, the chips were melted and I took a knife to spread them into a thin layer on top of the cupcake.

After the cupcakes were cooled, I froze the leftovers and frosted my six with my favorite peanut butter frosting, which can be found in this post (except I made a little creamier with a little more milk). Then I melted a small palmful of the semisweet chocolate chips, spooned the melted chocolate into a ziploc bag, cut off the corner of the bottom of the bag, leaving a very small opening, and piped a swirly chocolate circle on top of the six cupcakes.

As a note, of course you can make any type of chocolate cupcakes for these, it doesn’t have to be a box cake mix. The melted chocolate chip layer gives a nice sublte crunch to the cupcake, which I liked. I used Ghirardelli chocolate chips – I think that they are softer than the average chocolate chip. Another brand might give a harder crunch to these cupcakes.