Go to chocolate cupcakes

If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would become a person who makes chocolate cupcakes at least once a month I would have called them a liar -- totally failing to predict any of it, the rise of cupcakes as a food trend, Will, Liam, the whole thing.  And, so, here I am, a chocolate cupcake maker.

There's a story, no doubt apocryphal, about our Governor from back when she was still the Attorney General, or maybe before that.  How she would call people up at 10:00 at night to discuss this or that about whatever issue, or make sure they were going to actually wear a tie to the meetings the next day (I've heard it both ways), and all the while she was making cupcakes for something or other for her daughter.  This is not an invitation to associate, I'm not nearly as smart, and certainly not as driven or ambitious as our Governor.  I guess though the Governor and I do have that in common: we both work, we both raise a family, we both make cupcakes.  It's some kind of solidarity.

At any rate, this batch of cupcakes was made on Saturday, no late night required.  I made them while Liam was at Sand in the City with my parents; Liam and I frosted them together in the afternoon.  They were in honor of a visit from Will's sister and her family.  Liam's cousin is about 2 and I have yet to meet anyone in the 1 to 4 year old set who doesn't think a cupcake is about the world's most perfect food.

We use, exclusively, the Martha Stewart "one bowl chocolate cupcakes" and they are just great.  Not too sweet or chocolate-y, they come out right every time, you can half the recipe no problem, and they really do take only one bowl.  We make them mini-sized (half a recipe makes about 30 mini cupcakes, which is plenty) and frost them with butter cream frosting, generally in all different colors.  I credit the fact that Liam can pretty reliably predict that yellow and red make orange entirely to cupcake frosting.  Although, when I made them for Liam's school-birthday-party in June I frosted them all with white and colored sprinkles to prevent a riot over who got the last one frosted in blue or orange or whatever.

More later this week including an update, with photos, on the great house painting extravaganza of 2010.