I'm BACK!

Great news: I am no longer on death's door, and that means that I finally can get myself back in the kitchen!  It has been a long, horrible, salmonella- and parasite-infested two weeks, but I'm back!  As soon as I was eating again, I went right back to my long lost Kitchenaid Mixer!

Yesterday I made red, white, and blueberry cheesecake cupcakes.  I was in the mood for baking a dessert, and since it is Memorial Day weekend, I thought these were perfect.  Even better, they are actually low fat, from the Skinytaste blog (definitely one to check out if you want delicious but low-fat food!)  You use low fat cream cheese and Greek yogurt, and only 1/4 cup of sugar.  The bottoms are vanilla wafers.  They are really easy to whip together too.  The only problem was that they are supposed to be mini cupcakes, but I didn't have any mini cupcake wrappers, so I ended up making only 9 regular-sized cheesecake muffins.  I love them.  They are not super sweet, and the fresh strawberries and blueberries on top are so pretty and patriotic!  I definitly recommend these little guys.

Today is Alex's graduation party, and Rachael asked me to make something sweet to bring.  I looked through my dad's old recipe files, and found the recipe for Betsy's black bottom cupcakes.  These are famous in my family, and they were handwritten both by my mom (the directions) and my dad (the ingredients), so I thought that  was cool.  They were fairly easy to make, although you have to make the black bottom cake batter, and the cream cheese topping.  I added the nuts and sugar to some of them to make Mom happy.  The recipe is a little weird (it has things like vinegar in it!). 

They just came out of the oven, and it seems like something has gone a bit wrong.  I am not sure what, but the tops of the muffins taste chemically somewhow.  And it's only the very tops!  No idea that this means.  I am perhaps a bit rusty in the kitchen :(  Hmph.


Recipes:
red, white and blueberry cheesecake yogurt cupcakes


Black Bottom Cupcakes

Ingredients:
6 ounces cream cheese
1  1/3 cup cugar, separated
1 egg
1 cup chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoo salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup oil
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Optional nut topping:
2 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup nuts

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line 18 muffin tins.

2.  In a small bowl, mix the cream cheese, 1/3 cup sugar, and egg.  Mix well.  Stir in chocolate chips and set aside.

3.  In a large bowl, mix flour,  remaining 1 cup sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.  Add water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla.  Beat 2 minutes on medium speed.

4.  Fill cupcake tins with black mixture 1/2 full. 

5.  Top with 1 tablespoon cream cheese mixture. 

6.  Mix sugar and nuts and sprinkle evenly on each cake.

7.  Cook 20-30 minutes.