Black bottom cupcakes!

I got this recipe a few years ago from my friend, Jenn. I begged her for it after she brought these over for a party one time. Over the years, I have played around allot with the recipe. Everything from simply putting food colouring into the cream cheese mixture to make black and orange cup cakes for Halloween, to changing the flavours from chocolate to something else.


I will share the original recipe for those who like to stick to the basics, as well as a few of my tried and tested variations that turned out super good!


Original recipe:

1 - 8 oz. package of creamcheese
1 egg, slightly beaten
⅓ c. sugar
1 - 6 oz. package of chocolate chips

Blend all ingredients together and set aside. 

1 cup sugar
1½ cups flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 tsp. salt
1 cup water
1 tbsp. vinegar
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°F. Blend all ingredients together. Fill lined muffin tins about ½ full of the cake batter. Drop large spoonfuls of the cream cheese mixture on top of the batter. Bake 20-25 minutes.

My variations:

First of all, I have all sorts of shapes and sizes of small cake tins. I have plain ones, I have mini ones, I have fairy cake tins, large and small, and I even have an odd tall and skinny shaped win from Ikea that I don't know what the style is called. Each different tin that I have used, it takes a different time to bake. It has taken as little as 15 minutes, but never longer than 25 minutes to bake. 

I also beat the crap out of the cream cheese mixture with an electric mixer until the volume of the mix pretty much doubles. I find it makes the cream cheese mixture go alot further without making it taste less. I prefer the cheesecake part of the cup cakes over the chocolate cake part, so if it seems like there's more of it, I think it tastes better.

When I make the chocolate cream cheese version, I always double the amount of cocoa powder in the cake mixture and I always use milk chocolate chips. In my opinion that tastes best, and it must, since they usually don't last long enough to even cool down when I make them.

The coconut variation that I make, I add the same amount of unsweetened coconut to the mixtures as would be for chocolate chips in the cream cheese and cocoa powder in the batter. I also add coconut extract instead of vanilla. 

The white chocolate raspberry ones I make, I put in ½ cup of unsweetened raspberry jam (usually the no sugar added Smuckers stuff), cherry extract instead of vanilla and a few drops of red food colouring in the batter. If I don't add the food colouring, the colour they turn out looks putrid. Tastes good, but looks awful. In the cream cheese mixture, I don't add the sugar or chocolate chips, but instead put ½ cup of white hot chocolate powder. The brand I use is from Second Cup. 

When I make them "backwards", I leave the cake mixture just as vanilla flavoured. I sometimes sneak some real vanilla bean in there, but only if I have it on hand. It's not dire and tastes fine without, just tastes better with. I put the ½ cup of cocoa I would normally put in the batter, into the cream cheese mixture and put white chocolate chips in, instead of milk chocolate chips. 

So there's my novel on one simple recipe, lol!