The Trouble With Cupcakes. . .

1. They're too easy to make. You whip up a few ingredients, scoop it into muffin cups, and 15-17 minutes later you have a perfectly yummy mini sized cake. Even worse, it hardly leaves a mess. Disposable muffin cups keep the pans clean, and you don't need a plate to eat them.

2. They're a quick fix for a sweet tooth. This kind of goes along with number one. From the time you decide that you want something sweet to eat, you could be chowing down on a cupcake in 30-45 minutes. Much less time than practically any other kind of dessert (except maybe cookies) and certainly a lot less time than it takes to pack two kids up to go to the store :-)

3. They're always delicious. When have you ever seen or eaten a cupcake that you didn't like?

4. They're just the perfect size. . . for making (see 1 above), eating, and giving away! No cutting required, and no plate. Grab a cupcake and a napkin and you're set. And they're perfect for little kid fingers.

And for those reasons above, I think I am well on my way to becoming

"crazy cupcake lady"! I may never make another regular cake again. Just cupcakes from here on out! And today's special is double chocolate malt shop cupcakes with cherry vanilla buttercream frosting! This recipe was pretty good, but I felt it needed a couple of modifications. First off, I am not a fan of dark chocolate, and without an additional 1/3 c. of sugar, this cupcake tasted like bitter dark chocolate, blech! Then I didn't have any malted milk powder. Do you anyone who has malted milk powder nowadays? However, I did have some Ovaltine chocolate malt powder (which may be just as strange, but I grew up on the stuff, and love it!) and so I used that instead. Then when I was ready to pour the batter into the cups, I felt like the batter was waaaay to runny. So I added a 1/4 c. of flour to make it a little thicker. And finally I didn't add any chocolate chips because I have this weird thing about have chips in my cake. It requires too much chewing and messes up the consistency. Totally a personal weird thing though. But they came out of the oven looking perfectly chocolatey and delicious. I topped them off with the cherry vanilla frosting, and I think I could've eaten the whole batch,which was a lot. It made 24 regular sized cupcakes! Half of them have since found there way to other homes, which is much better for my waistline :-) As long as I don't make anymore cupcakes for the rest of the week, I think I'll be safe from being "crazy cupcake lady", right?