Darn Good Chocolate Cupcakes

Mmmmm, darn good chocolate cupcakes. They're so darn good! This recipe is from one of my new favorite cookbooks - The Cake Mix Doctor by Anne Byrn (see picture). I made the darn good chocolate cake a couple months ago for a coworker's birthday, and it was such a hit that I thought I'd make it again for another coworker's birthday! I made fun cupcakes this time though. :)

The recipe and some pictures follow... I modified the recipe just slightly this time and I've noted the changes I made below. What I love about the

is cake is how moist it is! It's not dry in the least. It goes great with any frosting too. The first time I baked it I made homemade penuche frosting for it, but I must admit that I cheated this time! I used good ol' Pillsbury vanilla frosting. I was short on time, what can I say? ;-) Every good baker needs her shortcuts! Oh, and beware, this is not a Cooking Light recipe...

Recipe from The Cake Mix Doctor for Darn Good Chocolate Cake:

-Cooking spray for the pan

-Flour for dusting the pan

-1 package (18.25 oz.) plain devil's food or dark chocolate fudge cake mix

-1 package (3.9 oz.) chocolate instant pudding mix

-4 large eggs

-1 cup sour cream

-1/2 cup warm water

-1/2 cup vegetable oil

-1 and 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

I'll quickly mention my variations in ingredients this time around... I did not have chocolate pudding mix on hand so I used vanilla (no difference in taste that I could tell from when I made it last time with the chocolate pudding). I also substituted Dannon Light n' Fit vanilla yogurt for the sour cream. Oh, and this time I added butterscotch and milk chocolate chips instead of all semisweet!

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly mist a 12-cup Bundt pan (or line muffin pan with 24 cupcake liners) with cooking spray and dust with flour. Shake out excess flour from the pan.

Place the cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, sour cream, warm water, and oil in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape the

sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 to 3 minutes more, scraping the sides of the bowl again if needed. The batter should look thick and well combined (like the picture to the right here). Fold in the chocolate chips, making sure they are well distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan evenly (or in cupcake liners), and place in oven. Bake the cake until it springs back when lightly pressed with your fingers and it just starts to pull away from the sides of the pan; this should be about 45-50 minutes of baking time for the cake and 20-22 minutes for the cupcakes.

Remove cake from the oven and place on wire rack to cool for 20 minutes. Then invert it onto the rack to cool completely. Store this cake, covered, for up to 1 week at room temperature.

I had some fun decorating the cupcakes with different candies, as you can see!

This picture is my favorite. Mmmmm, looks like a darn good chocolate cupcake to me! :)