I don’t care what time of year it is, I love drinking hot chocolate. Its seriously one of my favourite beverages. I even went and bought the sugar free version so I can drink it and not worry about the sugar, although… It just doesn’t takes the same, and since I fill it full of whipped cream anyways, I guess its not really doing me any good.

This morning, while drinking my mug ‘o’ hot cocoa and deciding what to do with my day, what to eat for breakfast and what to bake for today’s goodie.. I thought back to cleaning out the pantry cupboard, and resisted the urge to make a special trip to the grocery to buy things when I won’t really get the benefit of them, since I give my cupcakes away at the end of the day anyways..

Perhaps I used my beverage as inspiration, as today I made some cupcakes using the last of my chocolate nibs and bits of cocoa powder and chunks of chocolate. I also made use of the giant bottle of olive oil that I’ve been ignoring, and the bottle of imitation vanilla extract that I ended up with after my mom cleaneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comned her cupboards out about six months ago.

I also managed to rid myself of the half filled tins and tins of hot cocoa mix I’ve been hoarding since last Christmas. The stuff never goes bad, but I’m tired of having the same old stuff on my shelf. I’d rather have room for more specialty varieties.

With all of that in mind, I whipped up a fluffy chocolate vanilla olive oil cake with hot chocolate cream cheese icing. To say they taste amazing would be an understatement.

They also look good.

I actually ended up making entirely too many cupcakes. They’re small though, as I made them with my mini mini muffin tin…

A big ol swirl of icing ontop of a light and fluffy cake?
so delicious!

Closeup!

A perfect swirl..

Just look at that cake.. moist, and fluffy.

This is the cupcake pose.

See how tiny it is? Thats my hand! My thumb is at the bottom of the cake.
They’re cute and they’re the perfect size for a little bite of sweetness.

Sometimes foods I make remind me of things in my past. Sometimes its just one ingredient, or a utensil, or just a feeling I get when I’m making something.. Today, its about the beverage I drink when I’m thinking up my daily schedule.

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When I was a little kid and I stayed home from school.. My mom would make me hot chocolate.

A little metal kettle on the stovetop, a packet of swiss miss with those tiny dehydrated marshmallows. Sometimes there would be whipped cream, sometimes there would be cool whip. Sometimes there would be a giant marshmallow, or a few miniature marshmallows. Sometimes there would be nothing at all but the lukewarm cocoa, the perfect temperature every time.

Most times I stayed home from school, I really was sick. Knowing that I still needed to eat, my mom would make me little snack plates throughout the day. They always had random snacks from the cupboard and the fridge. Little bits of food that you normally wouldn’t think a sick person should eat, but tasted so good because there was just enough to get a taste, but not so much that you could hurt your stomach with it. I called it ‘tummy comfort food’. Things like buttered toast, or cinnamon toast, green grapes, carrot chips and onion dip, Maybe a tortilla and some sharp cheddar cheese, or an apple that she sliced in the ring slicer, and it came out in one big spiral, like a slinky. Sometimes she’d give me celery and peanut butter, or a handful of raisins with cinnamon  sugar sprinkled on top.
…And  together we’d drink hot cocoa and watch movies or daytime TV.

There was a long period of my life where sitting down and watching “the peoples court” made me feel at ease, and comfortable. That sort of free feeling when you know you’re somewhere safe, and although you’re not feeling well, you feel as though you could do anything, because you’re surrounded by comfort.

Comfortable blankets, comfortable couch, comfortable food, my mama close at hand. Always with a stuffed animal to protect me, and the softest of pillows behind me..

I remember other television shows that made me feel this comfort- The Price is Right, Little house on the prairie, Highway to heaven, 100,000 $ pyramid, and that one game show with the whammies. Oprah (big haired, overweight Oprah, with the scary eyeshadow and shows that were more like the stuff on Jerry Springer, and less like the stuff she has on now.), Phil Donahue, Sally Jessie Raphael, all of those talk shows played a big part of my sick day schedule. I knew my day of relaxation was coming to a close when the kid shows came back on television.

It just seemed like time moved so slowly when I was home from school. Like I could capture time and enjoy it more. I’d snuggle up to the giant couch that smelled like family (and it should smell like family, since my dad inherited it from his parents when they died and it had been around since the 50’s), wrap myself in a blanket that my mom made.  I was one of those kids that was sick pretty often, It wasn’t until highschool that I stayed home from school without being ill. My mom called those “self help days”.

The highschool years were tough. My little sisters were still new, and it took our whole family to raise them. My mom went through a really bad period of depression after they were born, and my dad was working so much trying to pay off the bills from the huge hospital stay.  Both my mom and my little sisters were in the hospital for over a month, and after my mom came home, I think it was another two months that my sisters were in the hospital.  My sisters were top priority, which was hard to come to terms with as “the baby” who had been “the baby” for 12 solid years. We made it through though.

I think my mom came up with ’self help days’ as a way for me to cope with all the hard stuff my family was going through.

Some times she’d let me go to school, and pick me up half an hour into my first class and take me to breakfast. Hotcakes and hot chocolate and McWillies, a little corner cafe that no longer exists. I loved those days. I miss those days.

And while its not the same, I feel a bit of a twinge of the past when I drink my morning hot chocolate, knowing I could curl up on the couch with a blanket and eat some buttered toast and watch the peoples court.

Usually I just stop with the Hot chocolate.. and I’ve got a special place in my heart for the people’s court.

…And buttered toast.

Without any further ado, The recipe for Chocolate vanilla olive oil cupcakes, and cream cheese hot cocoa icing.

Ingredients-

7 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 Tablespoons vanilla extract
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1 3/4 cups drinking chocolate (powder form, like Cadbury or Quik)
1/2 cup warm water
1/4 cup sugar when beating egg whites

Recipe-

In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks with the first measure of sugar until fluffy with a whisk. When the mixture starts to thicken, add a tablespoon of the warm water to make it fluffy again. While still whisking, pour in the olive oil slowly, beating continuously until combined.

Add the drinking chocolate and flour and then the rest of the water and the vanilla extract.
In a separate bowl, Whip the egg whites until thick, add the second measure of sugar and beat until it dissolves.

Pour the egg white mixture into the first mixture, and quickly and gently fold the egg whites into the mixture until combined.

Scoop the batter into prepared muffin tins and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Depending on the size of your tins and the amount of batter you pour in, you should have between 10 and 14 cupcakes.

As for the icing, you’ll be making a standard cream cheese icing, only adding in a bunch of hot cocoa powder towards the end. This icing is VERY thick, and suitable for icing sweet rolls as well (with just about as tasty of a result)

2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2-2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
(about) 1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup hot cocoa powder

In the bowl of a high powered stand mixer, beat the butter and cream cheese together. Once throughly blended, add the powdered sugar. At this stage you want to beat the mixture until it resembles a bunch of frozen peas in the bottom of the bowl. if they’re sticky, add more powdered sugar. If they’re a finer crumb than pea sized, thats fine. Once all of the powder has separated from the sides of the bowl (you may have to scrape the sides with a spatula) pour in the vanilla, and then slowly pour in the milk, stopping about half way to see if you need to add the rest. The mixture should come together, and after a few minutes of beating, become fluffy.

Just before you think its done, pour in the hot cocoa powder and beat the mixture about 30 seconds. Spoon into piping bags and apply to your cupcake!

Garnish however you like, I sprinkled some white sprinkles on top and stuck a piece of dark chocolate in the top, yankee doodle style.

So there you go, folks. You done pressured me into giving away one of my secret recipes. *smile*

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 1:56 am and is filed under May 2007, The Cupcakes!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.