Frosting |

Hey all!

Remember a few days ago when I posted that wonderful goat cheese pasta salad? Well, I made a promise to you guys that I would be posting the sweet yin to the savory yang of my goat cheese feast with Sohini and Kati.

This is me making good on that promise to ya’ll.

I present to you: Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes with Goat Cheese Frosting!

What? OMG? Is this real?

Yup, they happened.

I can’t take all the credit, cause that would be wrong. The recipe is one that I found on Saveur’s website, but Sohini and I tweaked the frosting a tad.

For the Cupcakes:

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

6 tbsp. cocoa powder

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup hot coffee

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup milk

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 large egg

You may notice, there is no butter in these cupcakes.

What?

No butter?

But, Kristina, you love butter!

Yea, I love butter, but hey, sometimes you can do without.

For the Frosting:

5 oz. cream cheese, softened

3 oz. goat cheese, softened

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Andddd, you can add a whole vanilla bean, halved lengthwise and scraped if you want, but Sohini’s vanilla bean happened to be really dry and it snapped in half while we were trying to scrape it, so we scraped the idea.

Let me tell ya, the frosting still tasted FANTASTIC.

What to do for the cupcakes:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Line cupcake trays

Whisk together all dry ingredients

Add in the coffee, oil and milk

After that is well incorporated, then you can add the vanilla extract and eggs

Bake cupcakes for 20-22 minutes

Let cool

What to do for the frosting:

Beat cream cheese and goat cheese together with an electric mixer, or a very strong arm, until light and fluffy

Add powdered sugar, 1/2 at a time

Once your cuppy cakes have cooled enough, slap that frosting on!

I didn’t have a pastry bag, so I just used a ziplock with the tip cut off

I think goat cheese frosting is my brand new favorite frosting. Its SOOOOOO much tastier than just cream cheese frosting. Don’t get me wrong, I love cream cheese frosting, but the goat cheese lightened up the frosting just enough to not be overwhelming or too sweet.

Yea, these cupcakes were devoured.

I love avoiding homework. Really, I do. Sure, once I hunker down and get into the groove of it, I’m cool. Until then, I’m like a child being put to bed early. I kick and scream and hold on to the door molding with my tiny fingers until one of my parents pries me off and stuffs me under my bed sheets.

Thank god I don’t live with my parents anymore, no supervision rocks. Until its 2 a.m. and I still have 6 hours of homework and only 3 1/2 hours of energy. Then I wish I had my mother breathing down my neck.

Last night was one of those nights. I spent the day procrastinating. Matt and I made the brunch of champions: thick cut bacon, fried eggs, and southwestern hash browns and a big cup o’ joe – all in my new cast iron skillets. Which are AMAZING. Then I looked up how to clean my cast iron, since as some of you may know, you can’t use soap. So I exfoliated my skillet with salt, put it back on the stove to dry, then conditioned it with a wee bit of vegetable oil to keep it lookin’ smooth. OH BABY!

After that, I bleached my sink, and used 409 to wipe down the counters. And the stove. And the kitchen walls.

Then I used some furniture stain to give my new wooden trunk a glossy finish. This took a while, cause the trunk is huge and I was using quite a bit of elbow grease.

I had just sat down to start my homework when I realized that I needed to start baking some ridiculously extravagant cupcakes for Julio and Sohini’s birthday party! Because after all, my reputation as my friend’s “go-to girl for ridiculously extravagant food” comes above all else. My Editing homework could wait.

See, Julio’s birthday is on Friday and Sohini’s is on Sunday, so we are having a “Hobo Party” on Saturday. You know, where we all dress up in our homeless best i.e. ripped tights, plaid shirts, Doc Martens, and fur caps and sit out on Sohini’s back porch around a fire pit eating hot wings and gumbo, amongst other tasty treats Matt and I will be whipping up.

I knew we had to end the night off well – with a food coma, justifying the fact that we are going to turn this shin dig into a massive sleepover (I already called dibs on the couch). Cause really who wants to move after 5 courses and copious amount of booze?

Thus my adventure to make Chocolate Cupcakes filled with Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough topped with Toasted Marshmallow Meringue Frosting began. Or, as I like to call them, Heart Transplant Cupcakes. A double entendre of sorts, because you take out the center “heart” of the chocolate cupcake and replace it with a new cookie dough “heart.” Also, because you will probably need a new heart yourself after too many of these.