Eat your heart out: Chocolate cream cheese cupcakes

I remember coming home from elementary school and every so often finding baked goods waiting for me in the refrigerator. This phenomenon always took place on Fridays, when my folks were able to leave work early. It made for a great start to the weekend, especially in the days before homework and job apps.

One of the staples of this family ritual was chocolate cupcakes filled with a sweet cream cheese frosting. I have found that, by recreating these treats in my dorm, I am able to briefly leave the grind that seems to encapsulate life at Tufts and enter into a kind of leisure that seems to be reserved for the days of childhood. I hope that by following this recipe, or a recipe that originates from your family, you too may be able to breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy a simple pleasure that we all truly deserve from time to time.

For these cupcakes, you’ll want to mix together 1 cup of sugar, 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/4 cup of unsweetened baking cocoa. My family’s recipe calls for a sifter to be used in the mixing process, but I have found that a lot of older recipes assume that the baker has cooking tools that simply aren’t viable to own when space is so limited in a dorm. You’ll be fine just using a fork or whisk.

Next, you will want to add the wet ingredients: 1 tablespoon of white vinegar, 1/3 cup of vegetable oil, 1 cup of water and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Order doesn’t matter here. Just add everything into your bowl of dry ingredients and mix them together with the same utensil you used previously. Voila! You have just made the batter for the cupcakes!

For the cream cheese filling, all you need to do is mix together an 8-ounce package of cream cheese, 1 egg and 1/3 cup of sugar. I find that mixing a block of cheese to a smooth consistency can be difficult without an egg beater. All I can recommend is that you allow the cheese to sit at room temperature for about 15 minutes, which will allow it to soften up a bit. Once the filling is relatively smooth, add in about half a bag of chocolate chips (or honestly as many as you want). Mix them in, and your filling will be complete!

To bake these cupcakes, you’re going to want to fill your cupcake tin halfway full with batter. (Don’t forget to line the tin with cupcake papers!) Then, spoon a healthy glob of filling into each cake. There should be a few millimeters of tin left to make sure the cakes don’t overflow. Now just bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes and you’ll be good to go! Happy baking!