Devils Food Cake Cupcakes

Today I experimented with Martha Stewart recipes.  It was fun, but as usual with Martha's recipes it was time consuming and messy.  One batch of cupcakes and I had 3 dirty bowls and a saucepan, and that was just from the batter.  The frosting is a whole other mess of a story.  :)  The recipe is straight from her Cupcakes book.  It is very chocolatey, not too sweet, and produces a somewhat dense cupcake.  I got 3 dozen from the batch, which was more than I bargained for.  For the frosting I decided to try two.  I was in the mood for some cream cheese frosting, and had just enough cream cheese on hand.  I halved the recipe from Martha's book.  Its just a basic cream cheese frosting, nothing you can really mess up or be surprised about.  The other frosting I made the dark chocolate frosting.  It was a trickier recipe with lots of chocolate!  The consistency was a bit too soft for me, so I added more powdered sugar.  This frosting is very rich, and not really sweet since it calls for cocoa powder and non sweetened melted chocolate.  I like it though.  So overall it was a successful baking trial!

I'm trying new decorating ideas.  This is white chocolate piped onto parchment paper and sprinkled with some sanding sugar.  Once it hardens, it's easy to lift and place on top of the cupcake. 

Sprinkle variety. 

YUM!