Chocolate Black Bottoms

I love black bottom cupcakes! They are by far my favorite type of cupcake, I don’t eat them very often but for some reason I was just craving them this week.

The 4th of July started off so nice, I woke up before my son and husband, enjoyed a cup of coffee and played around on my favorite food sites and Pinterest in SILENCE! It was de-lite-ful! But then my son started to stir, I heard my husband on the phone (which is never a good sign at 7 am on your day off!) so I started thinking of what to do for breakfast. Well, my husband ended up leaving to go to work, because it was something only he could fix. And my son got a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. I wanted to go to the lake or trail or something as a family and now I was trying to think of other things that my son and I could do to waste time until my husband came home. It was hot! So we decided to make cupcakes, and since my son is a chocolate lover like his parents, I decided to give into my craving and make my favorite…Black Bottoms.  (We also made sidewalk paint, which was totally awesome, I will do another post on that another time.)

Now to back up. If you don’t know what a black bottom is, it is basically just a chocolate cupcake with a cream cheese and chocolate chip filling. I have heard them called other things, but they will always be black bottoms.

I knew I had most of the ingredients, but the only cream cheese I had on hand was the new Philadelphia Indulgence Milk Chocolate flavored cream cheese, and the only chocolate chips I had were the large dark chocolate morsels. So, I now have the Chocolate Black Bottom…and who doesn’t like more chocolate. Since we are a dark chocolate family, I would love to try the dark chocolate indulgence next time, because there will be a next time! 

Chocolate Black Bottoms
(adapted from The Capital Baker’s Chocolate Cream Cheese Surprise Cupcake)
makes about 30 regular size cupcakes

Ingredients

the filling:

8 oz. Philadelphia Indulgence Milk Chocolate Cream Cheese (or regular if you want the classic)

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/8 tsp. salt

1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips (I didn’t have mini on hand so I chopped up larger morsels, but would recommend the mini)

the cupcake:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups sugar

2/3 cup cocoa powder (I used Hersey’s Special Dark)

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 cups water

2/3 cups vegetable oil

2 Tbsp. white vinegar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin cups with paper liners.

Prepare the filling; beat the cream cheese, sugar, egg and salt in a bowl until smooth and creamy. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Stir together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla. Beat for 3 minutes. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full with batter. Spoon 1Tbsp of the filling into the center of each cupcake.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the cake portion comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes in the pans. Remove from pans to wire rack. Cool completely.