I don’t know exactly why, as a grad student with plenty on my plate (no pun intended), I decided to start a food blog. But I know I figured since I was already cooking the food, I might as well document it.

I thought I’d start out flashy, so I went with Black Bottom Goat Cheese cupcakes courtesy of The Cupcake Project.

The recipe is straightforward…

Fold the melted baking chocolate into the liquid ingredients, alternating with the flour mixture…

And you end up with a very tasty cupcake batter.

I filled the cupcake liners 2/3 full, as instructed, but I ended up with a TON more batter than could ever fit in one tray.

The goat cheese topping, which tasted pretty much like sweet goat cheese (unsurprisingly). Chocolate chips got added to it right after this.

Puzzlingly, after I spooned the approximately two tablespoons onto each cupcake, the goat cheese topping was gone, leaving me with only chocolate batter. You can see what was left over in the bowl… nearly half.

They puffed up nicely…

and since they had the goat cheese topping, they didn’t need any extra frosting on the top. The combination of the goat cheese and chocolate was very tasty, but I will say that this chocolate part of the cupcake was kind of disappointly dry, though it had good flavor.

What happened to the rest of that batter?

Chocolate cupcakes, of course.

For the lonely non-goat cheese chocolate cupcakes, I whipped up a quick cream cheese frosting out of some leftover cream cheese I had in the fridge already, and frosted them up.

Black Bottom Goat Cheese Cupcakes (courtesy of The Cupcake Project)

Ingredients

• 2 C flour
• 1 1/2 t baking powder
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 3/4 C butter, room temperature
• 1 1/3 C sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 C plain yogurt
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1/3 C milk
• 5 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, melted

For goat cheese topping:

• 8 oz goat cheese
• 1/3 C sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF and prepare a 12-cupcake tin with cupcake liners.
2. Whisk flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a medium-sized bowl.
3. Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.
4. Beat in eggs, yogurt, vanilla, and milk until blended.
5. Alternately fold in flour mixture and melted chocolate, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
6. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full.
7. In a small bowl, mix all the ingredients for the goat cheese topping.
8. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of the topping onto the center of each cupcake.
9. Bake for thirty minutes or until a toothpick comes out dry.