Be Jealous of my Coworker…

No, really.

Being a Spanish teacher means that there is only ONE other person in the building on my same “team.” I’m lucky enough that Matt and I get along swimmingly, and have actually come to the conclusion that we would’ve been excellent friends in high school and college since we have many of the same geekinesses (is that a word?)

Well, today is Matt’s 30th birthday, so being the excellent teammate that I am, I decided to make him special happy birthday cupcakes. I knew that his favorite cake (ok, honestly, most of Chicago’s favorite cake) is the chocolate layer cake from Portillo’s. It is the most rich, decadent chocolate cake ever, and I know he orders it every time he goes to Portillo’s. I knew his birthday cupcakes needed to be chocolate!

As usual, I searched around and combined a couple recipes to come up with what I’m calling Fudge Brownie Chocolate Chip cupcakes. Yeah. I went there.

Fudge Brownie Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

1 stick butter

2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1/2 c. all purpose flour, sifted

3/4 c. plus 2 Tbsp. sugar

2 eggs

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 c. mini chocolate chips

Directions

Pre-heat the oven to 325* Melt the butter and chocolate together in a double boiler, stirring until smooth. Allow to come to room temperature. Sift the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder together in the bowl of a mixer. With the mixer on low speed, add the eggs in one at a time until well-incorporated. Add the chocolate butter mixture and stir well. Stir in the chocolate chips, then scoop into lined cupcake tins. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean of batter (it might have some melted chocolate on it from the chips) about 20-23 minutes. Allow to cool, then decorate.

Tagged as: Baking, chocolate, cupcakes, friends