Black Bottom Cupcakes with Raspberry Jam

You can't really go wrong with chocolate, cream cheese, and raspberry jam. If you're in the mood for something sweet on a cozy winter night in, try making these black bottom cupcakes with raspberry jam. I originally saw these on foodgawker minus the jam. I'd heard of and tried this type of cupcake before but I'd never made them. I added the jam because I thought it might add a little brightness to deep flavor of the chocolate and the heaviness of the cream cheese.

Yummy, creamy goodness.

I changed a few other things from the recipe as well. Originally, the recipe called for 1/4 cup of cocoa powder, 1 cup of water, and cider vinegar. When I read the recipe reviews, one woman said she did half milk half water for a richer batter, and a heaping 1/3 cup of cocoa powder. I took her advice, but I don't drink cow's milk at home so I did 1/2 cup soy milk and 1/2 cup water. I also didn't have cider vinegar and didn't want to buy a whole bottle for one use, so I used rice vinegar which you'd think would be weird but it was actually fine. I think the purpose of the vinegar was just to loosen up the batter a little bit. The flavor of chocolate was all I tasted in the end.

Unbaked

Baked.

These were super delicious and pretty easy to make. They were surprisingly light as well, even after our Spinach and Black Bean Enchiladas from the same night. The cake part isn't overly sweet at all, because cocoa powder isn't sweet, but the cream cheese and jam mixture was perfect in the middle. The tang of the cream cheese with the tang of the raspberry- mmmm perfection.

Reading over the recipe just now, I realized you could easily adapt these into a vegan cupcake, you'd just need to substitue a dairy-free chocolate chip, and swap out the cream cheese for tofutti cream cheese. I think the cream cheese mixture would do fine without the egg. Voila!

Split open.

Raspberry Black Bottom Cupcakes
Makes 12 large cupcakes

Ingredients

8oz cream cheese- softened

1 egg

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup mini chocolate chips

½ cup raspberry preserves

1 ½ cups AP flour

1 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder- heaping

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup milk (or soymilk, rice milk, almond milk, etc)

½ cup water

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Steps

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1.      1.  Lightly spray muffin pan with pam so overflowing batter doesn’t stick to pan. Line tin with paper or foil muffin cups.

2.       2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat cream cheese, egg, 1/3 cup sugar and 1/8 tsp salt with whisk attachment until mixture is light and fluffy- about 2 minutes. Meanwhile, heat raspberry preserves in a bowl in the microwave for 45 seconds. Stir chocolate chips into cream cheese mixture. Push cream cheese mixture over to one side of the bowl and pour jam in other side. Using a butter knife, gently swirl the two halves together creating a ribbon of jam throughout the cream cheese. If that doesn’t work, don’t stress, it will still taste just as good.

3.      3.  In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, 1 cup sugar, cocoa powder, and salt until little to no lumps remain. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the milk, water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla. Stir until well moistened. Fill muffin cups ½ full with cupcake batter and top with a dollop of the cream cheese jam mixture in the center of the batter. If you wish, you can do two pans of smaller cupcakes.

4.      4. Bake for 25-30 minutes until edges of cupcakes look set and are slightly firm to the touch. The cream cheese in the center should start to brown a little bit, but not much. Let cupcakes cool in pan for about 20 minutes. They are delicate, so be careful!