Sweets for the sweet

What better way to say Happy Valentine's Day than with some sweet chocolate treats with a pretty, fluffy pink frosting?


I haven't baked many good treats recently and I have been missing them. I've been more on a bread kick lately, and while bred is nice and tasty and good, it's just not very pretty or fun. So I thought that I should bake something a little more decadent to send to work with Ben this week in honor of Valentine's Day.

Now, I know to some Valentine's Day is nothing but a Hallmark holiday, consumerism at it's finest, unrealistic expectations of fairytale romance that are doomed to failure in the cold, harsh reality of the world. And there are also those who say, indignantly, "Why should we have to confine romance to one day? The Man is just trying to get us to spend money on commercial junk! I'm perfectly capapble of showing my love every day of the year!" But to those people, I have to ask... Do you really buy your sweetheart a big bouquet of flowers on a random Tuesday? A box of chocolates to celebrate a long and dreary work week? Do you bake them little chocolate cupcakes with fluffy pink frosting just for the heck of it? If so, then go ahead with your romantic self.

If not, however, I suggest you make these for your favorite person. They might just agree to be your Valentine.

Flourless Chocolate Cupcakes (from Cupcake Project) with Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting (from me)

Makes about 18 cupcakes or a bajillion mini cupcakes

1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp salt
18 oz bittersweet chocolate chopped into small pieces
1 C unsalted butter (room temperature)
3 eggs
3 egg whites

Combine the water, salt, and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until completely dissolved and set aside.
In the top half of a double boiler, melt the bittersweet chocolate, then pour the melted chocolate into the bowl of an electric mixer.
Cut the butter into pieces and beat the butter into the chocolate, one piece at a time.
Beat in the hot sugar-water. Next, slowly beat in the eggs and the egg whites one at a time.
Pour the batter 3/4 to the top of lined cupcake tins. These don't rise so you can go higher if you'd like. Have pans larger than the cupcake tins ready. Put each cupcake tin in a larger pan and fill the pan with boiling water halfway up the sides of the cake pan. (Don't be like me and accidentally overfill the water. You may have to eat any flooded cupcake casualties.)
Bake cupcakes in the water bath at 300 degrees F (150 degrees C) for 30 minutes. The center will still look wet.
Do not take the cupcakes out of the tin until they are completely cooled! Once the tins are cool enough to handle with your bare hands, put the entire cupcake tin in the fridge until it is cool. Then remove the cupcakes from the tin and frost. If you take the cupcakes out of the tin while they are still warm, they will lose their shape.


Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting

4 oz cream cheese
4 oz butter
1/4 cup raspberry jam
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Beat cream cheese and butter together until creamy and fluffy. Add raspberry jam and beat well. Add powdered sugar and beat for a long time until frosting in smooth, light, and fluffy. When in doubt, just keep beating the icing. I tend to just turn my mixer on and let it go for a little while. Otherwise I get too impatient standing around and I want to use the frosting before it's reached its true fluffiness potential.

I also added about two drops of red food coloring to make it just a little bit prettier, but the frosting had a nice pink color already, so that is completely optional.

Makes about 4 cups.