The Ultimate Black Bottom Cupcake

I was looking through my blog and forgot to post this! I made these Black Bottom Cupcakes for Christmas and they were awesome. There are several recipes out there for this type of cupcake, but apparently this is the ultimate. I don't have another to compare it to, but I would definitely make this recipe again. I even had some left over batter and made a few mini-cupcakes. This way when they were finally cooled, I didn't have to eat an entire cupcake to do a taste test. However, I ate about 3 of the mini-cupcakes....hmm....

Adapted from: http://www.cookiemadness.net/

INGREDIENTS (Yields 18 cupcakes)

FILLING
16-oz cream cheese, cool room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 large egg whites, room temperature
2 tbsp sour cream, room temperature
1/3 cup miniature or regular size chocolate chips – or however many you want (I used regular sized chips, and it was more like 1/2 cup)

CAKE
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (7.9 oz)
3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder – Hershey’s Dark
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line 18 muffin cups with paper liners. Beat the cream cheese, sugar and salt until smooth. Add the egg whites and stir or beat on low speed just until mixed; stir in the sour cream and chocolate chips. Set aside.
Mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt together in a small bowl.
In the actual mixing bowl, beat together the oil and sugar. You can do this with a whisk, spoon or hand-held mixer.
Mix together the buttermilk and vanilla. Add the buttermilk/vanilla mixture and the flour alternately to the sugar/oil mixture. Stir until smooth – be careful not to overbeat.
Divide the chocolate batter evenly among the muffin tins. Spoon large tablespoonfuls of cream cheese batter over the chocolate batter. You should have some cream cheese batter leftover.
Bake on center rack for about 25 minutes. Let cool in cupcake pan for 30 minutes and then transfer to the refrigerator to chill.