Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes with Satiny Chocolate Buttercream. Delightful!

 We humans love a good food experience.  In fact, most of our shared pastimes are accompanied by an indelible presence of a certain and specific food.  Baseball games and hot dogs.  Carnivals and cotton candy.  Hot summer days and popsicles.  And of course, movies and popcorn.

This afternoon my husband and I took our three oldest children to the movies for the first time in four years!  We decided that a good 3-D experience (and a lovely movie about a kind-hearted boy and dragons) was enough to justify the splurge.  Of course, being that it was a very special affair, I wanted to go all-out and buy them each a bag of popcorn.  For $5.95 a piece.

I’ll say that again:  Popcorn.  Small bags of popcorn. For $5.95.  A piece. 

It occurred to me, as I pulled the twenty dollar bill out of my wallet that if I(along with millions upon millions of people) am/are  willing to pay THIS much for POPCORN…and “butter” – then there was much more about this popcorn than meets the eye.

Clearly, I knew that this popcorn was worth less than twenty cents per bag (I do calculations like that for fun) – but I still pulled out the money and handed it over.  Indeed, this popcorn was ’special’.  Why?  Because this popcorn was part of a memory-making experience for my children.  I know that they will always remember getting to go on a special date – “Just the big kids and mama and daddy” – and that they will always remember being handed a bag of popcorn that they would not have to share.

Cha-ching.

I can’t say that this didn’t leave me cringing and wincing in discomfort – and I must say that I guarded my little children (and my precious popcorn investments) like some kind of human force-field - watching for sporadic movements from the other children in our path.  One false move of an overexcited kid and $5.95 cents of popcorn would go spilling across the floor – and I (not wanting this experience to be tainted by some popcorn spilling injustice) would have no choice but to buy another.  After a heart-stopping close call with a little girl who had broken into a dead sprint and just missed my four-year-old by inches….we made it, popcorn intact.  And we all had a wonderful and memorable time.

_____________________

Food is a powerful thing.  Further, the food/event connection is a much more impressive phenomenon.  This is why people are willing to pay a 3000% mark-up for popcorn at the movie theatre.  This is also why learning how to cook is so important. 

One of the greatest things about being a cook, is that by the mere conjuring of a recipe, we can make any day into an extraordinary day.   Event-less days can be marked by a lovely bruschetta or an unforgettable soup.  A quiet evening can be transformed into an impromptu cookie party.

Even better, after a quiet moment on a Saturday morning where the day is sitting before you like an open and free landscape, you can think – what would I like to eat today?  And then – you can make it so.

As was the case this morning – as I sat drinking coffee and suddenly wanted to eat a chocolate cupcake.  Albeit, I didn’t get to eat that chocolate cupcake until this evening – but it was well worth the wait.  It was not some store bought dry and smackey cupcake that would leave me disappointed (and craving more).  It was exactly the cupcake that I wanted.  Because I can cook, I was able to create (in part) the kind of day that I wanted to have.

Sour Cream Cupcakes For An Extraordinary Day

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Hershey’s)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup and 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 1/4 sticks) – room temperature

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

Add the sour cream and flour mixture - bit by bit - to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and stir gently.

1 1/4 sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Prepare cupcake tins by lining the cups with cupcake papers.

Combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium mixing bowl.  Stir to mix.  Mix well.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the room-temperature butter, the sugars and the eggs.  Whip until light and fluffy. 

Add the sour cream and the flour mixture to the butter/sugar/egg mixture alternately.  Meaning: add some flour mixture and stir, then add some sour cream and stir, and so on.  From this point on stir very, very gently.

Spoon the batter into the cupcake papers.  Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the centers of the cupcakes are no longer jiggley and liquid.

Cool on wire rack and frost.

Satiney Chocolate Buttercream

1 stick, plus 6 tablespoons of unsalted butter – at room temperature

1 cup powdered sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Combine all ingredients and whip until smooth and satiney.

Frost cupcakes!

These are tender, creamy and  absolutely delectable!  Well worth the effort and the time.  I encourage you to try these lovely cupcakes the next time you find yourself AND your day free and uninhibited.  And that, in essence, IS an extraordinary day!

When you can cook, you can play in integral part in making ordinary days special, hallmark occasions complete, and almost any occasion memorable.  And in the end – isn’t that what matters?

In four years from now, when we go to the movies again….I will buy more popcorn.  But by then the babies will be old enough to come with us…..so I’d better start saving now. 

But it’ll be worth it, to me.

Bon appetit and bonne chance in your Adventures In Cookery,