"There's No Such Thing as Too Much Chocolate"

First, I feel like I should explain my long period of absence before jumping back into things. As you may or may not know, I'm a tired college student that uses baking as a way to stay sane during the semester. Unfortunately, sometimes my school-workload can get overwhelming and leave me with little time for anything else. Really, it was my own fault for taking five classes. But what can I say, I want to graduate in a timely manner.

Um, okay, this is either flour or cocaine. I can't recall which.

Lucky for me, it's now June and I have a few weeks before I start summer classes so I can go through my backlog of blog fodder. I'm all for keeping things in chronological order, so I'll start off my return with some chocolate cupcakes. Don't ask me how I remember this, but I made these during spring break. That was in March. Again, it's now June. I don't know if you're as adept with a calendar as I am, but you can see that some time has passed between the making of the cakes and now.

With that being said, I don't entirely remember how I made these cupcakes. I have several photos on my phone detailing the process, but it's like reading the assembly directions for a piece of Ikea furniture. You can see the progression, but anything more detailed than cheap plywood equals bookshelf (or in this case, flour equals cake) is a stab in the dark. It's not surprising that I can't remember the finer details of what went wrong making these, but I guess the important part is that I remember why I made them.

I made them for my "little sister" Ashley.

Ashley in her natural habitat.

We started as coworkers, but now we're family

Instead, we go to the beach together. We drool over cakes in Costco, and go on bicycle rides in Walmart in the middle of the night. She purchases KFC at 10 o'clock at night right before they close just so we can eat it in a CVS parking lot by our house. She listens to me complain about my neurosis (the latest example of this was not even five minutes ago). Best of all, she understands me even when everyone else doesn't. I get all of the perks of having a younger sister, without actually having a younger sister. She's one of my best friends and I consider myself very lucky for having met her.

Ashley notices a lack of cake
I've known Ashley for about two years now, and she's grown to be the little sister I never had. Since we're not actually related, I never had to live with her. Because I don't live with her, I haven't experienced the sibling rivalry that sisters usually have: she doesn't borrow my clothes, she doesn't hog the bathroom when I'm running late in the morning, and she doesn't try to murder me while I'm sleeping.

Here we are at the world's saddest pumpkin patch.

Before I met Kyle, the spoils of my baking efforts were delivered to my coworkers. Almost every weekend there were a dozen or two cupcakes sitting in the back of the office waiting to be devoured by everyone. After meeting Kyle last September, all of my cakes made their way over to his house so they could be eaten by his roommates. Ashley was the first to notice the decline in baked goods, and she definitely didn't let it slide. To make it up to her, I told her that when I had the time, I'd make something specifically for her. When asked what she would like, her response was simply "there's no such thing as too much chocolate."

The frosting looks.. not so appealing here.

Some months went by and finally I was graced with the presence of spring break. With that small taste of freedom, I made Ashley her chocolate overload cupcakes. The premise of creating a satisfying cake for her was simple: cram as much chocolate as I could into one cupcake liner. I settled on a chocolate cake filled with chocolate pudding topped with a chocolate buttercream frosting. I noticed I had some Guittard semi-sweet chocolate chips left in my pantry from some previous project, so I threw some of those on top as well (four on each cake, for those keeping track of my neurosis). As usual, everything down to the pudding was made from scratch. I go to great lengths to inject sugar into the veins of people I love.

Usually I hate making chocolate cake because it always comes out too dry or too dense like a brownie. But for her, I was determined to make it work. Again, I'm not sure how I did it, or what recipe I used, but I think I found the right combination of ingredients. It's just my luck that I forgot to write it down and several months passed. I'm afraid it's lost in the ether now.