Marble Cupcakes

The marble cupcakes were not the focus of my week this week. You see, I got to go to a wedding in San Antonio. Here is a shot of me with the bride, my friend Erin. The height difference makes for kind of an awkward picture. I'm pretty sure my head is not actually resting on her chest, but it was pretty late by the time that picture was taken, so, who knows.

When I started my doctoral program two plus years ago, there were four other students who started with me. Three of them were guys-all married, and the other one was a girl who was single like me. She met the man she would later marry toward the end of our first semester, after a comical series of bad dates, and knew, within a few weeks, that he was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. I, on the other hand, have only a comical series of bad dates to show for the last two years, and about 20 cupcake recipes. But, as I have stated before, I am trying not to make this about my love life.

Anyway, Erin got married this weekend in San Antonio, and Kim, Martha, and I decided to go to it. We were all excited to be there to support Erin, and were looking for any excuse to leave Lubbock. Some of the highlights of the weekend included:

• A stop in Brady, TX on our way to San Antonio. Brady, by its own estimation, is considered the heart of Texas. However, the main drag of Brady consisted of two sketchy gas stations, a gym, and some sort of real estate/taxidermy hybrid business.
• The hotel fire alarm going off at 7:00 in the morning. The night before, Kim, while studying a map of our floor on the back of the hotel room door, commented on the instructions underneath, which said, "Should a fire break out, do NOT stay in your hotel room." Her comment was that anyone who needed to be told to leave a burning room may have deeper issues. She apologized profusely as we descended 11 flights of stairs and stood outside for less than ten minutes before they let us back in. On the plus side, since we were already downstairs, we decided to have breakfast, which included self-made Belgian waffles.
• Lots of college football. Our hotel room had two TV's, which meant we could watch two games at once. We watched Iowa vs. Northwestern and Texas vs. Central Florida in the morning, and Navy vs. Notre Dame in the afternoon while we got ready. We had a real struggle to tear ourselves away from the two TVs in the country club where they were married that were showing the last few minutes of the Oregon/Stanford game and the Alabama/LSU game so that we could be seated outside for the wedding. I think we all appreciated that a group of three women could enjoy so much college football.

It was a very nice wedding. Erin's family is some sort of Protestant religion, but her husband's family is Jewish, so the ceremony was a blending of several religious traditions, with their own flair added here and there.

Case in point, this was the mariachi band that played outside the ballroom before the reception started.

Here is a shot of Martha, me, Kim, Shannon, and Amber before the reception started. The wait staff was already serving margaritas and appetizers before the reception even got underway. The food was fabulous. The band was amazing! Their lead singer was a tiny, middle-aged white man who did everything from Outkast and Justin Timberlake to Journey and the B-52's, along with a lot of standards.

But, really, the highlight of my weekend was hanging out with Kim and Martha. We are all very busy people, and it was quite a luxury to get to spend three days together watching football and hunting for Snuggies. And they were nice enough to get me home in time to teach Relief Society on Sunday afternoon, which was where I served the marble cupcakes that were supposed to be the subject of this post.

Ironically, I did not take any pictures of these cupcakes. I made them before I left town, and froze them in anticipation of serving them to the girls in my Relief Society class on Sunday.

This is a good recipe. The marbling of the cake makes it not too rich.

Marble Cupcakes

1 3/4 c. cake flour, sifted

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/3 c. milk, room temperature

1/2 c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 c. granulated sugar

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1/3 c. unsweetened Special Dark cocoa powder

1/4 c. boiling water

Confectioner's sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together cake flour, baking powder, and salt. Combine milk and cream.

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and granulated sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk mixture, and beating until combined.

To make chocolate batter, measure out 1 c. batter, and transfer to another bowl. Combine cocoa and the boiling water in a bowl. Stir into reserved 1 cup batter.

Fill prepared cups with alternating spoonfuls of vanilla and chocolate batter, filling each three-quarters full (I used a small cookie scoop, and did 2 vanilla and 1 chocolate for each cupcake). Run the tip of a paring knife or wooden skewer through batter in a figure eight motion to make swirls (I used a chopstick). Bake about 20 minutes.

To finish, dust with confectioners' sugar just before serving.

Unless you are running behind and can't remember where you put the confectioners' sugar you stored in your car three days earlier, and then you can serve them without.