Easter is on the way! These cupcakes are so easy to decorate-kids would love to help you! Bake your favorite cupcakes, top with frosting and green sprinkles or shreds and add your favorite Easter eggs or candy.

We have been making these Chocolate Party Cupcakes for years – they are so good! They have a delicious cream cheese and chocolate chip filling-YUM! Great for holidays, birthdays and whenever you have a chocolate craving. Enjoy!!!!

Print Recipe

Chocolate Party Cupcakes

Delicious chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese and chocolate chip filling.

Prep Time30 minutes mins

Cook Time15 minutes mins

Total Time25 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Cupcake

Servings: 24

Author: Mary Beth

Ingredients

Cupcake

• 1 Chocolate Cake Mix

Cream Cheese Fillings

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup chocolate chips (plus a few more to add to filling layer, if desired)

Frosting

• 1 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 2 pounds powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon vanillla
• 1/4 cup sprinkles, optional

Instructions

Filling

• Beat cream cheese, sugar, salt and egg together in a bowl.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Set aside.

Cupcakes

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Place 24 cupcake liners in cupcake pan.
• Prepare cake mix according to directions.
• Fill each cupcake liner approximately 1/4 full of chocolate cake batter.  Using a small pitcher to fill the cupcake liners makes it easier – and is less messy than using a spoon.
• Put about 1 tablespoon of filling on top of chocolate layer in the center of each cupcake.  Can add a 2-3 chocolate chips  to center, if desired.
• Add layer of chocolate over filling, so liner is filled about 2/3 full.
• Bake according to cake mix directions,  about 12-15 minutes, or until cupcake top bounces back to touch.
• Let cool in cupcake pan for a few minutes, then cool on a cooling rack.

Frosting

• After cupcakes are completely cool, can frost with your favorite frosting or use the Buttercream Frosting above.
• Cream butter with mixer.  Add powdered sugar, milk and vanilla.  Beat until smooth and creamy, scraping sides of bowl often, about 2 minutes.  Add a few drops of milk at a time, if too stiff and add a little bit of powdered sugar at a time if you want a stiffer frosting.  
• Pipe or frost with a knife.  Add sprinkles and other decorations, if desired.

Notes

This is a version of a recipe Cathy Oesterling shared when we worked together for University Extension.

Do you like to experiment with different frosting techniques? Decorating St. Patrick’s Day cookies can give you a chance to “play” in the kitchen. Use your favorite sugar cookie recipe and cute out shamrock shapes, bake and let cool.

Once the cookies are cool, make a batch of royal icing and then divide it into 1-3 bowls, thinning with 1 teaspoon of water at a time, if the icing is too thick to dip cookies into. Put a base color in a pie plate or shallow dish, I used white. Add a few drops of food coloring to the icing in the small bowls, and stir to combine. I used 2 shades of green and 1 shade of yellow. Drizzle the coloring icing over the base and use a toothpick to swirl the colors.

Then the real fun begins, DIP-DIP-DIP! Using your fingers (yes-it can get messy!), and dip the sugar cookies into the icing and pull the cookie straight up. Allow the excess icing to drip back into the bowl. Every cookie will be unique.

Then if you want to make your St. Patrick’s Day cookies extra special, you can step up your decorating with edible gold paint and gold leaf. (Both available on Amazon).

Shake the gold paint really well. Put a small amount of paint in bowl, then using small brush you can paint veins or stripes on the cookies and then splatter the cookies with small dots. I also used a wider brush to add gold paint around the outer edges of some of the cookies.

Then using tweezers, you can add small gold flecks on the cookies. What leprechaun wouldn’t love these?

Marbling creates such beautiful and creative cookies! Also try on Easter and Christmas cookies.

Wishing you a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

You can use your favorite cookie and icing recipes. I used the recipes from Sally’s Baking Blog:

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/best-sugar-cookies/

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/royal-icing/

You can also try using the marbling technique to decorate spring butterfly cookies.

We are almost halfway through September! Time just goes by so quickly! Halloween – and even Christmas-decorations are on display at the stores. I decided to decorate some t-shirts for Berkley with fall and Halloween themes. All of these heat-transfer vinyl designs are available on Etsy and they were cut out on my Cricut machine.

This one is my favorite! It is the Pumpkin Crane, from the Crazy Crafty Lady Company.

Every little kid needs a spider shirt for Halloween. This pattern is from the Pretty Vectors Lab. (The black and white splotches on the shirt are just part of the Halloween frame, they are not part of the pattern.)

I remember when Pac-Man first came out! This Halloween Pumpkin Game design is from The Silly Beans shop.

I had never used the foil HTV before, I think the solid black vinyl might have looked better, but it was a fun experiment. Scarlett Rose Cuts offers this design on Etsy.

Ahhh….my boy holding his boy. How sweet is that? Little Berkley is so fun and inspires me to create some cute little t-shirts.

The Halloween theme backgrounds and frames are from the PhotoRoom app. This app allows you to easily erase the background and then you can be creative with a wide range of colors, frames, backgrounds and text.

Happy Fall and Happy Halloween!