Black Bottom Cupcakes

Black Bottom Cupcakes are the perfect marriage of a rich chocolate cake and a cream cheese filling stuffed with chocolate chips. The chocolate portion of this dessert is a depression-style cake without eggs or dairy.

Black Bottom Cupcakes with Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Filling

These cupcakes have a rich, moist chocolate cake base with a cream cheesecake filling full of chocolate chips. We made these cupcakes often while growing up as the recipe is from a friend of our mother. I think this was one of the first desserts all four of us – yes, Barbara and I are two of four sisters – learned to make at a young age.

The look of these cupcakes are unique and quite appealing, and they taste twice as good as they look. I made them recently as we celebrated all of the nieces and nephews birthdays that occurred over the last couple of months. It was fun to have the oldest (18) and the youngest (3) nephew blow out their birthday candles together.

Our mom claims you can get two batches of cupcakes with just one batch of the cream cheese filling. It depends on how generous we are with the filling as sometimes we use it all. Sometimes we can stretch it to fill about one and a half batches of chocolate cupcakes.

If this happens to you, just use the leftover chocolate cupcake batter to make plain chocolate cupcakes and add some frosting to the top!

How to Make Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Combine softened cream cheese, egg, salt, sugar until smooth and stir in chocolate chips. Set mixture aside. Stir together wet ingredients for cupcake batter in large mixing bowl. In separate bowl, mix dry ingredients together. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients until batter is smooth. Bake until toothpick comes out clean from cake portion.

Notes about Black Bottom Cupcakes

• Do not forget to pull your cream cheese out of the refrigerator to soften. Allow at least 30 minutes for it to rest on the counter until it’s not stiff to touch. If you don’t want to wait that long, here is a method to cut the wait time in about half.
• While we used our KitchenAid mixer (you can use a hand mixer) for the cream cheese filling, we used an old-fashioned spatula and our arms to mix together the chocolate cake portion.
• The chocolate cake base is what is often called a depression cake, crazy cake or wacky cake because it has no eggs or dairy in it.
• Don’t get too caught up with how much batter to add to each liner. We usually fill them one-third to one-half full before adding a heaping spoon full of cream cheese mixture to the top.
• I always use paper cupcake liners because I hate cleaning muffin tins. However, if you don’t want to use them, be sure to spray each cup with baking spray.
• When testing the cupcakes to see whether they are done, be careful where you insert the toothpick. Try to avoid the cream cheese section and just test the chocolate cake section.
• Cooking time always depends on your individual oven, but how full you fill your muffin cups affects cooking time as well. Be sure to test them before you pull them out of the oven.

Other Cupcake and Muffin Recipes

We love cupcakes and muffins because they are the perfect individual serving size and clean up is usually a breeze when using paper liners.

• Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
• Rhubarb Muffins
• Easy Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes
• Orange Soda Cupcakes
• Heart Shaped Cupcakes

Linking up to Meal Plan Monday.