Chocolate Cupcakes with Speculoos Cream Cheese Icing

I'm always a bit peeved about recipes when they require too many bowls or utensils and such. It seems kind of trivial, but with a gazillion other things piled on the dishrack, sometimes adding another dish just makes the entire thing look like the leaning tower of Pisa. Normally there's at least two mixing bowls involved when baking cupcakes: one for wet ingredients and another one for dry ingredients. Among the numerous measuring spoons and spatulas that I end up wielding, that is.

I opted for Robyn's chocolate cupcake recipe over at Add a Pinch since it involved a grand total of one mixing bowl. Like all cupcake recipes, it's quite simple. However I thought it was very interesting that it involves a half cup of boiling water. I raised an eyebrow when I saw the ingredients list, but I was boiling a kettle of water for tea already, so what the heck let's do it. And yes, just drop in the wet ingredients one by one into the bowl of dry ingredients. As Robyn mentions, it's a very runny mixture - but when baked it gloriously rises and has a wonderful moist and soft texture.

Speculoos cookie butter is my most recent find. I fancy ginger snap cookies, and was head over heels after discovering Speculoos at the local Trader Joe's. I look at it as a substitute for nutella or peanut butter, delicious on bread or crackers or in crepes. Speculoos icing is the next best thing I tell you.

Speculoos & Cream Cheese Icing
(http://www.speculoos.us/dessert2.html)

1/2 cup Speculoos
8oz pacakge of cream cheese
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Add all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and use a hand mixer to whip the icing. Put in a piping bag or slather on with a knife. Enough for 12 cupcakes.