Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcakes

These are also referred to as Amazon Cupcakes. They are a chocolate cupcake that has pockets of a cheesecake like filling baked into the cupcake. They are very simple to make, require no frosting and are very very good! The better quality your cocoa powder and chocolate you use will make a big difference in the final flavor of the cupcakes.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcakes (makes 24 cupcakes)

Chocolate Batter:
3 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups cold water
1/2 cup + 2 tbs vegetable oil
1 TBS vanilla extract
2 TBS lemon juice or white vinegar

Pre heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Sift the dry ingredients together, in another bowl mix the water, oil, vanilla and lemon juice or vinegar. Add half of the wet to the dry, mix until evenly distributed and slowly add the rest of the wet (add this slowly will prevent lumps in the batter). Set aside while you make the cream cheese filling.

Cream cheese filling

12 oz room temperature cream cheese (neufchatel also works)
1/2 cup sugar
2 room temperature eggs
1 1/4 cups chocolate chips (or your favorite chocolate cut into small pieces)

Cream together the cream cheese and sugar until there are no lumps left, make sure to scrape the bowl and your spatula well to get any cream cheese that can be hiding. Slowly add a little bit of the egg at a time, mixing completely before your next addition, aiming for about four additions of egg. Stir in the chocolate chips last.
Prepare a muffin pan with paper liners (or grease the muffin pan well if you don't have paper liners) this can also work with mini muffin pans as well. To scoop the batter into the pans, you are going to alternate the chocolate batter with the cream cheese batter ending up with about 3 layers of chocolate cake batter and two layers of cream cheese batter. The scoops for the chocolate cake batter should be slightly larger than the cream cheese batter. Start off with about 2 tbs worth of chocolate cake batter in the bottom of each cup. Then scoop a heaping 1 tbs of the cream cheese batter and repeat once more and then finish off with another layer of chocolate cake batter on top (you want to evenly distribute this over all the cupcakes, so depending on how much is left in your bowl, the last layer of chocolate cake batter may be less than the other two.) Your cupcakes should be about 3/4 full, it isn't going to rise too much. Bake at 350 degrees F until the cupcakes bounce back when gently pressed in the middle. You can also insert a toothpick into the middle and as long as you see crumbs and not batter then they are done.