As you may have noticed I love to cook, but even more than that I love to bake. I think it is because I am sucker for homemade desserts. When invited over to a party or dinner I always ask what I can bring. I mean really I want to bring something. I am always secretly hoping that they will say dessert because I just have so many yummy desserts that I want to try! (If you are my friend, reading this feel free to ask me to bring anything, salad, wine seriously no pressure)but I love to bring desserts. So when my sister-in-law said they were having a surprise party for my niece I just up and asked if I could bring dessert because I had so many ideas. I thought cupcakes would be perfect I mean you don’t need plates or forks so that is just a total bonus. I made three recipes and today you get the recipe for the marbles ones, because well, it was my personal favorite of the three. I will try to post the other two sometime this week. This one is from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes. Thank you Martha Stewart for your mad kitchen skills. I really must buy more of your cookbooks.

Marble cupcakes

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 2 tsps. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp.salt
• 1/3 cup milk-room temperature
• 1/3 cup heavy cream-room temperature
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter-room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs-room temperature
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup boiling water

1. Pre heat oven to 350 degrees and line 16 muffin cups with liners.

2. Mix flour, baking powder and salt. Combine milk and cream.

3. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time until fully mixed. Beat in vanilla. Alternately beat in flour mixture and milk mixture.

4. In small bowl mix cocoa powder and boiling water. Mix in 1 cup of the batter.

5. Fill prepared muffin cups with a spoonful of vanilla, then a spoonful of chocolate batter. Use a wooden skewer and swirl in a figure eight motion to achieve marbled effect.

6. Bake for about 10 minutes until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Tips- As this was for a kids party I frosted with vanilla icing and decorated with chocolate chips, for an elegant touch simply dust with icing sugar ala Martha.