Devil's Food Cake with Angel Frosting

Happy New Year!  For the first recipe of the year, Club Baked is doing the Devil's Food Cake which can also be made as cupcakes.  I chose the cupcake route to share with our guests on New Year's Day.  When looking through the ingredients, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I already had all of the ingredients for the recipe (score!). 

I was able to get 20 cupcakes out of the batter (I think I could have stretched out the batter to make up to 24). Since we only use skim milk, I used skim instead of whole milk for the cupcakes, and they still turned out very chocolaty and moist. 

The frosting is a marshmallow fluff that works well with the deep chocolate cupcakes.  Alone, the frosting is very sweet and sticky.  The cupcake balances the sweetness.  I'm very novice in my cake and cupcake decorating skills, and don't have any fancy tips.  To decorate the cupcakes, I used a spatula and worked the frosting up as much as I could without it going over the sides.  I had a bunch of frosting left over (since I followed the directions and ingredients for a 2 layer cake).

 My guests were very impressed with the shiny frosting.  I really like this recipe, and the frosting was a nice change from a rich buttercream. Check out the other creations from my fellow bakers at Club Baked.
     

Chocolate Mint Thumbprints

When I saw this cookie in Baked Explorations, I knew it would be perfect for the holidays.  I made them for Christmas Eve, and they were perfect.  They were a great combination of minty chocolate sweetness.  Definitely a keeper!