Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes – fluffy chocolate chip cupcakes with milk chocolate frosting!

Oink! Cluck! Moo! The working mom’s version of a 2-year-old animal sounds birthday party. My son, whom we affectionally refer to as “the saurus” (or “saurus”, for short), just turned two.  How on earth that happened, I have no idea.  I’m not exactly sure how I went from labor and delivery straight to a 2-year-old birthday party in the blink of an eye, but such is life.

Being a typical 2-year-old boy, he communicates primarily in sound effects and is quite an expert on all things animal noises (the giraffe continues to baffle us…does anyone know what sound a giraffe makes?!).  Considering his two loves in life (animal sounds and farms), it only seemed fitting to throw an animal-sounds-meets-big-red-barn themed birthday party for a few of his friends.  Okay, a few Saurus friends and a bunch of ours.  Whatever.  Adults like animal crackers, too.  And we don’t have parents to limit our intake.  It’s awesome.

The party was a grand success, and something very easy to throw together, in case you’re like me and return from a business trip 12 hours before the scheduled start time.  You can make it happen!

The invitations I made quickly on the computer and printed at home on cream paper to go in grey envelopes.  And hooray – I even made a printable PDF version for you!  Get it here –> invitation

These printable party hats greeted the guests and were a big hit

Menu:

Animal crackers of all shapes and sizes – I just got several packages from the grocery store and dumped them in layers in a big bowl

Crock-pot pulled pork (recipe here)

Easy homemade macaroni-and-cheese (recipe here)

Applesauce pouches (left over from last fall’s apple day but you can just as easily buy them)

Cookies (recipe here – the secret is to always keep a batch of frozen dough in the freezer for such emergencies a bake sales and two-year-old birthday parties) and milk

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes (recipe below) made festive with easy animal sounds pennants – Just print this PDF –> animal sounds cupcake toppers, cut out along solid lines, tape around bamboo skewers, and insert in cupcakes!

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Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Fluffy chocolate chip cupcakes with milk chocolate frosting!

Course cupcakes

Servings 18 cupcakes

Author Cass Hunter

Ingredients

• 3/4 C butter room temperature
• 1 C pure cane white sugar
• 1/2 C pure cane light brown sugar
• 3 eggs room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 C sour cream room temperature
• 2 C flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 C milk room temperature
• 1 C mini chocolate chips + 1 Tbsp flour
• 5 Tbsp butter room temperature
• 3 oz cream cheese room temperature
• 1 C powdered sugar sifted
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 6 oz fine milk chocolate chopped, melted, and cooled to room temperature
• heavy cream or whole milk, as needed

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Whip together butter and sugars. Add eggs, vanilla, and sour cream.
3. Sift in dry ingredients, alternating with the milk. Stir just until combined.
4. In a large ziploc bag, shake together chocolate chips and flour. This will keep them from all sinking to the bottom. Who knew?
5. Fold in the chocolate chips.
6. Spoon into cupcake tin and bake at 350F for 12-14 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
7. Place on wire rack to cool. Make frosting while you wait.
8. For frosting, whip butter and cream cheese together until fluffy.
9. Gradually sift in powdered sugar and salt and continue beating.
10. Stir in melted milk chocolate until well-combined.
11. Add cream and beat until desired consistency is reached.
12. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes.
13. Add cow sprinkles. Just because you can.

Since I wasn’t going to be around to do much DIY-ing of adorable things (like this awesome little blue truck photo prop – seriously, who has time for that?!), I ordered almost everything online and when I got home, pretty much the whole party was sitting on my doorstep.  I even ordered the groceries online so I just had to swing by the store, saving precious minutes hours.  (side note: if your grocery store offers online ordering and/or delivery, it’s worth every penny!) Day of, I set out the desserts, filled the balloons with helium, and stuck things on the walls. And still time to enjoy the party! That’s how it’s done!

Animal sounds banner: I hung these adorable animal sounds cards and tissue poms on some twine and tacked it to the wall behind the desserts.

Trail mix to-go: I filled terra cotta pots with a variety of snacks (dried cranberries, m&ms, pretzels, peanuts, etc) for the guests to make their own trail mixes to take home in paper sacks that I stamped (link to barn stamp) and scrawled on with a sharpie)

 List of links & printables:  milk bottles | balloons [ cow | pig | barn ] | barn stamp | animal sounds cards | tissue poms | animal sounds cupcake toppers | invitation

Hope you enjoy the Chocolate Chip Cupcakes recipe! For more about the party and two-year-old life in general, visit chuck&welly!