Some coworkers and I went to Oliver’s Eatery for lunch yesterday. At the time, they described it as being similar to Baker Bros, but different in some manner which I can't quite recall at the moment. At any rate, as I rather enjoy Baker Bros, I thought I’d give it a shot.

As I approached the counter, I noticed that the menu was divided into sections for salads, sandwiches, pasta, and perhaps one or two others. I’m not one to pass up a good sandwich, and so I perused their offerings — their club sandwich immediately caught my eye and, voila, I ordered one. After paying at the counter, the clerk handed me one of those familiar buzzing-light-up squares to take back to my seat.

I gathered my sandwich accouterments — a napkin and some flatware — and enjoyed some chit-chat with my coworkers while my sandwich was being prepared. Jeremy’s pasta arrived first, and then one or two other coworker's meals, but mine arrived soon after that. As I took my plate back to my table, the first thing that struck me was the subtlety of the sandwich itself: unlike a club sandwich that you might find at Chain Restaurant XYZ, Oliver’s club wasn’t stacked to the ceiling merely for the sake of doing so. Still, it had all the necessary elements — roasted turkey, cheddar, bacon, lettuce and tomatoes.

Upon biting into the sandwich, I knew I had a winner. The sandwich was both hot and cold — a good thing — from the hot just-melted cheddar and cold meat and cheeses. As I enjoyed my first bite, I knew something was extraordinary about the sandwich, but I couldn't quite place my finger on it. It was like a bit like the feeling of trying to remember “Where did I see that guy before?” when watching a movie…

Finally, it dawned on me: the sandwich was made with real cheddar cheese. Not “real cheddar cheese” as a marketing ploy, but actual from-the-cow cheese. Part of what clued me in was that the cheese hadn't melted uniformly; now, cheddar isn’t supposed to melt evenly (that would be gruyère’s job), but it’s not uncommon for fake-cheddars to melt with T-1000-like consistency.

Pleasantly, the bread was also a key player in the sandwich. It was either white or wheat bread — I wasn't quite sure since it was browned due to the toasting — but it was fairly thin. I’d guess each of the slices was around 1/4 to 1/3" thick which, if you as me, is how it should be for a club sandwich (after all, the meat and cheeses are the star of a club sandwich)

Looking over their web page, it would appear that there's only one Oliver’s restaurant (as opposed to being a franchise with several locations). Well, drat to that. I mean, sure, it’s convenient that they’re close to work (they just off Frankford Road and the Tollway), but it would have been even nicer if there was one close to my home as well. I guess I’ll just have to make use of them during my working hours. C’est la vie.

I was browsing through Ask MetaFilter and came across a thread on the weirdness of non-American pork (at least, in from the poster’s perspective). The thread is interesting in itself in some ways, but then about halfway in, a guy who goes by “obiwanwasabi ” busts out with a make-your-own bacon recipe:

Make your own bacon — it’s dead easy. Buy a couple of pounds of pork belly. Rub the pork all over with salt, sugar/dextrose and sodium nitrite (pink salt), then put it in a ziploc bag for a while. The liquid comes out of the pork, making a brine that cures the meat. When it feels firm in the centre (about a week), pop it in a low oven til it reaches an internal temp of 150°F / 65°C. Take it out of the oven, remove the skin while it's hot, chill it &mdsah; voila, bacon. I can post a more detailed recipe from this book tonight if you like, along with a couple of recipes for sausage.

Bacon is tasty, to be sure, but it does seem suspiciously easy to make. I don’t think I’m courageous enough to try this, but I could see some of my meat-adept friends giving this a try (yes, this means you, Ru & Roger).

I brush my teeth — but who doesn’t? Anyhow, on a recent trip to Target, I picked up the Refreshing Vanilla Mint flavor of Crest’s Whitening Expressions line. I had previously tried their orange-flavored toothpaste — titled something like Citrus Blast or something equally ridiculous — and it was a pleasant change from the usual mint flavor that toothpastes generally have. Granted, it wasn't exactly like biting into an orange, or even like biting into a piece of orange-flavored Bubblicious, but it made tooth brushing just a tad more palatable.

Getting back to this other flavor, though, I recently noticed that I was running low on my Citrus Whatever tube and so I picked up “Refreshing Vanilla Mint” to give myself some variety. And, it all just went downhill from there…

The canonical vanilla-flavored food item may be vanilla ice cream (with perhaps vanilla yogurt near the top of the list as well). Well, rest assured, this toothpaste resembled neither of those. There was a hint of vanillaness, to be sure, though it somewhat reminded me of the harsh vanilla-like flavor that you might find in a vanilla-themed hard candies.

As for the mint, well, it was there. What can I say — it was pretty much standard-issue toothpaste-mint. Lowest-bidder, factory-borne mint. That alone is perhaps tolerable on the scale of a few minutes here-and-there, such as when brushing one’s teeth; when fused with factory-vanilla, though, the combination is disastrous. Imagine Crest toothpaste in your vanilla latte. Yeah, kinda like that. (Not that Mermaid Coffee uses cheap vanilla, but the end result would be approximately the same.)

In all, I might otherwise recommend the Citrus Whatever flavor of Crest’s Whitening Expressions line. However, after looking over their site, I don’t see it listed any more and I can’t help but wonder if maybe they discontinued it. All the same, since only one of their flavors turned out to be freakishly bad, the others could conceivably be fine. (And, if you can find their Citrus*.* on store shelves, grab it while you can.)

I work in the West End and my coworkers and I occasionally go out for lunch in the area. And, one common spot is what we call “BOAT” — the Bank Of America Tower (which is just a few blocks from the building that we work in). There’s a food court in its basement level and we’ll often go there if nothing better comes to mind ;).

I usually bring a lunch to work, but sometimes I’ll walk with my coworkers as they pick up lunch just so that I can get some sunshine and fresh air. Such was the case last Wednesday (or was it Thursday?) when I walked with Bryan as he went to BOAT for some Chick-Fil-A. As we approached the counter, we both spied a tray of brownies under a clear dome. I’m not one to turn down a brownie and yet I wasn’t sure if I wanted a full brownie’s worth of sugar; so, I offered to split one with Bryan.

He declined and suggested that I just get one for myself and that I could tell him about it afterwards (well, voila, Bryan). I bought the brownie — 99¢ + tax — and took it back with me to the office to have as a snack sometime that afternoon. Sure enough, I ate the brownie, and here’s how I would rate it on its various metrics:

• Chewiness — the brownie was similar in some ways to vending machine brownies in that it was oddly chewy, almost to the point of gumminess. I blame corn syrup for this (HHOS).

• Texture — while I’m not one to turn down an extra-thick fudge brownie, some of my fondest memories are of brownies with a more cake-like density. Not that I want a brownie to resemble cake, but I like to be able to bite through a brownie without conscious effort. This brownie was dense but fakely-so; I wouldn’t be surprised if flour was absent from their recipe.

• Chocolatiness — the brownie had a chocolate flavor to it (so far, so good) but it was a fairly meek chocolatiness. Then again, I’m a bit of a chocolate fiend — I’m the kind of guy that would want to make s’mores out of 70% dark chocolate (which, come to think of it, would be tasty right about now).

• Nut Coverage — the brownie was topped liberally and homogeneously with chopped walnuts. These were just fine.

• Temperature Bonus Factor — if the brownie was served hot or warm, I would have offered bonus points for that; but, I consider it just a bonus as I’ve had some very good brownies in the past that were just served at room temperature.

I did make my way through the whole brownie, which is saying something. (I have tossed halfway-eaten desserts before, such as a cake batter ice cream + brownie chunk mixed ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery. Their ice creams are normally tasty but the brownie chunks in this one took on a texture resembling melted gummi bears.)

Back to Chick-Fil-A’s brownies, though. Supposing that a 50% rating signified a brownie that was nether good-tasting nor bad-tasting, I’d rate this one at 55%. If someone were to offer one to me for free, I’d probably take one. But, I don't think I’d buy one on my own. Then again, can much more be expected from a 99¢ brownie?

I like cooking shows as much as the next guy (well, ok, maybe a little more than the next guy) and I have a soft spot for some reality shows as well. So, I've been having a great time watching Cooking Under Fire — a cooking/reality show airing, of all places, on PBS. In this show, there’re three judges, Ming Tsai, Todd English and Michael Ruhlman. Tsai is the host of several cooking shows, English owns multiple restaurants in New York and Ruhlman is a successful food author.

There’re twelve contestants and they each cook dishes for the judges; a contestant is eliminated after each round and the winner will be awarded a job at one of Todd English’s restaurants in New York. In some ways, this is my favorite variety of reality show — sure, it’s rooted in reality, but each of the contests is merit-based rather than just luck. So, simply the best cook wins; it's not just a matter of seeing who can balance on a log the longest or something equally obtuse.

Cooking Under Fire is an excellent show and I look forward to it every week. Then, I heard about another cooking-based reality show, Hell’s Kitchen which airs on Fox. This too features a set of aspiring cooks that want to win a job in the host’s restaurant (in this case, there is just a single judge/host, chef Gordon Ramsay). The difference this time around is that Ramsay is an asshole.

I had my TiVo record the premiere episode last night and I eagerly sat down to watch it later that evening. The show opened with the obligatory meet-and-greet where the contestants were in their finest attire in some ballroom drinking sparkling wine as they tried to get to know one another. A little while into the evening, two of Ramsay’s sous chefs were introduced and they addressed the group. They informed the group that the contest won’t be easy and that chef Ramsay demands perfection… blah blah blah.

At this point, they revealed to the contestants that the contest was starting right now and that they had to prepare their “signature dish” for chef Ramsay using the adjacent kitchen. As if riding the cliché wagon for all its worth, the sous chef with the shaved head then yelled to the group, “What are you waiting for?! Go!”. So, the group rushed off to the kitchen to prepare their dishes (still in their fine clothes, of course).

Now, it would have been one thing to have each of the contestant’s kitchen attire (“chef’s cloak”?) on hand, but that wasn’t the case. More importantly, though, the contestants didn’t have access to their own knives; rather, they had to scrounge around to find some knives to use within the kitchen. To you and I, knives are probably pretty similar from one to the next. But, through watching countless cooking shows — all in the name of research, natch — I’ve learned that chefs consider their own set of knives a unique personal asset.

Or, put another way, foisting an unfamiliar set of knives upon a chef would be like requiring a developer to use an foreign editor. Say you like to use Crimson Editor or maybe HTML Kit but then your boss forced you to use Emacs all day? Well, how do you like them apples?! Not so much fun, eh? (And, before the Emacs guys jump on me, I only used your beloved editor as a hypothetical example; feel free to substitute Vi there if you would feel better.)

To show such disrespect for these aspiring chefs astounded me. But, it didn't end there. After everyone’s dishes were ready, Ramsay began tasting them. He walked over to a pasta dish and started by asking who prepared it; a guy in his mid-20s stepped forward and stated that it was “Andrew’s Awesome Penne” (though I have a hunch about the fellow’s name, I’m not certain I remembered it correctly). In any case, Ramsay tasted the food and then spat it out into his hand.

Granted, this guy is probably used to “the best of the best” but that gesture was simply unnecessary. Of course, Ramsay began berating the guy at this point for what he considered a lousy dish and I just (beep-boop-boop) deleted the show and its Season Pass from my TiVo. I’m all for reality shows with civility and especially reality cooking shows; but where does this acridity come from? Maybe I should’t have expected such high standards from Fox.

While I was in England earlier this month, we stopped in a Sainsbury’s to pick up some goodies. I think Adrian wanted some Hobnobs and I wanted to find some more Marmite since I was running low.

I don’t think Adrian found Hobnobs there but he did pick up several packs of Aeros. And, I got some goodies as well. I found the Marmite which I was looking for and I also picked up a couple chocolate bars, one Lindt 85% Chocolate bar and one Nestle Double Chocolate bar (which has “pieces of pure roasted cocoa encased in creamy milk chocolate”). So, I’d say it was a successful trip. However, the unsuccessful (read: bone-headed) part came next — I forgot to pack those when at the end of the trip.

I was flying out before either my brother or my parents and I was hoping that one of them might take my forgotten goodies with them and then mail them to me. As it turns out, I just happened to check my back patio today and I found a package waiting for me. (Sometimes the post office or UPS will drop off packages there, which is usually handy since the patio is enclosed with a fence and any packages there aren’t viewable from the parking lot.) However, I also normally keep the blinds which face the patio closed. So, either the driver would need to leave a delivery slip or I’d just have to check manually.

UPS is good enough to leave a slip on my front door when they leave a package at the back and so does the post office… most of the time. But, they left no slip this time and it was only by chance that I saw the package — I was opening the blinds to let some sun in and I noticed the package there. I opened it and discovered my goodies inside (whee!) but I then took a closer look at the package itself. The postage-sticker in the top-right corner had already become yellowed from sitting out in the sun. And, I then noticed the postmark — April 5th (last Tuesday).

I’m still not sure when the package arrived, but I'm guessing that it could have arrived on Friday (on the early side) or Monday (at the latest). So, the package was sitting outside for two days at least and I had no idea it was out there. Now, were this a package full of books or clothes, that would have been harmless. But, my mind soon turned to the chocolate inside. I gingerly opened the box and pulled out the first bar, the Lindt, which was mostly solid (whew). However, I was not so lucky with the Nestle Double Chocolate bar — as I lifted it from the package, it wilted in my hands.

“Well, it should still taste the same”, I thought to myself. So, I just put both bars in the fridge to reharden. In some ways, this is the same problem as having cookies right out of the oven — they look so tempting but they just need to cool for a little while before they’re ready for eating. And I knew that trying to eat the bars in their current state just wouldn’t help at all. But, I suppose it’s already been over a week since I got back from the trip and I should be able to wait one more day before diving in ;).

Some coworkers and I went out to lunch last week at T.G.I. Friday’s and, as I had a late breakfast that day, I didn’t really want something too heavy. I started looking over their lunch menu and noticed that they had a Cobb salad — and considering that Cobb salads have both avocado and blue cheese, I could hardly resist. But, if you’re not familiar with Cobb salads, here’s the gist of how they got started:

One night in 1937, Bob Cobb, then owner of The Brown Derby, prowled hungrily in his restaurant’s kitchen for a snack. Opening the huge refrigerator, he pulled out this and that: a head of lettuce, an avocado, some romaine, watercress, tomatoes, some cold breast of chicken, a hard-boiled egg, chives, cheese and some old-fashioned French dressing. He started chopping. Added some crisp bacon — swiped from a busy chef. […]

Now, I don’t think the T.G.I. Friday’s version had watercress and I can't recall whether it had chives, but this was a fantastic salad. As described by their menu, their Cobb salad has “chilled chargrilled chicken, crisp bacon, avocado, Colby cheese, egg, black olives, tomatoes and Bleu cheese on salad greens”:

• Grilled chicken: Unlike some poseur grilled-chicken ### salads (like the grilled chicken Cesar salads that some restaurants have), the chicken was sliced into bite-sized pieces. It always annoyed me when restaurants slapped4” slices of chicken onto a salad; but, that wasn’t the case here.

• Bacon: This was real bacon, natch, and not some of that soybean-based fake bacon. And, it was cooked to a point of crispiness (but not yet crunchiness) which, as I see it, may the optimal texture for salad-based bacon.

• Avocado: Here’s where the salad really shone. Of course, I'm a bit of an avocado fiend as it is and I'll order nearly anything if avocado is a primary ingredient. However, nothing ruins an avocado-based dish more quickly than unripe avocado (bleh). But, this avocado was ripe and soft — I really couldn’t believe that Friday’s hadn’t screwed this part up as restaurants so often use almost-ripe avocados on hamburgers and the like.

• Hardboiled egg halves: Other than overcooking them, it's hard to flub a hard boiled egg. And, sure enough, these eggs were cooked properly and halves (which meant that I didn’t have to manually slice them myself).

• Diced black olives It doesn’t look like diced olives were part of the original salad, but they worked well here. And, like the eggs, it’s hard to incorrectly add olives to a salad ;).

• Blue cheese: Like the avocado, the blue cheese was another stand-out in this salad. Really, I was expecting a few pea-sized bits of blue cheese scattered throughout the salad, but the blue cheese in this salad was generously sized, of which some chucks were almost approaching the size of those bite-sized (cube-shaped) candybars that are popular around Halloween.

At the time I ordered it, I was thinking to myself that I’d “just have a salad” and that I’d order “something more substantial” next time. But, this salad had a deliciousness that surpassed my expectations and I’ll definitely have one again sometime.

I went to SXSW last weekend and got back to Dallas Tuesday evening. Then, the following day (Wednesday), there was the DFWBlogs March Cocktail Event at New Amsterdam Coffee Haus (which actually is a bar, contrary to what you might think). I actually wasn't sure if I’d go, but decided to give it a try as I had heard that there might be some new bloggers there.

I ended up getting a bit lost on my way there and wound up about ten minutes late. Now, even though ten minutes late is still “on-time” in the DFW-blogiverse, I still expected that there’d be a few people there ahead of me. However, as I walked in the door, I took a quick look around and soon realized that I was the only one there. So, I just ordered a drink and sat down at a table which looked big enough to hold several more people. And, fortunately, New Amsterdam has an excellent beer selection; I certainly didn’t mind a few quiet moments as I sipped my Chimay White.

As I waited, I peered around the place and took in their decor. Soon enough, a few other bloggers arrived — Leia, Matt, Julie and Andrew walked in about the same time. Each of them ordered a drink and, as we began talking, we soon realized that neither Leia nor I had dinner beforehand. Leia mentioned off-handedly that the last time the DFWBlogs happy hour was at New Amsterdam, the group went off to Cafe Brazil afterwards. That sounded pretty good, actually, and I suggested that we could go get some dinner there.

After finishing our drinks — and meeting new-blogger Heidi — we closed our tabs and headed off to Cafe Brazil. And, as an illustration of the goofy road patterns in the area, I recall that Matt’s directions to get to Cafe Brazil went something like this: “ Go left on Exposition Ave and then turn left onto Elm Street. Well, actually, you don’t need to turn left onto Elm — Exposition just curves around and then becomes Elm.”

We drove to Cafe Brazil and there were plenty of free tables; we were seated just about as soon as we got there. And, while I often order a make-your-own omelette when I go to Cafe Brazil (with chorizo, feta and sun-dried tomatoes), I felt like something a bit sweeter this time. I turned to the breakfast section of the menu and the pancakes caught my eye. Of course, the menu only said “pancakes” and didn’t make it clear whether fruit-filled pancakes were available (such as blueberry pancakes which would have hit the spot right about then).

When our server came around to take our order, I just asked him what kinds of pancakes they had. I recall that there were plain, chocolate chip and some third variety of pancakes. Well, that made my choice easy — I could hardly resist a dish featuring both pancakes and chocolate. And, just to ensure some protein intake within the meal, I also ordered a side of chorizo.

Our food arrived a little while later and I dug right in. And, I’m not sure if this is typical of all breakfast-is-our-specialty restaurants, but these were some enormous pancakes — each of the three pancakes was about 6-8 inches across and about a third of an inch thick. Sure enough, there were chocolate chips in there. But, the thickness of the pancakes worked to their disadvantage. I mean, let’s not kid around — this was a chocolate-chip delivery vehicle which happened to be in a circle and I just wanted as many chocolate chips in each bite as possible.

To the cook’s credit, it was evident that the chocolate chips were added as the pancakes were cooking (as opposed to adding right into the batter) as chips might have all sunk to the bottom of the mixing bowl otherwise. With this manual chip-sprinkling midway through the cooking process, the chips were evenly distributed. But, the pancakes were so thick that even a 2" x 1" slice — a throughput of perhaps two to three chocolate chips — still left me with a mouthful of pancake.

Perhaps some thinner pancakes would resolve this. Nothing crazy or crepe-like (not that I would be opposed to that) but perhaps something closer to a quarter-inch thick. That should be thick enough to remain structurally sound when transferring them off the cooking surface while ensuring the most favorable chip-to-batter radio. Not that these were bad pancakes — they were soft and delectable — but they did have that area for improvement.

Come to think of it, most restaurant-pancakes are pretty thick, if memory serves. Maybe it’s just that their customers like the spectacle of a pile of plate-filling pancakes. So, I suppose I’ll just have to make my own chocolate-chip pancakes to get them properly unthickified. (And, that reminds me of the DFWBlogs-breakfast which we had about two years ago. Everyone joined in and we cooked up a huge breakfast; I wouldn’t be opposed to trying that again sometime.)

Leia, Matt and I went out for lunch yesterday. We didn’t have a particular place in mind, so we just started wandering around the West End (since that’s where our office is now). We came across Tony Roma’s which sounded pretty good; so we walked in.

It was maybe 1:30 at this point, so the restaurant was fairly empty. We were seated at a table near the bar and I soon noticed the above par number of beer bottles featured along the shelf behind the bar (but, I just ordered water with lunch, natch). The menus were tri-fold glossy jobbies, which is about what I expected. And, as I started looking through the menu, Leia helpfully pointed out that they had blue cheese burgers. “Well, that makes my choice easy!”, I said as I refolded my menu back to its compact form.

We placed our orders and the food arrived didn’t take long to arrive. Leia had barbecued chicken with broccoli on the side, Matt had a barbecue chicken sandwich and I had the blue cheese burger (also with broccoli on the side). From that point forward, the experience became a bit surreal. As we ate our meals, we couldn’t help but notice the awful music piped over the speaker system, a smattering of mid-80s not-really-hits, if I recall. And, what was even more bizarre, as our server came by to fill up our glasses from a pitcher of water, I noticed that she was quietly humming along to this schlock.

But, back to the food. I ordered the blue cheese burger, of course, and even though blue cheese alone is usually enough to entice me to order a dish of Ingredient X + Blue Cheese, I saw when I was reading the menu that their blue cheese burger also featured bacon — which was only a further bonus. Jumping back in the timeline a bit, when the food first arrived and the server was handing the plates from her servers’ tray to our table, the burger whet my appetite: the blue cheese was sprinkled liberally across the face of the patty and the buns appeared to be toasted as well. I soon learned that appearances could be deceiving.

I was initially pleased that the burger included not one but two slices of tomato. However, they proved to be largely useless — they were about a third of an inch thick each and, even with one slice, the hamburger was too tall to fit my mouth. The tomato slices were soon placed to the side. And, as I gripped the bun, about to take a bite, I couldn’t help but notice that the bun was actually a bit sticky. It didn’t leave a residue on my fingers but there was definitely some adhesion to my fingertips somewhat similar to the effect of Post-It notes.

My first couple bites were mostly bun-filled, but that’s not uncommon for hamburgers in general. As I ate towards the center of the burger, something seemed awry with the burger but I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Then, as I noticed myself having to wash down a bite with a sip of water, it dawned on me that the patty was of the subsaharan variety. Imagine for a moment chomping down on a dry kitchen sponge placed inside a hamburger bun; that would approximate both the texture and moisture content of this hamburger. Now, I’m not saying that this was the worst hamburger that I’ve ever had. Oh wait, yes I am.

After braving through our meals, we set out to pay our bill. Leia and Matt opted to use cash while I paid for my portion with a credit card. At this point, it was probably after 2:00 — we were almost the only people in the restaurant — but it took what seemed like 10-15 minutes for our server to run the card. All the same, while my hamburger may have been less than ideal, I might be willing to give Tony Roma’s the benefit of the doubt; maybe they were having an off-day, or maybe hamburgers just aren’t their specialty. So, if my coworkers want to go for lunch there again sometime, I may just give that a try. But, I’ll probably order a non-beef entree from their menu ;).

I brought some cupcakes in to work last week and I thought I’d share the recipe here. Thinking over what I should bring, I was looking for something more substantial than a cookie, but still hand-held (for the sake of easier office eating). I soon narrowed it down to cupcakes and I looked through the cupcakes section of AllRecipes to see if anything caught my eye — and the Chocolate & Cream Cheese cupcakes sounded pretty good.

So, I bought some cream cheese and cocoa over the weekend and made the cupcakes later that week. I made them with Splenda and I’m pleased with how they turned out. And, other than the flour and chocolate chips, the cupcakes were relatively low carb (well, by cupcake standards, anyway). There’s also a photo of the cupcakes at the RD2 blog. Anyhow, on to the recipe:

Black Bottom Cupcakes I

Prep Time: approx. 30 Minutes
Cook Time: approx. 30 Minutes
Ready in: approx. 1 Hour
Makes 2 dozen cupcakes (24 servings)

Ingredients:

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips [regular-sized chips worked fine for me]
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar [or Splenda, natch]
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder [I upped this to a heaping 1/3 cup, as recommended in the reviews]
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup water [I used a cup of milk instead, as recommended in the reviews]
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C). Line muffin tins with paper cups or lightly spray with non-stick cooking spray. [I both lined and sprayed, just to be sure.]

2. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese, egg, 1/3 cup sugar and 1/8 teaspoon salt until light and fluffy. Stir in the chocolate chips and set aside.

3. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, 1 cup sugar, cocoa, baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Make a well in the center and add the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla. Stir together until well blended. Fill muffin tins 1/3 full with the batter and top with a dollop of the cream cheese mixture.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes [I only baked mine for about 20 minutes, as recommended in the reviews].

The only change I might make would be to make extra cream cheese topping next time, as I almost didn't have enough for all of the cupcakes. But, other than that, I think I’d make these again sometime.