Chocolate, Coffee, SATs, and Life...

Nothing wakes one up better than the scent of freshly brewed coffee, right?  I beg to differ.  I had to conjure up every ounce of strength not to break my diet after taking the picture seen above - my version of Starbucks Caramel Mocha, in cupcake form of course.  I used decaf in these so my daughter could nibble on them if she wanted to, but I imagine these would jump start you into action on a cold Monday morning if made with 100% caffeinated coffee.  I love coffee.  A little over 8 years ago I used to be an addict, the "Hi, my name's Sahar, and I'm a coffeeholic" kind. Not only did I have six cups of coffee a day, I put coffee into everything I consumed.  I sprinked granules into my cereal, stirred them into my ice cream, and even had a secret stash of Kopiko for those AP Bio all-nighters.  The stash never lasted all night, obviously.  One night at the dinner table one of the girls pointed out how jittery my hands were, and called for an intervention.  Many years later here I am, no more jitters, and completely cured of my caffeine fix.  In fact it doesn't affect me anymore.  I have to think of other measures when I want to feel awake, because coffee just doesn't cut it.  Here's why, though.  It isn't because I haven't had a good, honest cup of coffee in a while.  It's because I've been dosing myself with caffeine in small amounts, unknowingly.  Caffeine isn't in just tea and coffee, man, it's EVERYWHERE! Who doesn't like chocolate, huh? Well do you know how much caffeine you're consuming in a single bar?  I'm a dark chocolate fan - nothing less than 60% cocoa.  Hey, it's supposed to be good for you! That and green tea, which I'm again a very heavy consumer of.  There's the other source of caffeine in my life!  Anyway I'm railing off the subject here... the point of this rant was to tell you how the cupcakes came into being.  So the other day I was missing a bunch of things I had to let go on this diet of mine, the most important being chocolate.  It's excruciatingly hard to open the freezer (yes, I like my chocolate frozen rock solid), see all that left over Ghirardelli, and walk away.  My fingers were itching to bake and all I needed was an excuse.  I found one, in the form of my cousin.  She had to travel all by herself, for the very first time, to a different city in order to take a standardized test.  I hate those so much, by the way.  I was never a bad student, but standardized tests just aren't my forte - I kind of get creeped out sitting like a robot in such a controlled environment,  reminds me of a creepy Bryan Adams video. ANYWHO so my cousin's back and what better to treat her with than chocolate and coffee?  Coffee for all the nights she probably put in studying for a standardized test (Come on, cuz, really?) and chocolate because thats what I like to celebrate with!  That's how I came up with these... coffee infused dark chocolate cupcakes, filled with homemade caramel, and topped with coffee buttercream, oh and more caramel.  In fact I think these are good enough to celebrate life... it's a bittersweet symphony anyway, isn't it?