Karova Cookies and Black Bottom Cupcakes

Perhaps one of the most wonderful things any girl could ask for is a little bit of chocolate.  Last night I was thinking about sunshine and fruit and summertime, and concluded that only chocolate could improve the picture.  Today was a fulfillment of my chocolate obsession.  I was thinking of making the tried and true karova cookies, or going in a new direction with black-bottom cupcakes.  Or...both.

Yeah, both is definitely the way to go.  

As soon as I finished making the karova cookie dough and stuck it in the fridge, I started mixing cream cheese and sugar and egg.  When I pulled the mixing bowl off the mixer, I found something odd - a half stick of butter sitting behind the KitchenAid.  The cupcakes require no butter, so this was quite the discovery.  I had thought the dough was especially crumbly for the karova cookies, and here was the reason.  Half a stick of butter had come flying out of the mixer to lurk in the shadows.  I left the butter for the moment, emptying the mixer contents into a bowl then adding the dry ingredients, making a cavern, adding the wet ingredients, and pouring the whole mess into cupcake liners.  Then the cream cheese mixture was dolloped in the middle of each cupcake and I pushed it all in the oven.  

Now, what to do with the extra butter.  With the fate of a whole batch of cookies hanging in the balance, the only thing to do was beat up the butter, pull out the dough, and add it back to the mixer to create the right butter/sugar/cocoa/flour/delicious ratio.  It came together beautifully and even let me push the dough into its rightful square log shape without the loss of any dough pieces.  No harm done.  

The cupcakes are out of the oven and the cookies will be chopped and cooked within the hour.