black-bottom cupcakes
I’ve always thought one of the best lines in Pulp Fiction is wedged almost unnoticeably early on. Fabienne tells Butch that she wants a pot belly because she thinks they’re sexy on women (though, kind of hilarious, she thinks they make men look oafish). Butch disagrees, tells her she should be happy she doesn’t have one because guys don’t find it attractive. She snips back that she doesn’t give a damn what men like, before musing somewhat sadly that “It’s unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same.”
And I have to admit, if you swapped “touch” with “taste,” you’d have exactly what was going through my head this weekend as I made a quickie batch of David Lebovitz’s famed Black-Bottom Cupcakes from his Great Book of Chocolate. A spin on the classic devil’s food cake, each cupcake gets a dollop of cheesecake filling which is decked out with chopped bits of bittersweet chocolate before it’s baked into something almost too delicious for words. Since they lack frosting, they’re superbly easy to schlep from one place to another, and should you have time to zap them in the fridge, I think they’re a rare cupcake that actually tastes better cold. And seriously, chocolate and cheesecake? It is beyond my comprehension how everyone does not dream about this flavor contrast. I know we here in the SmitKitch certainly do.
