I felt like making plain, old-fashioned chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. I used my most reliable source of recipes, an old Fine Cooking magazine. If you want to frost these using a pastry bag and tip, double the frosting recipe – the recipe calls for spreading the frosting on with a knife, which uses less frosting than piping it on. I prefer my frosting piped on.

• Chocolate Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Frosting (Fine Cooking #21, July 1997, p. 35)