cupcakes blacker than sin

my fabulous mother-in-law's birthday was this week.



this is me and mother-in-law at a sock hop, circa 2010.



this is mother-in-law using only the powers of her mind to levitate a bouncy ball on my first hancock christmas.



this is one of our earliest hancock+missy family portraits at a cross-dressing charity event back in the day. (wasn't jeremy just radiantly beautiful? btw in case you are wondering, brother-in-law there in the front was tammy fae baker, complete with real-weepy-action.)

i realize that some people might read that "fabulous mother-in-law" statement and assume that i say it sarcastically. but no, i pretty much won the in-laws lottery. totally love the hancocks. as a matter of fact, i am sending purposely annoying text messages to my brother-in-law [just for fun times] while writing this post! (where is your mom, ben? "i don't know" well did she tell you any of her plans for tonight? "no she did not" BUT I MADE CUPCAKES, BENJAMIN!!! CUPCAKES, DO YOU HEAR ME?! good thing he is a patient lad.) anyway, the point is, love my in-laws, i'm a lucky ducky.

so anyways, we did not celebrate my mother-in-law's b-day on wednesday due to her currently ridiculous work schedule ... but tonight, we acknowledge the date of her birth. so i did the only thing i know to do in these situations.

i baked something.

but i didn't just bake any old something. no, no. i baked cupcakes. dark chocolate cupcakes. flourless, deep dark chocolate cupcakes. yes i did.



super moist, super chocolatey, blacker than sin.

and so then i was like .. you can't just take unfrosted cupcakes to a woman that you respect for her birthday. it's just ridiculous. however, i really suck at making frosting. it consistently turns my kitchen into a disaster area, it's always heavy and gritty and gross and you can feel your teeth rotting from all the sugar ... blech. so instead, i made whipped cream. stabilized whipped cream for long-lasting-action.

and then i was like, what makes whipped cream better?



and then jeremy opened a cabinet where he had stashed my cake-testing toothpicks (the nerve .. can you even imagine?) and there was a bottle of jack daniels.



the finished product, topped with some bittersweet chocolate shavings.

i don't mean to toot my own horn here but ... *toot toot*.


**editor's note**

so then jeremy got confused and thought today was National Be Really Boring Day and he fell asleep on the couch with tillie mae (that little skank waffle)((pictured below))



and so i was bored and made a ganache with my leftover bittersweet chocolate. i thought i'd be real slick and dip the whipped cream-topped cupcakes in the ganache, but my first attempt resulted in catastrophic failure.



so i drizzled it on, instead. never let it be said that missy hancock was afraid to gild a lily.