In a medium bowl, whisk together the confectioner’s sugar and both types of cocoa powder. Set aside.
Beat together butter and cream cheese until smooth.
Add the confectioner’s sugar mixture and salt to the butter mixture and beat until combined.
Add the heavy cream and beat until light and fluffy. Once the frosting is at desired consistency, add in vanilla and mix until combined.
Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cuppies
Ingredients (makes 24)
Cuppies
13/4 cups flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tablespoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), room temperature
2/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
Peanut Butter Frosting
1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick), room temperature
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
2 1/4 cups confectioner’s sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup milk
Instructions
For Cuppies:
Preheat oven to 350˚F. Line two twelve-muffin tins with liners.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powders, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Place butter in a separate mixing bowl and beat with an electric or stand mixer on medium speed for 30 seconds. Add the two sugars and the vanilla and continue to beat until all the ingredients are incorporated together.
Add eggs one at a time, beating after each egg addition until fully incorporated.
Alternately add the flour and buttermilk, mixing on low speed. Add the next addition when your batter is streaky; if you wait too long, you will overmix by the time you’ve added the remaining ingredients. Try folding in the last bit of flour with a spatula to avoid overbeating.
Divide batter among lined muffin cups, filling each cup about 2/3 full.
Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle come out clean.
Immediately remove from tins to a wire rack to cool completely. Fit a piping bag with tip of your choosing, fill with frosting and pipe on the desired amount of peanut butter frosting.
For Peanut Butter Frosting:
Beat together the butter and peanut butter until smooth.
Add the confectioner’s sugar and vanilla to the butter mixture and beat until combined.
Add the milk and beat until light and fluffy. You may add more milk or sugar if needed to achieve the desired consistency.
Strawberry Short-Cuppies
Ingredients (makes 24)
Strawberry Compote
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon cornstarch
4 cups strawberries (fresh or frozen), tops removed
Stabilized Whipped Cream “Frosting”
1 1/2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
6 teaspoons cold water
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
Cuppies
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
6 ounces unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 cups whole milk
Topping
Red or clear edible glitter, optional
Sliced strawberries, optional
Instructions
For Strawberry Compote:
In a medium-sized saucepan, whisk the cornstarch into the water until dissolved.
Set saucepan over medium heat and add sugar, stirring until sugar dissolves.
Add strawberries to saucepan and heat until simmering, then reduce heat to low.
Mash strawberry chunks with a potato masher until the mixture is relatively smooth, like the texture of jam.
Continue simmering until the compote thickens, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and cool completely before filling cuppies.
For Stabilized Whipped Cream “Frosting”:
Place the cold water into a small bowl and sprinkle gelatin over it. Let mixture set for five minutes.
While the gelatin is setting, place the heavy cream, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment.
Place gelatin in the microwave and heat for 10 seconds or until the gelatin turns to liquid.
Beat the cream mixture on high speed for about 1 minute, then pour in the melted gelatin in a slow, steady stream.
Continue beating the cream until stiff, then refrigerate until it’s time to top the cuppies.
For Cuppies:
Preheat oven to 350˚F. Line two twelve-muffin tins with liners.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Place butter in a separate mixing bowl and beat with an electric or stand mixer on medium speed for 30 seconds. Add the sugar and vanilla and continue to beat until all the ingredients are incorporated together.
Add eggs one at a time, beating after each egg addition until fully incorporated.
Alternately add the flour and milk, mixing on low speed. Add the next addition when your batter is streaky; if you wait too long, you will overmix by the time you’ve added the remaining ingredients. Try folding in the last bit of flour with a spatula to avoid overbeating.
Divide batter among lined muffin cups, filling each cup about 2/3 full.
Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle come out clean.
Immediately remove from tins to a wire rack to cool completely.
For the Assembly:
Cut a hole in the top of each cupcake with a paring knife and fill each with about 2 teaspoons of strawberry compote. (The more you can cram in there, the better.)
Fit a piping bag with a tip of your choosing, fill with stabilized whipped cream and pipe on the desired amount of cream.
Sprinkle with a Butter-sized sprinkling of glitter and add a slice of strawberry, if desired.
Acknowledgments
When I was twelve and first decided I wanted to do the words, I would fantasize about this section and all the grateful drops of unicorn spit I’d fling at the page in glee. Now I’m afraid I’ll forget someone impossibly important and get punched in the face.
To my glorious, magical, perfect editor, Lauren Smulski: My darling Ketchup. I SQUEE. You are all the things a writer dreams about when they imagine putting a book baby into the world. I gladly cashed in all my karmic brownie points to end up with you, madam. Your majesty will be honored by a marble fountain I’m having commissioned to stand proudly in my front yard. My HOA can fight me.
Brent Taylor and Uwe Stender. My fellas. My guys who plucked a query about broken vaginas out of the slush and found that book a home. Which is really the best part of all of this—that I will forever be able to say that you two dudes pulled this off. HashtagTeamVagina. You’re both incredible and everything I needed in agents that I worried didn’t exist.
Extra shout-out to Brent for somehow being able to sense my neurotic combustions across state lines. Telepathy is always appre
ciated in an agent.
All the love and snuggles to my HarperCollins/Harlequin/MIRA family. What an incredible team of people to whom I will forever be indebted for your efforts and brilliance. Emily, you are glorious. Shara, you’re a gem and a half. Meghann, you’re a goddess, and your book is friggin’ hilarious. Jennifer, thank you for your talent and for laughing through 360+ pages of vagina euphemisms.
T.S. Ferguson, my soul twin. I am utterly grateful for you.
Huge thanks and love to my Midwest Writers Workshop family. Forever and ever.
Getting to know and love Dee Romito has been the best part of the writing world.
Special love to Dee and Christa Desir for their literary matchmaking skills. I owe you ladies many fruit baskets, and I’m honored to call you friends.
Thank you to Brenda Drake, who will appear in ten thousand acknowledgments sections, and it still won’t be thanks enough for all she does.
Triona, my grammar guide. We will always have the red-faced septuagenarian at our table, and bless you for that. Adriana Cloud, you are a goddamn editing genius, and I am so grateful for you. Amy Reichert, I will eternally aspire to be even a fraction as badass as you. Sarah Cannon, for your chats and support and existence. Katie Glover, for being so very Buttery, and for being the fastest reader in all of time and space. Thank you, ladies. Thank you from the bottom of my fizzy little heart for all you’ve done and all you are.
Mr. S, I thank you for your friendship and Yodaing. You are forever appreciated, sir.
Shannon Teague and the Cake, Hope, and Love crew: Thank you for letting me prance around your shop and for the technical assist and for letting me borrow your name for a particularly awesome character. From a MySpace blog to this, Shannon. What even.
To the handful of cartoon villains who’ve passed through my life over the past thirty-six years: SUCK IT. (If that sentence makes it past my editing team, Twitter owes me $15.)
My soon-to-be sister-in-law, Angela Durall, thank you for all you do, and for periodically keeping my kids alive during deadlines and doctor’s appointments. You absolute angel, you.
To my mother, my sweet Mommy: You were right. You always said there was something there with my writing. Thank you for decades of support and love and for driving me to my first RWA conference when I was twelve. I’m super sorry my first book is about vaginas. I promise the next one will be about puppies or similar so you can tell your friends. Well, puppies or prostitutes. Either/or.
My darling children. My precious babies. I’m sorry you had so many nights of pancakes and mac and cheese when I had wording to do. Thank you for never blowing up the garage or sacrificing your father to our critter overlords while I was talking to myself at the laptop. If you’re reading this book...it had better be the year 2030 or later, or you’re bloody well grounded. Mommy loves you.
Behind many a writer is a spouse wondering WTF they married into. Drew, thank you for being mine. The house only caught on fire once during your watch. (That toaster was shifty anyway.) Thank you forever for the endless support and for doing your best to keep up when I’m freaking about the imaginary people in my head not being accommodating, and for rubbing the migraines out of my neck after fifteen-hour sessions curled up at my desk. Thank you for loving roller coasters so much it makes me happy to go with you, even though they terrify me. And also for finding it hilarious when I scream, “YOU’RE DEAD TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” at you on said rollercoasters. You are loved. You are valued. You are cherished. (We’ve gotta get out of here, baby!)
And finally, a round of applause to my vagina. Thanks for the inspiration, lady. We make a good team.
ISBN-13: 9781488023637
The Awkward Path to Getting Lucky
Copyright © 2017 by Summer Heacock
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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The Awkward Path to Getting Lucky Page 33