Mexican Black Bean Savory Cupcakes with Whipped Sweet Potato “Frosting”

I first discovered Mexican Black Bean Savory Cupcakes in Mount Shasta. No, they weren’t being served at the local café with the psychedelic art on the walls. They weren’t being sold at Berryvale Market nor were they recommended to me by the dudes reading tarot cards on the sidewalk outside. And, to my knowledge, unlike rose quartz, these cupcakes will not open your heart and crown chakras.

…now I kind of want to google “chakra-opening cupcakes”.

I discovered the recipe via an internet search for savory cupcakes. Sophia was out of the room at the time. When she returned and saw the webpage I was looking at, she said something like, “Ooooh-kay…”

Sophia’s skepticism was borne from sound mind, turns out. I wasn’t ready to hear it because I was like, Imma cupcake rebel, I don’t need your sound mindy-ness.

But that’s life’s rich pageant, oui? Deliberately ignoring the sound mindy-ness of trusted peers?

It’s not like these cupcakes didn’t turn out like they were Supposed To. I have all reason conclude that the feat was executed with accurate precision. The only way in which these cupcakes were altered from the original recipe was that I used cow’s milk and real butter instead of unsweetened soymilk and margarine (as you can see by clicking on this link, it was a dairy free website).

Despite my lack of deviation from the original recipe, the recipe did NOT yield 12 cupcakes like it said it would. It yielded more than that, resulting in challenges with storage and how I could possibly consume all those cupcakes (it’s far easier to persuade my parents to eat the cupcakes I make when they’re Of The Traditional Cupcake Palette, so I was on my own with these ones).

Count ’em: not twelve.

Mind you, the cupcakes weren’t inedible, nor was the frosting. The whipped sweet potato frosting was basically mashed potatoes. Aside from the frosting being too soft to be texturally compatible with the cupcake, the flavors in the cake (black beans and chili powder to name a few) begged for something different. Sour cream was the first thing that came to mind, quickly followed by cheddar cheese with green onion. After trying and not being won over by the cupcake-frosting combination as prescribed by the recipe, I ended up scraping the mashed potatoes off. This suddenly made the cupcakes stackable, which made storing them WAY easier.

Since then, I’ve been whittling down the leftover cupcakes in a series of more Mexican combinations. The cakes have been consumed in delicious rice bowls, burritos (I suggest brown rice + red salsa + cheddar cheese to accompany), and, my favorite, experimental microwave-enchiladas assembled with whatever was relevant and readily available.

On a side note, this was my first time using a pastry bag (thanks for the pastry bag, Sophia!). Assuming I’m not making some unknown-to-me, grievous error in pastry bag usage, pastry bags are a pain. They’re valuable tools, but it’s much easier to negotiate with a knife. It’s an experience worth repeating if the cupcakes super-duper call for the effect, but for someone who primarily makes cupcakes for homework avoidance and herself, the pastry bag won’t become a usual suspect in future baking endeavors.

The pastry bag experience also put the common recipes’ lopsided cupcake-to-frosting ratio into perspective. Just by the way pastry bags are, you lose some frosting when you use them.

Definition in legs and rest of body
not given... because they weren’t
the point.

If after reading this post, you have an inkling that you’d enjoy this recipe more than I did, it is by no means my intention to discourage you from pursuing the inkling. Who knows: perhaps the cupcakes will open your crown chakra!