Chocolate cupcakes with espresso cream cheese frosting

I am still on a roll with the online photography challenge. Today’s submission was a tribute to Frida Khalo and we were asked to include something autobiographical, something that would tell the viewers about the person behind the camera. There were beautiful entries as always and since Khalo was known to paint her own images, many took that challenge and photographed themselves. Me? not in a million years. I submitted an image (below) of chocolate cupcakes with red buttercream frosting. Here is why.

My sense of Khalo is first of bold colours and flowers, then of her defining love affair with Diego Rivera. Did you know that she also had a romantic relations with Trotsky while he was exiled to Mexico? I find that interesting. That woman was ahead of her time.

Khalo said she was painfully lonely and that was why she took to painting herself. Considering that her life seemed full and she was seldom alone, I reflected on her sense of loneliness and it reminded me of a poem, “Solitude”, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train
but one by one we must all file on
through the narrow isles of pain

Since we were asked to reveal something about ourselves through the image I made it red and black, both colours that represent who I am….bold….mysterious….. and I added a piece of jewelry, red coral and pearl necklace that I had made in Mexico by an artist. I am sure Frida would have loved that piece.

So for this post I am sharing a recipe of chocolate cupcakes with a little simpler frosting, made with cream cheese, butter and espresso. It’s easy to make and nice to have around every now and then. I make it basically in one bowl, no mixer and it works fine.