Almost raspberry blackout cupcakes

Yesterday afternoon I baked.
I baked with zeal and I baked with joy.

I made "VWAV" infamous raspberry blackout cake- with a few changes:
Apple juice concentrate instead of sugar, and strawberry jam, because I didn't have raspberry- oh and some prune puree, because I don't know why!!?

After seeing cake after beautiful cake- of the chocolate variety on flickr, I had a keen hankering for some good ol' chocolate cake.
Truth be told, I've always sucked at making chocolate cake, I'm not sure what it is, maybe because I'm not one of those 'chocolate people'.

It must have been that pesky habit of mine- recipe tweaking!:

As the cupcakes came out ok yummy.. just not as sensational as I imagined this cake should be..

But the big bad cake critic who is my husband gave them the thumbs up- even without frosting (!!?) as did my friends little family-

Her 3 year old son, gave me a big chocolate toothed grin, as he mumbled

"I like this"

The era of frosting is over..
I was going to make a combination frosting: ganache/buttercream..

As I reached for the partially hydrogenated vegetable spread, all the articles about the link between, hydrogenated fats and heart disease, flooded into my half baked brain..
They are believed to potentially increase ones chance of heart disease by 85%!!
So, no more buttercream for me.
And I wonder about the idealism of veganism- good for the environment, good for the animals.. just maybe I can't have my cupcake frosted, and eat it too..