Restaurant Review: Las Flamas

Las Flamas - lunch on November 29, 2013

The day after Thanksgiving last week, my sister's boyfriend took our family out for lunch.  He wanted to take us out to Mexican food and originally we were going to La Paloma but when we drove there for lunch last Friday, they had a sign on the door saying that they weren't opening until 4 pm that day to let their employees have more time off for Thanksgiving.  Good for them!

It did mean, however, that we had to go looking for a new place to have Mexican food for lunch.  Fortunately, we found Las Flamas just down the street.  From the outside, it almost looks like a Mexican version of an L&L Hawaiian barbecue.  It's very casual, you can sit down and order for dine-in or place an order at the counter for takeout. It doesn't necessarily fit the stereotype of "dive" or "hole in the wall" because the place is mostly glass walls so there was plenty of light and it was bright and clean.

Freshly fried tortilla chips served warm and crunchy - yum

But if you have a stereotype that most hole in the wall places sometimes have the best food, Las Flamas can live up to that generalization.  I don't usually eat Mexican food because a) I like fried tortilla chips a little too much for the comfort of my waistband and b) on the opposite end of the spectrum, I don't like or eat a lot of the basic ingredients in Mexican food: tomatoes (nix the salsa), avocado (hold the guacamole), sour cream, or chilies (forget spicy). Plus Mexican dishes are rarely as plain as I like to eat - remember that a French dip of just bread and beef is my idea of a sandwich whereas a typical Mexican dish probably has no less than 8 ingredients in it, including vegetables. Yeah, I have the culinary tastes of a 5-year-old and have yet to develop a taste for 95% of all vegetables.

Fajitas Camaron (Shrimp)

But I was pleasantly surprised by the entrees at Las Flamas.  We all ordered different dishes and every single one of us liked what we got.  The rest of my family enjoys Mexican food a lot more than I do so they didn't have my picky eating hangups to start with. But they're also far more familiar than I am with what good Mexican food should taste like and Las Flamas passed their test. My mom got the shrimp fajitas pictured above and it came with a generous amount of shrimp. The picture below came out weird and blogger doesn't let me rotate it even though I corrected it in the source file.  But this is the some kind of fish entree that my dad got.

My sister's boyfriend got the enchiladas and by the time he was done, his plate was literally clean so I'm going to assume his dish was good.

Enchiladas Poblanas

When push comes to shove, what I usually get at a Mexican restaurant is some kind of fajitas. I can pick out what I won't eat (the onions and green bell peppers) and only fill the tortillas with what I will eat. The beef in the fajitas I ordered was really tender and very good.  What I enjoyed just as much was the flour tortillas themselves.  They came out warm and were soft.  Just perfect.  My dish ended up being a little greasy at the end once the cheese had melted and from the sizzling of the beef on the hot cast iron plate but aside from that, it was delicious.  For less grease, I suggest the shrimp or the chicken fajitas.

Bistek Fajitas (Beef)

My niece got the flautas which she also enjoyed.

Flautas de Pollo

The service was great.  Our waitress was nice, the place wasn't crowded so we received our orders in good time and overall, it was a good dining experience.  If anyone was in town looking for good Mexican food, I'd take them to Las Flamas.  It isn't fancy but it serves good food with a smile and that's worth more to me than a hifalutin' ambiance.

Ina Garten's Lemon Bars

Lemon Bars from The Barefoot Contessa - made November 23, 2013 from Desserted Planet

There's no faster way to use up lemons than to make lemon bars, preferably a recipe that uses the zest and the juice.  Sometimes the zest is the best part of the lemon so I like adding them to lemon desserts whether the recipe calls for it or not. This is the 4th dessert I made for my friend's fundraiser efforts and unfortunately the one that turned out the least well.

It's usually hard to go wrong with lemon bars so I thought I was only taking a small risk by trying this new recipe from the Barefoot Contessa.  Unfortunately, I should've paid closer attention to the proportion of ingredients before I started mixing them together.  The crust part was okay, albeit a bit thicker than I normally prefer in a shortbread crust but that was okay.  It was the filling that got to me.  3 cups of sugar?  Eek. That's a lot of sugar in a lemon bar filling. At first I was worried it would make it too sweet, despite the generous 1 cup of lemon juice the filling also called for.

When this was baking, it seemed my worst fears were justified because the top got really dark, probably because of the high sugar content.  I left it in the oven as long as I dared before it got too dark.  It's hard to burn lemon bars and I didn't want to add that possibility to my list of baking failures.  Turns out my fears of burning were for nothing as were my fears of too much sugar making this too sweet.  Sadly, I had the opposite results.  While the corners and edges appeared done and the filling was firm (almost too firm) the middle was a bit goopy. And far from being too sweet, the lemon bar had so much lemon juice that it was too sour and had a bitter aftertaste.  I think the sourness was partially due to it not being baked long enough. I inadvertently messed it up even further because I was in a hurry when I made these and glazed them quickly with a royal icing glaze in the hopes that it would lighten up the dark top.  But the glaze ended up not setting as much as I had hoped and instead absorbed into the goopiness of the filling. So I had to sprinkle powdered sugar over the goopy glaze over the goopy filling to try and salvage them. Sigh.  Lemon bar fail. Next time I'm sticking with my tried and true recipe.

Crust

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened (8 ounces or 1 cup)
½ cup granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
⅛ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Filling

6 large eggs at room temperature
3 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest (4 to 6 lemons)
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (8 lemons)
1 cup all-purpose flour
Powdered sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9×13 pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. For the crust, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy in the bowl of an electric mixer. Combine the flour and salt and with the mixer on low, add to the butter until just mixed. Add vanilla. Gather the dough into a ball and press gently and evenly into the 9×13 pan. Chill in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
3. Bake the crust for 18 minutes, until very lightly browned. Let cool on a wire rack. Leave the oven on, set to 350 degrees.
4. For the filling, whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and flour. Pour over the crust and bake for 30 minutes, until the filling is set. Let cool to room temperature.
5. Cut into triangles or squares and dust with powdered sugar.

Coconut Macaroon Brownies

Coconut Macaroon Brownies - made November 23, 2013 from allrecipes.com (submitted by Valerie Hatfield)

A third dessert I made for the fundraiser folks.  As with any bake sale or relief efforts, I almost always contribute a brownie and this time was no different.  I've had this recipe in my "to try" file for years and now seemed like a good time. It's a brownie sandwiching a coconut filling; what could go wrong?

Thankfully nothing did.  I only tried a sliver of this just to make sure it was okay before I dropped them off at my friend's house and they seemed fine.  The only thing I found surprising is the brownies weren't as dark chocolate in flavor as I expected, considering the amount of cocoa in them and I used Pernigotti which usually guarantees a dark chocolate flavor, especially in that amount. Otherwise, these were decent.

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Filling
4 cups unsweetened flaked coconut
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking pan.
   In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla. Combine the flour, cream of tartar, cocoa and salt; stir into the egg mixture until well blended. Spread half of this mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan.
2. Make the middle layer. In a medium bowl, stir together the coconut, sweetened condensed milk and 1 tablespoon vanilla. Carefully layer this over the chocolate layer in the pan. Top with the remaining chocolate batter. Spread to cover evenly.
3. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes in the preheated oven, until top is no longer shiny. Cool in the pan before cutting into bars.

Restaurant Review: Nola's

Nola's - lunch on November 21, 2013

The week before Thanksgiving, I took my team out to Nola's in Palo Alto, just off University Ave.  I'd heard of Nola's before from friends who've gone there but this was my first time trying them out.  If you don't know the address, it's easy to miss as its frontage space isn't that of your typical restaurant.  Instead of opening the front door and walking into the restaurant itself, you enter a hallway and go down a paved path set between "buildings" and come upon a number of partitioned rooms, the most open one housing a fountain. If you don't know what to look for, the restaurant is easy to miss and you think you're just passing an alley way.

Once seated and you look around, you realize Nola's is set up to look like a section of Bourbon Street from New Orleans itself.  Instead of one large restaurant, it's multi-level with rooms partitioned off, making it seem like you're entering different buildings on Bourbon St.  There's also a bar area (which is very Bourbon St for anyone who's been to New Orleans).  It's not quite as glitzily tacky as the original Bourbon St but if you've never been to New Orleans before, Nola's could probably tide you over until you see the real thing.

Chicken and Cornmeal Waffles

Spicy Jambalaya

We were seated in the "courtyard" or what seemed like the center of the restaurant on its ground floor.  I ordered the chicken and waffles and thought it was delicious. The waffles came with a scoop of whipped cranberry butter and that was probably the only thing I didn't inhale on the plate as I don't care for cranberries except in my Pumpkin Upside Down Cake.  The cornmeal waffles were served hot, were thin but both tender and crisp and paired well with the chicken.  The chicken itself was tender and juicy, the way good fried chicken should be to make it worth the calories.  The gravy it came with was a trifle too spicy for me but it was still pretty tasty.

One of the salads with herbed focaccia crostini

Mama's Mac n Cheese

I forgot which sandwich this was - with sweet potato fries

It's a standing joke for our team lunches that we have to order at least 1 dessert for the team to share or preferably one for each person but I try not to pressure them (really, or at least I try not to). We'd all been working hard though and had some good appetites this time around so everyone ended up each ordering a dessert. (Ah, they make me so proud.)

N'awlins sampler: beignets, pecan pie, and bread pudding

Our waiter actually laughed at us, not unkindly but in an "are you sure?" way once we'd put in our dessert orders.  When he brought them out, we understood his amusement.  Holy cow, the desserts were huge!  As in they were literally meant for sharing but 4 people ordered 4 desserts so there was a lot, even for my dessert-queen self.

Beignets

The beignets were nice fluffy yeasted fried doughnuts dusted with powdered sugar.  I can't say they were as good as Cafe du Monde's but that's a high bar to reach and they were delicious all the same. Not greasy, not too sweet (although remember I have a high tolerance for sugar) and if I wasn't already full from my entree, I would've probably eaten more than couple of bites.  From the N'awlins Sampler that one of our party ordered, I thought the bread pudding was the best.  I only tried a smidge of the pecan pie and it seemed decent but it didn't a hold a candle to the bread pudding.

Big Fat Brownie Sundae

My own dessert order was for the Red Velvet Waffles and I had them leave off the whipped cream and paid the additional $2 to have it a la mode with vanilla ice cream.  The red velvet waffles were the main reason I wanted to come to Nola's once Jim, one of my friends from a previous company, had posted a description from the menu on Facebook. Red Velvet Waffles?  Of course I was going to try it.  Unfortunately though, they weren't as good as I had hoped or expected.  I don't know if mine were overcooked as a one-off or if they were meant to be served like that but they'd been cooked too long and were dry.  The cream cheese icing helped as did the ice cream but even so, they were tough to eat and I couldn't even finish half a waffle, much less two of them.  Far, far different than the cornmeal waffles in my entree which had been cooked to perfection.  Sniff.

Red Velvet Waffles

Despite that, I'd still say overall that Nola's is pretty good.  If you want something a little different for ambiance, it's a good place to go, especially if you're the meet and mingle type (I'm not very).  But next time I'm getting the bread pudding.

Nutella-Filled Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Nutella-Filled Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough November 22, 2013 from Cookies and Cups

This was one of the cookies I made to help with my friend's fundraiser for Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts. Anything that involves stuffing nutella inside a cookie is worth trying.  Although I have to admit I didn't follow the directions precisely.  Instead of piping nutella dollops and freezing them, I chilled the jar of nutella first then used my mini cheesecake pan with removable bottoms to layer cookie dough on the bottom, drop a scoop of chilled nutella in the center and cover it with another layer of dough.  Then I pushed up the bottom to pop the cookie "blob" out and sealed any cracks so the nutella couldn't escape during baking. This method works pretty well if you have the pan, although it does make fairly chubby cookies (note: that's not a criticism - I always like chubby....in a cookie).

These are fairly rich and you'll only achieve that fudgy texture if you underbake them.  If you fully bake them, the cookies will be dry. I highly recommend letting these cool to room temperature before you try them.  If you eat them when they're too warm, they'll be too mushy.  Normally that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but it's better when the cookie has cooled and has the texture of a fudgy cookie to go with the softer, almost liquid texture of the nutella. You can also taste both the chocolate and the nutella better when the cookie is cool.

 2 2/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups chocolate chips, divided
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup Nutella
*optional flaked sea salt for garnish

1. In bowl off stand mixer cream butter and both sugars for 1-2 minutes until light and fluffy.
2. Add in eggs and vanilla and continue mixing until evenly incorporated.
3. Melt 2 cups of the chocolate chips in microwave or double boiler.
4. Mix in melted chocolate into the butter mixture and evenly combine.
5. With mixer on low add in the dry ingredients and blend until dough forms.
6. Stir in remaining chocolate chips.
7. Chill dough for at least 2 hours.
8. Meanwhile, line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
9. Fill a zip-top or piping bag with Nutella and pipe teaspoon sized amounts onto parchment paper, similar to a Hershey Kiss. You will need 48 dollops of Nutella. Place baking sheet in freezer for at least an hour.
10. When dough and Nutella are chilled preheat oven to 375°
11. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
12. Form cookie dough around each Nutella piece using about 1 1/2 tablespoons of dough. Place on baking sheet about 2 inches apart.
13. Bake for 7-8 minutes.
14. While cookies are baking place Nutella back in freezer, as it will thaw out quickly.
15. Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool.

Thanksgiving Desserts 2013

Every year I'm in charge of supplying desserts for our Thanksgiving Day meal and this year, similar to last year, I also hosted afternoon dessert for extended family the next day. So that was 2 occasions to plan and bake for. But I felt woefully unprepared for this year's baking-fest.  I'm not sure why.  It wasn't like I didn't know Thanksgiving was the 4th Thursday of November and that I couldn't read the calendar as each day passed.  But like a deer frozen in the headlights, I played chicken with time.  And lost.

Which is why I needed to take off the 2 days before Thanksgiving and scramble to plan what I was going to bake, head to Costco and Trader Joe's to buy any missing ingredients and get baking. Last Tuesday was grocery shopping and prep work.  (Wednesday and Thursday was for actual baking.) Fortunately, one of the advantages of being a baking ingredient hoarder is I'm usually well stocked up on the essentials and only had to pick up a few perishable items to make my supply complete.

Thanksgiving Day desserts:
My traditional Pumpkin Upside Down Cake with Cranberries and Caramelized Pecans - this is what we have in lieu of pumpkin pie.  As I've mentioned before, I don't like pumpkin pie and since I'm the one making desserts, yeah, we don't have pumpkin pie. The original recipe for this cake makes a trifle too much caramel so I usually only make 3/4 of the caramel recipe for 1 cake. It doesn't make it as gooey or rich but that's not always a bad thing.  I don't usually like cranberries but they're perfect in this cake to add some tartness and contrast with the sweetness of the caramel.

Pumpkin Upside Down Cake

My niece asked for Banana Butterscotch Caramel Cupcakes which is also one of my favorite cupcakes.  I'd been saving up overripe bananas in my freezer so this was a perfect use for them.  All went well when I got up early to make them on Wednesday: I had a lot of baking and cookie dough making to do so I made up the batter in record time and whisked them into the oven....only to realize 5 minutes later that I had forgotten to add the butterscotch chips to the batter.  Eep.  I yanked them out of the oven and sprinkled some on top of each cupcake but I knew that wasn't going to cut it.  They needed to be mixed into the batter itself  to add that butterscotch flavor to the banana.  After they had baked, the few butterscotch chips I had managed to sprinkle on top had partially sunk into each cupcake and also somewhat melted.

Banana Cupcakes cored in the middle

But I had no intention of accepting a cupcake fail so I cored the middle of each cupcake, warmed up some salted caramel, added more butterscotch chips to it and spooned that in for the filling.  It wasn't perfect but at least I was able to incorporate a little more butterscotch flavor into them.

Filled with salted caramel and butterscotch chips

Top off with the brown sugar frosting and it looks like I had made the cupcakes this way on purpose.

The finished, frosted cupcakes

Those were the two desserts I made the day before Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving Day itself, as soon as the turkey came out of the oven and we sat down to eat, I placed the third dessert in to bake, another family favorite: apple cobbler. The original recipe calls them Apple Crumble Bars but I make it more as a cobbler and serve it warm with ice cream.  Whatever you want to call it, it's good. I only took a picture with my ipad so the quality isn't very good and I forgot to take a better one with my camera. But regardless of how it looks, did I mention it was good? Especially served warm with vanilla ice cream which is how I served it to everyone along with a slice of the pumpkin upside down cake.

Apple Cobbler

Considering the non-dessert Thanksgiving spread, it turned out to be more than enough dessert for the 10 of us on Thanksgiving Day. But of course that didn't stop me from making more sweets for 15 people the following day.  Since 3 of the 15 were kids, I went for the simple rather than the fancy and for once, stuck to recipes I'd made before (click on the caption titles in each picture to go to the recipes).

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

Buttery Tea Balls

Lemon Chip Cookies

Once everyone had arrived or was on their way, I also made the Cinnamon Sugar Banana Lumpia to be served warm at the last minute.

Cinnamon Sugar Banana Lumpia

And just to make sure no one was shortchanged of sugar, I also served the Red Velvet Cheesecake my cousin brought for Thanksgiving.  I'm not a cheesecake person but it was layers of red velvet cake sandwiched with vanilla cheesecake layers and the sliver of the red velvet cake part of it that I tried was pretty good.

Red Velvet Cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory

All in all, when I'm fortunate enough to enjoy good food with family, there's much to be thankful for indeed. And after all that eating, I was also grateful to get to the gym and run 5 miles this morning.  That was probably enough to work off at least 2 cookies. We'll just conveniently ignore everything else I ate beyond those 2 cookies.  Thanksgiving comes only once a year after all.

Thanksgiving 2013

I meant to blog a pre-Thanksgiving post on Wednesday to link the dessert recipes I was working on but I was too busy baking them to get to my blog.  And now Thanksgiving has come and gone and I hope all those who celebrated it had a good one and are suitably stuffed.  I stopped eating around 3:30 pm yesterday and didn't break my fast until 17 hours later this morning if that gives you any indication on how much I had to be grateful for yesterday.

But pictures say a thousand words so here's the pictorial of our Thanksgiving feast yesterday

As a whole, we're not really big on turkey in my family so we had a relatively modest 10-lb turkey.  Based on a tip from Martha Stewart on how to keep the turkey from drying out, my sister wrapped it in parchment paper for most of its baking time.  Towards the last 30 minutes of roasting, she peeled back the parchment and laid strips of bacon over it. It worked because the turkey was pretty moist.

The rice stuffing my mom and my niece made

Below is my mom's mashed potatoes - I don't have the recipe but I was in the kitchen when she and my sister were making it and I was listening to the ingredients that went into it which included sour cream, milk, mayonnaise and butter.  I had to ask "are any potatoes going into that?" LOL. It's garnished with the bacon crumbled from the slices that went on top of the turkey. I didn't have enough room to try them but everyone seemed to like them.

Mashed potatoes

Gravy made from the turkey drippings

My mom also made crab-stuffed chicken breasts.  I didn't have room to try this either at the time but I took some home as leftovers and will have it later this weekend.

Crab-Stuffed Chicken Breasts

My uncle brought lechon and it was really good, very tender and moist.  I haven't had lechon in awhile so I think I ate more lechon than turkey.

Lechon (roast pork)

My mom also made Shrimp Pesto Pasta, a family favorite.  You can't tell from the picture but there's a lot of shrimp underneath the noodles.

Shrimp Pesto Pasta

The ham is from Honeybaked.  My poor mom stood in line for an hour just to get inside the shop then had to wait some more to buy it.  I'm not normally a big fan of ham but it was pretty good.  Even better as leftovers the next day with scrambled eggs.

Honeybaked Ham

This was my plate and I'm only posting this one because I forgot to take an individual shot of my Caramelized Sweet Potatoes, the post that has gotten the most hits over the past few days so I hope other people were able to give them a try as well.  I remembered to add the orange zest this time and it did make the sweet potatoes more orange-y.  They were good that way but I also liked them without the zest.

I will post the desserts separately later on.  I have 14 family members coming to my house this afternoon for dessert so I'd better get off my computer and get ready for them....

Black Bottom Peanut Butter Cups

Black Bottom Peanut Butter Cups - made November 23, 2013 from Chocolatier magazine, Oct 2006 edition

I took today and tomorrow off to do my holiday baking for Thanksgiving weekend.  For our family Thanksgiving, I'm baking the desserts (more on that in a future post) plus I'm hosting a dessert gathering at my place the next day.

I know I'm not the only one busy with all the Thanksgiving preparations.  But in the midst of all the holiday flurry, I'm also mindful of those in the Philippines impacted by Typhoon Haiyan, a stark contrast of all that I have to be thankful for right now versus the numerous Filipinos displaced and struggling to survive the aftermath of the typhoon. I'm not the only one who feels this way; there has also been an outpouring of support in the Filipino community and beyond to help provide aid and relief to the victims of Haiyan.  Stateside, there are numerous fundraisers happening and I was privileged to contribute in some small way to one of them this past weekend through a long-time friend. I offered to bake for the kids and team members behind the fundraiser, about 24 in total so I had some serious baking to do.

Starting with this recipe for a peanut butter and chocolate combination.  It's essentially a dark chocolate cake, "filled" with a peanut butter cream cheese filling and topped with a Reese's peanut butter cup.  Since I was planning to do a variety of treats, I went small on these so people could sample without overcommitting to any one thing. I filled mini cupcake tins with the chocolate cake batter, added a dollop of the peanut butter cream cheese filling in the center (or sort of in the center) and once they were out of the oven, immediately topped them with mini Reese's peanut butter cups which turned out to be the perfect size for mini cupcakes.

These look rather homey (or homely?) as I wasn't super neat about filling the center in a perfect circle but I liked the homemade look of it all.  This was a nice pairing of peanut butter and chocolate.  The cake itself was soft in texture and dark chocolate in taste while the peanut butter cream cheese filling provided the richness. It made quite a bit of batter though.  I made 2 dozen mini cupcakes, 2 dozen brownie-square-sized ones and a dozen regular-size cupcakes. It's important to time these in the oven as the cake, being a more liquid batter than the filling, will bake first while the filling will seem underdone.  That's okay because you don't want to overbake the cake to dryness.  It's better for the cake to be perfectly done and the filling to be slightly underdone. 

Peanut butter-cream cheese filling

6 ounces cream cheese, softened

½ cup creamy peanut butter

2/3 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons bleached all-purpose flour

1 large egg, room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon salt

¾ cup (4 ½ ounces) Nestle swirled milk chocolate and peanut butter morsels, Reese’s pieces or peanut butter chips

Chocolate cupcake batter

3 cups bleached all-purpose flour

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

2/3 cup unsweetened non-alkalized cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

¾ teaspoon salt

½ cup firmly packed golden brown sugar

2 cups lukewarm water

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Garnish (optional)

About 36 small (1” diameter) Reese’s or other peanut butter cup candies, cut in half

1.     Make peanut butter-cream cheese filling: Place cream cheese and peanut butter in bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment.  Beat on medium speed until smooth and creamy.  Gradually add sugar, beating another 1-2 minutes, or until light and fluffy.  Mix in flour until just incorporated.  Add egg, vanilla extract, and salt.  Beat until egg is uniformly incorporated.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Set aside.

2.     Prepare chocolate cupcake batter: Position rack in center of oven and preheat oven to 350˚F.  Line twenty-four 2 ½” diameter muffin cups with paper cupcake liners.  Sift flour, granulated sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt together in large bowl.  Stir in brown sugar, breaking it apart with fork or whisk to evenly distribute it.  Make well in center of dry ingredients and add lukewarm water, oil, vinegar and vanilla extract.  Stir gently until batter is creamy and smooth, pressing out any lumps with fork or back of spatula.

3.     Spoon or pour about 3 tablespoons batter into each lined muffin cup to fill it no more than two-thirds full.  Then top each cupcake with 1 generous tablespoon peanut butter filling.  Bake about 25-27 minutes or until toothpick inserted in cake portion comes out clean.  Allow cupcakes to cool about 15 minutes in pan.  (Note: the cream cheese centers will sink slightly as cupcakes cool.  But, no worries; these little wells are perfect nesting spots for Reese’s cups that will go on top.)  Carefully remove cupcakes from pans and transfer to racks to cool completely.  While cupcakes are still slightly warm, but not hot, place 2-3 peanut butter cup halves on top of each for garnish.  The residual heat from cupcakes should melt peanut butter cups even so slightly, causing them to adhere to cupcake tops.