These sweet little babes will make you fall. in. love, and I say that with all seriousness! If you’re a chocolate lover (and even if you aren’t) eat with caution… and lots of milk.

What you’ll need: One chocolate cake mix, any will do. My favorite is chocolate fudge, or devil’s food. If you want to get fancy, you can make your own, but seriously? Oil, eggs, and water. Semi-sweet chocolate chips, butter, vanilla, and sweetened condensed milk. Oh, and cupcake paper-thingies.

In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine all your cake mix ingredients. Read the box for instructions, some will vary. EXCEPT, use one less egg than instructed. My cake mix called for three eggs, I put in two. This will make our cake a little less “cakey” and a little more… fudgy… and yummy…trust me.

Mix everything together until you are lump free. I prefer to use a wire wisk, but an electric mixer is fine too.

Measure out about 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Mix them into your batter. You can use more or less here… I vote more.

Line your cupcake pan with liners, you’ll thank me later. If your pans are as old and beaten up as mine are, your cupcakes will turn out extra special.

Get out your 1/4 size measuring cup. I use this to get roughly the same amount of batter into each little space. This batter makes about 20 cupcakes.

Soon, my love.

Bake these gorgeous little suckers in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, and then give them the:

tooth pick check. If it comes out clean, they’re ready! Be careful though, make sure you don’t stick the toothpick into a gooey chocolate chip and mistakenly overcook them. That would ruin your whole day.

Aren’t they pretty?

Now we’re going to get these out of the pan (take them out, for goodness’ sake) and get them on a cooling rack, or on a cool counter if you don’t have one.

While they are cooling, let’s make the icing… the STAR of the show.

Start with two tablespoons of butter.

Melted. 30 seconds in the microwave should do the trick.

Add one can sweetened condesnse milk. Generic is fine, it’s all the same, scout’s honor.

A teaspoon or two of vanilla – not too much!

Two cups of chocolate chips.

Stir everything together. If you’re having trouble getting the chips melted, just pop it into the microwave for no more than 30 seconds.

Keep stirring. Ah, that’s better.

Finally! (That isn’t a hair in that yummy gooey chocolate – I promise.)

Now you need to ice your cupcakes. This part can be tricky because this icing is very warm, and also pretty runny. So what I like to do is sit the icing aside for about ten minutes and let it get firm. Not too firm, but… you know. While that’s going on, I clear a big spot in my refridgerator and lay a sheet of wax paper down. That way, when I ice them, I can stick them right in the fridge.

Why, you ask? Well, since this icing is a little runny, it will run down the sides of your cupcakes. If you stick them right into a cool refrigerator, that will slow the running down drastically and leave your cupcakes looking super cute, like so.

Let them chill out in the fridge for an hour or two to let the icing harden a bit more.

You can also decorate these with white chocolate chips (same recipe) and food coloring! Just remember to let them firm up before diving in, you’ll thank me.