After enjoying two (mostly) sunny, (relatively) warm days, I awoke this morning to wind, rain and gloom. Just what I didn’t need on a Sunday.

I also really didn’t need the pile of work I have to unexpectedly finish by tomorrow morning because of some weird client panic on Friday afternoon (why oh why is it always on a Friday afternoon?). I suppose I could say that having to work makes an otherwise interminable Sunday afternoon pass rather more quickly, but in truth, it’s just irritating and grumpy-making.

But when 3 p.m. rolled around, and the wind was howling, and it was raining, and I was hating everything, I had a revelation, and the revelation was this: cupcakes!

What better way to cheer up a gloomy day than by filling the house with the aroma of sweet, warm chocolate cupcakes? I don’t often make cupcakes because—well, I don’t often bake cake-like things, period (too much butter, too much sugar, too much mess), and cupcakes generally seem like a particularly fiddly cake-like thing. But I wanted to get away from the computer and do something homely and I knew I happened to have just enough ingredients in my fridge for a batch of sour-cream chocolate cupcakes, so I got down to it.

I’ve made these chocolate cupcakes before (I use the basic sour-cream chocolate cupcake recipe from the Cupcakes! cookbook by Elinor Klivans which hasn’t failed me yet, despite the bad reviews on Amazon—though admittedly, I’ve only made that one recipe from it). This time, however, in place of the half-cup of water the recipe calls for, I used a half-cup of freshly brewed espresso to create the ultimate indulgence: mocha cupcakes. Oh yeah.

I baked the cupcakes for 25 minutes, cooled them a few minutes in the tray, and then popped them out to cool on a wire rack while Jeremy and I ran to the shop for dinner goodies. Upon our return, I dusted the little cakes with powdered sugar, made a lovely cup of tea, and scarfed down one deliciously moist, gorgeously tender, richly chocolatey, seductively coffee-scented cupcake with a sigh of sinful pleasure.

And my Sunday was saved.