Chocolate Cupcakes

Made chocolate cupcakes from Cook's Illustrated magazine tonight. Was relaxing to do some nice, ordinary baking. I haven't tried them yet, but I've never had a Cook's Illustrated recipe go wrong. Oh, I did have to come up with a substitution for sour cream. I mixed cream cheese with a little heavy cream and a tiny bit of vinegar. Kinda similar, right? I added a little bit of homemade grenadine to the accompanying "simple vanilla buttercream" recipe, but it ended up having almost no effect on the frosting's color and flavor. They'll be coming with me to work tomorrow for a birthday and a going-away. Hope nobody reads this until then!