The idea for these cupcakes visited me in a dream. A real, honest-to-god, its-three-in-the-morning-and-I'm-under-the-covers dream. When I groggily woke up the next morning, I sweetly remembered dreams filled with chocolate cake and green avocados. As consciousness slowly regained, I remembered I had made an apple cake the night before, so I threw the idea of the avocado cake to the wayside as the prospect of a sugar-laden, pretend-healthy cake breakfast whispered to me from the kitchen. But the more I thought about it, the more delicious a chocolate avocado cake sounded. So delicious, in fact, that I couldn't think clearly the rest of the day.

My curiosity was piqued. After work, I immediately ran to the supermarket and rummaged around for the ripest avocados I could find. It took me 15 minutes and several hundred fruit handling assaults to find the ripest avocados. I was a mad woman with a mission. After all, these cupcakes had come to me in my dreams, clearly it was destiny!

By themselves, these vegan chocolate avocado cupcakes are a perfect representation of a delicious, moist cupcake with the perfect crumb. But with the avocado buttercream? Game changer. This combination is absolutely lethal. The avocado taste in the buttercream is subtle, yet present, and has such a fantastic natural coloring. I would seriously take this avocado buttercream over the traditional buttercream any day. Any day. It is that good.

I shared these cupcakes with my fellow grad students and they were unanimously a hit. I need to dream about pastries more often.