Orange Cupcakes? Yes please!

I've had this photo waiting since, oh, Easter. Uh oh.

When I'm at my apartment, I generally don't do that much baking. For one thing, I don't have a lot of space to store baking supplies, which means I don't have that many pans... Which means what normally would take me two hours takes me four because I'm constantly waiting for a pan to be finished. Consequentially, I usually try to choose easy recipes to at least minimize the amount of time it's going to take. I don't do the intensely complicated recipes, and often take short cuts with cake mixes.

I've never been an anti-cake mix kind of girl. Like with yarn, everything has it's purpose. As far as I'm concerned, if someone wants chocolate cupcakes with a special frosting, they're going to get a chocolate cake mix. Hey, I don't taste a difference!

I don't taste a difference because I don't actually eat chocolate cake, but whatever.

These cupcakes are a result of a doctored cake mix and let me just say: they're fabulous.



I found these Orange Sherbet Cake recipe on pinterest originally and I'm so glad I did. Holy crap were these good!

I'd first heard about the whole cake mix and soda recipe when searching for a vegan cupcake recipe for Monkey's step-mother back when she was "vegan". Those cupcakes didn't turn out too well because unfortunately, while vegan cupcakes are nommy, vegan frosting is really hard to make!

Since I wasn't worried about eliminated dairy products, I opted for a cream cheese frosting to top these cupcakes- more because whenever I buy cool whip, it winds up being eaten before it's supposed to. Most recently, I bought some for a Mother's Day dessert. It was supposed to sit on top of the strawberries on a cream cheese cake, but wound up being scarfed in the kitchen before dinner. The strawberries alone were totally fine!

Ahem.

The cream cheese frosting was delicious of course, how could anything involving cream cheese not be! It was a tad heavy for these cupcakes, but still yummy. I wound up adding a few teaspoons of orange extract to the cupcake and the frosting just to really cement that fake orange flavor. I think the perfect addition would have been those chocolate covered oranges, but that's just because I can't leave well enough alone.

Man were these good. So good, I may have accidentally eaten 18 out of the 24 cupcakes on my own. In one weekend.

Oops.

I don't know why anyone trusts me around sugar. Clearly, I can't control myself. The more artificial, the faster it seems to go.