Cupcakes at Tiffany's

Or rather, with Tiffany. My youngest niece Tiffany has been wanting to come over and bake with me and yesterday we were finally able to. We made mini-cupcakes in four different flavors! The flavors we made were Chocolate Peanut Butter, Dark Chocolate Mocha, Lemon, and Cherry Vanilla. Unfortunately, in all the fun, I forgot to take pictures! I did however, snap one at the end with my phone of Tiffany and all of our cupcakes.

We started with two box cake mixes, one plain yellow (for the Lemon and Cherry Vanilla) and the other a milk chocolate (for the Chocolate Peanut Butter and Dark Chocolate Mocha). This is how we spilt the yellow cake mix to get our Lemon and Cherry Vanilla Cupcakes.

There was 3 cups dry mix so we placed 1 1/2 cups mix in two separate bowls. The directions then called for 1/3 cup vegetable oil. I measured the oil and "eyeballed it" pouring about half in each bowl. It then called for 3 eggs. We beat 3 eggs together and poured them into a measuring glass. The beaten eggs measured to 2/3 cup so we poured a 1/3 cup beaten egg into each bowl. Lastly, the box directions called for 1 1/4 cups water. This would be roughly 5oz. of liquid for each half of mix and this is where we took the opportunity to add additional flavor.

For the Lemon we added 5oz. of water and the zest of half a lemon.

For the Cherry Vanilla we added 5oz. of maraschino cherry juice.

Our chocolate cake mix called for the same amount of liquid, eggs and oil so we split it the same as the yellow mix.

For the Chocolate Peanut Butter we added the 5oz of water with 2 Tbsp of peanut butter.

For the Dark Chocolate Mocha we added 5oz of cooled coffee.

Once all our cupcakes were baked, we made the following icing:

Butter Cream Icing

2 sticks softened butter
2lb powdered sugar
pinch of salt
3 Tbsp milk or water
1 tsp vanilla

Beat everything together until fluffy. If icing is not coming together, add more milk or water 1 Tbsp at a time, mixing in between each addition.

We divided our icing into quarters and flavored it for each type of cupcake.

Lemon: Added 1 Tbsp lemon juice and yellow food coloring to icing. Topped frosted cupcakes with white sprinkles.

Cherry Vanilla: Left icing as vanilla but added pink food coloring. Topped frosted cupcakes with a maraschino cherry.

Chocolate Peanut Butter: Added 2 Tbsp peanut butter to icing. Topped frosted cupcakes with Reese's Pieces.

Dark Chocolate Mocha: Added 2 Tbsp coffee and brown food coloring to icing. Topped frosted cupcakes with a shard of dark chocolate coffee flavored candy bar.