Orange Crush Cupcakes

Don't judge my cupcake decorating skills! (Or lack of skills!) I usually make K do the decorating portion, but for some reason, I did these on my own. As long as they taste good, who cares what they look like, right? Part of the issue is I see on TV the people that bake cupcakes for a living use an ice cream scoop to measure the amount of batter for each cupcake. I try this trick, but my ice cream scoop must be bigger than the ones they use because my cupcakes always overflow!

I got the recipe from "i heart nap time". She called the cupcakes Orange Cream Cupcakes... which, to me meant they were going to taste like an orange creamsicle. It didn't. But I imagine it could with a few changes. Also - you should really go check out the pics of her cupcakes. WAY cuter than my little disasters!

Ingredients:

• 1 16.5 oz white cake mix
• 1 3.4 oz pkg instant vanilla pudding
• 6 Tbsp orange jello powder save 1 Tbsp for frosting I bought two of the larger boxes of jello thinking that one might not be enough and I would be super agro if I was in the middle of making the cupcakes and had to go back to the store for more jello. One was plenty.
• 3 egg whites
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup orange soda room temperature
• 1 8 oz cube of cream cheese softened
• 1 cube (1/2 cup) salted butter softened
• 1/2 tsp orange extract
• 3 cup powdered sugar

Directions:

• Pre heat oven to 350. 
• Combine cake mix, vanilla pudding and 5 Tbsp of jello in a large bowl. 
• Beat in egg whites, vegetable oil and orange soda. 
• Mix on medium speed for 2 minutes.
• Place batter in cupcake liners and bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned. 
• Remove the cupcakes from the pan and allow to cool. 

Frosting:

• Combine cream cheese and butter in a large bowl. 
• With a mixer beat until smooth.
• Add jello, orange extract and powdered sugar. 
• Mix until fluffy.
• Frost cupcakes, top with a cute gummy orange candy, and enjoy! 

My opinion: They were good, but not great. I think the orange cream cheese frosting was too much.It would have been much better with a vanilla frosting - giving it more of the orange creamsicle taste I was hoping for. If I were to make them again, I would definitely change the frosting.

The Nieces

Luckily, I made these right before we had family come into town for 4th of July and they were more than happy to help us eat them. My one niece devoured hers and then raved about how good it was. A little while later, I was talking about the cream cheese frosting and all of a sudden she was saying she didn't really like the frosting that much. Apparently, she doesn't like cream cheese frosting. Kids. SMH... LOL I was the exact same way when I was her age.