The BEST White Cake Cupcakes I Have EVER Tasted.

Oh yes, I'm back to making my famous Cupcakes. :] I've been wanting to for days, but poor little miss Layla has apparently not been feeling well, so she hasn't given me a chance to bake any. I also did a complete cleaning overhaul in my apartment on Thursday, so it's so much easier when you have a clean & well organized kitchen to work with.

Now, I had stocked up on cake mixes a month or so ago when Publix had them BOGO. (P.S. PUBLIX BOGOS ARE THE GREATEST THINGS EVERRR!) So, I've been sitting here with a few boxes of cake mix in my cabinet, with no intention of making a boxed cake. I am not a fan of processed foods, and boxed cake, to me, is just to blah & generic. Anyone can make it. It's not WOW enough for my liking. I'm ashamed to make boxed cake. I don't like my food tasting average. It's just not me.

I knew these cake mixes had to be used though. I'm not a food waster. I hate throwing out things that have expired. A certain someone in our family (I won't mention names here but some people know who I'm talking about because it drives me absolutely insane) likes to pass food along to us. Because she's an EXTREME couponer and buys more food than is humanly possible to consume. Now, I'm all for free food, and handouts, but here's the thing: she gives us EXPIRED food. It's absolutely disgusting. I'm not talking like "oh this expired a month ago", I'm talking YEARS ago. She gave us 3, count them THREE, boxes of food a few months back. I read the dates on them, and I threw out all but about 4 canned goods (which we all know last decades). They had all expired like 2 years ago. Yes, years. That is not an exaggeration by any means. But, I digress. This has nothing to do with my amazing cupcake journey.

Where was I? Oh yes, not wasting the cake mix. So, I had the genius plan to doctor up my mix a bit. Make it a little more unique. So, I took a recipe I found at Recipe Girl and adapted it to the items I had in my kitchen. Here's the end result:

1 (18.25 ounce) box white cake mix
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated white sugar
a small pinch of salt
1 cup water
1 cup milk
2 Tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large egg whites

Whisk together all dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients. Mix well with hand or stand mixer. Pour into either a) well greased cupcake pans or b) cupcake pans with liners in them. Bake on 325 degrees F for 18 minutes. 

OH.MY.LANTA. These are by far the most amazing, perfect, soft, moist, spongy, white cupcakes EVER. No lie. You can eat them without frosting. They're that good. In fact, Daniel & I ate two of them without frosting, fresh from the oven. They are absolute perfection. I'm a culinary master. tehe. 


I just wanted to share that recipe with you guys. If you make it, be sure to let me know how yours turned out. I'll post my end product & frosting recipe tomorrow. <3 Goodnight, cupcake lovers.

Baking In My Undies!

Last night I decided I wanted to bake something yummy. I had picked up some canned pumpkin dirt cheap the other night, and wanted to use some, because, well, who doesn't love pumpkin? I wanted to do something new--not the pumpkin cupcakes again (although they were amazing!), and not a pumpkin pie (because we already had one in the fridge). I did some research and found a great idea, and made my own recipe from it. Here we go...My recipe for Pumpkin Brownies!

I guess these might technically be considered "Blondies", but they have chocolate in them, so I call them brownies.

Ingredients
2 cups of All-Purpose Flour
2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of butter/margarine
1/2 cup of brown sugar
3/4 cup of sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups of canned pumpkin
chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a pan with aluminum foil & spray with nonstick spray.
2. Combine dry ingredients in bowl.
3. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars.
4. Add egg, vanilla, and pumpkin and mix until smooth.
5. Add the dry ingredients a little at a time, and mix until it's all combined.
6. Add chocolate chips to the batter. Chocolate chips are at your discretion, if you like a lot of chocolate, more chips, less chocolate, less chips.
7. Pour batter into pan and top with chocolate chips.
8. Bake for 35 minutes or until light brown around edges.
9. As hard as it may be, let cool before removing from pan and devouring. 

AMAZING stuff. Daniel even calls them "Deliciousness". 

If you make it, be sure to let me know how they turned out!! 

Now, back to my trigonometry homework I've been neglecting.